Reading Roundup, June 2024: A Long Overdue Finish and Field Guides
I only finished one book this month, so my notes will also include some selected volumes I picked up while in California at the venerable Bookshop Santa Cruz, and which are mostly not sit-and-read type books.
Seed to Dust by Marc Hamer (Bookshop|Library)
The second volume by Hamer, and the third (of three) that I've read. Along with How to Catch a Mole and Spring Rain, Seed to Dust makes up something of a loose nature-memoir trilogy. This volume, the longest of the three by far, is a month-by-month diary of Hamer's time as the gardener for a well-to-do older woman somewhere (presumably) near Hamer's Cardiff-area home. It's main overarching theme is an exploration of impermanence and death, in many forms, and is heavily influenced by Hamer's relationship to Buddhism.
It took me months to read this - I devoured a little less than half in the fall, and then finished the rest at a more casual pace this spring and summer. During both sessions I at times felt like this was Hamer's masterpiece, at times felt like it was overly didactic and curiously intolerant of other points of view. But I don't think either is quite fair as an overall assessment. The book merely acts as a statement of Hamer's own worldview, accrued piece by piece, and given the nature of its structure it's like conversing with your friend every day and encountering their various changes in mood and preoccupation. So yes, you'll likely be annoyed by one section, and turn the page to another that has your head nodding in complete agreement.
In the end, I don't know that I'd call this Hamer's best book - I personally find How to Catch a Mole more original, and Spring Rain better structured, but there are still an abundance of ideas presented in this one to take note of.
Now, for some California Field Guides I purchased. Bookshop Santa Cruz is well worth seeking out if you're in the area. We went twice this time over the course of our one-week trip!
The New Beachcomber's Guide to the Seashore Life of California (Bookshop|Library)
This guide is beautifully illustrated with color photographs throughout. The prefatory material on intertidal habitats is very brief but, I think, well-described. The meat of this book is the photographic guide, though, and as an object it is beautiful. I can't say I'm a very good beachcomber, but this book did help me identify a few organisms this year - mostly shells I found on the beach, but also some of the organisms we found in our very brief visit to the tidepools at Point Lobos.
Fylling's Illustrated Guide to Pacific Coast Tidepools (Bookshop|Library)
This is a very, very concise guide to this topic, but the portability and the wonderfully vibrant hand-drawn illustrations are what drew me to this one. I really wish Marni Fylling could produce a more comprehensive and specific guide and become something like the David Sibley of the tide pool - now THAT would be an awesome book.
California Indians and their Environment: An Introduction (Bookshop|Library)
I'm always interested in learning the deep history of areas I travel through, and and America that necessarily comes down to the indigenous inhabitants. This book is part of the University of California Press California Natural History guides series (https://www.ucpress.edu/series/cnhg/california-natural-history-guides). All of these volumes are worth taking a look at if there's a topic that piques your interest. This one suffers a little bit from its organization, but I think its still on ok introduction to the diversity of historical inhabitants of California and how they utilized the environment.