Recent Reads, Volume XI

A brief summary of what I’m currently reading or have recently finished, why I read it, and whether I’d recommend it. Although really, it’d have to be truly terrible for me to bother writing about a book I wouldn’t recommend……

The Hidden Lives of Owls (Leigh Calvez) – I added this to my To Be Read list after reading an article written by the author on snowy owls in a 2018 issue of Smithsonian magazine. Naturalist Leigh Calvez delves into the differences in habitat, behavior, and ecological outlook of owls, covering a different species (or sometimes species group) in each chapter. It’s a good source of information, without getting too bogged down in scientific terms and details. 

The Breath of a Whale (Leigh Calvez) – Calvez recounts lessons learned and reflections from roughly a dozen years research, tracking, and observing whales. Each chapter focuses on the unique features – physical,  yes, but also behavioral, ecological, and historical – of a different species. I read this mostly because she also wrote The Hidden Lives of Owls, but in a bit of fortuitous timing, its arrival from the library also coincided nicely with our homeschooling lessons on cetaceans. (Bonus review from my 8-year-old: “Well, I only read the chapter on orcas, and the one on blue whales, but they were great! They weren’t boring like most adult science books I’ve seen are, and she even helped an orphan orca calf get back to its pod! If you like reading books about people helping animals,  you should read this one. Although the part when she was looking for blue whales was not very interesting, because it took a LONG time to see one. It was probably more interesting to read about than it was to sit and look for one and not find one though.”)

Deep Delta Justice (Matthew Van Meter) –  Small town Louisiana, 1966, and a racially-motivated disproportionate prosecution of a black man intervening and stopping a fight before it truly started. The aftermath involved the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee and the U.S. Supreme Court, and resulted in the establishment of the right to a jury trial in state criminal cases. This reminded me very much of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy (about which I wrote in Volume II), but with a more positive and hopeful endnote.

Black Fortunes (Shomari Wills) –  Wills covers the stories of the first six African-Americans who survived slavery and became millionaires. It was a pretty easy and quick read, though the chronology of each story was not the easiest to follow. I thought it worth the time to learn about individuals of whom I had never heard before, though perhaps a little discouraging to see the lengths to which they had to go to disguise either their race or their wealth. Biographies, even abbreviated ones, are some of my favorite books, and this fits the bill.

So there you have it: 4 books I’m reading right now or have recently finished. If you’ve read any of these (or decide to after reading this post), drop me a note and let me know what you thought of them! And let me know what you’re reading right now too.