Books for People Who Love the Planet

As a nature nerd from a young age, and then an educator in conservation, I have always loved the way that I could read a combination of Fiction and Non-Fiction to learn more and constantly expand my ideas of what it means to live on and be part of the ecosystems here on Planet Earth. I've rounded up some of my favourite books with everything from fictional novels that weave an ecological awareness into their sories, to non-fiction books that will expand your knowledge and maybe shift your perspective of a life on the plane.

There are a couple of authors who I adore that bring nature and ecology into their writing and use it in such a powerful way it becomes a character itself, or a theme of the story in terms of the ways that the characters relate to the world around them. 

The Overstory by Richard Powers is such a quintessential book for anyone who loves nature and the fight to protect it, an ambitious tree structure story that won Richard the Pulitzer Prize and continues to be an important novel about five strangers summoned together by the natural world. More recently, Richard Powers released Playground, which brings together the ocean and the islands of the pacific, alongside AI and big tech corporations. It's a clever and mesmerizing story about colonisation, adventure, and what it means to find home here on planet earth. One of my all time favourite novels is one of Power's shortest ones, Bewilderment. It's a quietly heartbreaking story about a young scientist searching for life in space, whilst dealing with the challenge at home on Earth of being a father to a rather unusual and special nine-year-old boy. Nature weaves through this story in the most incredibly powerful way, and if you haven't read any of Richard Powers novels yet I would recommend giving this one ago. It's a reminder of how beautiful it is to be alive, of how special our planet is and how special humans are too.

Another author that is now an auto-buy for myself and many others, Charlotte McConaghy creates gripping stories about humanity and the planet. Wild Dark Shore takes place on a subantarctic island where the land and the climate are characters as much as the very few people involved in the story as well. I loved Migrations, a book set slightly in the future after mass extinction events, where our protagonist is following the migration of the last Arctic Terns to Antarctica. McConaghy's books are powerful in their reflection on environmental change and the role of humans on the land around them, but they are also just all examples of really fine storytelling.

I could write an entire blog about many of these blogs but here are some other incredible pieces of fiction that feature the planet and themes of nature in beautiful and unique ways. 

Land by Maggie O'Farrell is a brand new novel about the mapping of Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century following the ravaging of the Great Hunger. Its a story about people and family, but also about the land itself and the way human events leave their marks on the earth and it's contours.

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak is a book that has lingered for me in the years since I read it, with the perspective of a fig tree growing on the divided Island of Cyprus woven into the story of two star-crossed lovers and the ways we escape reality, but also the ways home can bring us back. It's a beautiful story about nature and it's power, as well as a story about human spirit and resilience. 

Lastly, I'd recommend Ian McEwan as another amazing writer who features our climate and the environment in a lot of his novels. I read and loved Solar a long time ago, a satirical story about a Nobel Physicist who is trying to harness solar power to combat climate change. I also have Ian's newest book, What We Can Know, waiting in my TBR pile at home. It sounds incredible, a story about rising sea levels and how humans act and imagine solutions in the face of catastrophe. 

I love reading both non-fiction and fiction, both can offer us new perspectives on the world in different ways. I love reading non-fiction books about the planet and our place here on it, and some of my favourite books of all time grapple with our relationship to nature and the things we can learn from it. 

Braiding Sweetgrass is one of the books I think every human on earth should read. It's a big book, and one that takes some time and patience, but its become something that I think formatively changed the way I think about our relationship to nature. Robin is an incredible writer, combining both her indigenous knowledge and stories, alongside her incredibly vast scientific knowledge in the field of plants. For a smaller taste of her work, The Serviceberry is a small but mighty book about the abundance and generosity of nature, and the things we can from plants learn about economy and community.

Is A River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane is such a fantastic book, and perfect in a New Zealand context where the idea of a river being a living being has been a big step taken. This book has this idea at its heart, and through perspective shifting storytelling Robert takes us on three journeys across the waterways of the world. 

James Rebanks' The Place of Tides is about the author meeting a woman on a remote Norwegian island who cared for ducks and their valuable down. He spends time there for a season learning about the landscape and the role this woman had in caretaking it. It's an incredible story about letting curiosity lead the way in learning more about the places in the world that exist even when no one is paying attention.

The Garden Against Time is a unique little book. In it Olivia Laing tells an enchanting and rambling story about her garden, its secrets, and its connection to the idea of public and private gardens. She interrogates the idea of us owning a piece of land, of walling it off and keeping it to ourselves, but also shares her own gardening experiments and investigations. I loved it's meandering storytelling that felt like getting lost and surprised in a small wild garden somewhere.

Lastly, for non-fiction, we have some absolutely beautiful non-fiction coffee table style books that I think are a bit like the adult versions of those beautiful visual encyclopedias we cherished as children. 

The Meaning of Trees by Robert Vennell is a treasure in our home, one that I have never read back to back, but frequently visit to research a particular native plant and learn more about the ones I see in the neighbourhood. He has another book coming out later this year that I can't wait to get my hands on, this time all about the history and meaning of our native birds.

For the fungi fanatics who like me have a much loved copy of Fungi of Aotearoa in their home library, you now also need to pick up a copy of The Secret Life of Fungi by Jay Lichter! It's another absolutely stunning book about the mycelial mysteries we are only just beginning to understand, and its a beautiful reminder of how crucial even the smallest pieces of nature are to our survival.

Let me know what books you love that feature nature at their heart, and which ones need to be added to my own never-ending TBR.