100 Books Like The Hopes of Snakes

I adore this book because it is so unique—I’ve never read anything quite this specific or niche which seems so all-encompassing.

It is the story of a life lost, and a life found. Of a father that dies and how the recovery of his daughter is tied up with the start of a new relationship—with a goshawk.

At the outset, the author is so wonderfully eloquent on all aspects of loss; the sudden jarring sense of confusion when a person dies and you have their possessions still in your hands; the struggle to keep in touch with reality (“for weeks I felt like I was made of dully burning metal”); the desperation to see the back of grief when new relationships are desperately grasped at, and fail of course, because of that desperation. 

The goshawk saves her (and us) from the darkness, as she becomes gripped with the… show more.

While there has been some controversy about the science in Simard’s book, there’s no doubt that it’s a great read that juxtaposes Simard’s personal life with her scientific life.

I was drawn to her personal story, which takes place in both government and academic spheres. I cried with her when her brother passed away, and I was proud with her when her daughter said she might want to study forestry at university.

The mix of science and memoir works well in this book, showing how the two are inextricably entwined. I was impressed by how hard Simard worked to keep her family together, particularly when she was a professor at UBC in Vancouver, and they were living in Nelson.  

I particularly appreciated the author's evidence-based management approach. It was refreshing that the author showed that we can be optimistic about solving the many challenges our planet faces. It is important not to think and work in terms of doom and gloom or slogans, but with data.

As a data scientist, Hannah Ritchie illustrates how problems such as climate change, deforestation, biodiversity, plastic in oceans, etc., can be solved. With the available data, you can then work out solutions.

The book is illustrated with many graphs and tables.

I don’t think there’s anything as hopeful as patience, and it is patience that supports poet and farmer Scott Chaskey’s reflections on leaving England for a small Long Island land trust and helping it grow into one of the first community-supported agriculture (CSA) farms in the United States.

Seasons, patience, and a love of land and words have created a fertile farm and a thriving human community alongside an abundance of birds and wildlife. I return to this book every decade or so (I’ve had it for that long), when I think I know my life but what I truly need is to be re-enchanted by Chaskey’s poetry and food-growing, his life-long apprenticeship to the beauty alongside us.

If you read one biography/memoir of a Gilded Age criminal, make it this one. It tells the story (often in his own words) of the celebrated pickpocket George Appo, an odd little half-Chinese, half-Irish, one-eyed fellow who could make $800 in a few days when most working men made less than that in a year. Appo would rivet New Yorkers when he testified about his second career as a “green goods” con man, working to swindle gullible out-of-towners who came to buy purported counterfeit money at a discount, only to discover that there was nothing but sawdust inside the packages they carried away. Appo refused to name names, though, as he was a self-described “good fellow.”  

“I saw a little boy on the street today, and he cried so eloquently that I will never forget him.” Maeve Brennan wrote for the New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section as ‘The Long-Winded Lady’ from 1954 to 1968. She roamed the city’s streets, bars, and restaurants, eyes wide open, weaving stories of vivid emotional detail from the most seemingly mundane moments. None of these are too long – in the waiting room concentration can be fleeting – but each sketch engages. Her story of the crying boy ends this way: “He might have been the last bird in the world, except that if he had been the last bird there would have been no one to hear him.”

Understanding New York Jews is key to understanding American Jews. There is no city like New York City and there are no Jews like New York Jews. In the middle of the 20th century, they made up around 30% of the total city population. This three-volume award-winning set uncovers aspects of the city’s history that even aficionados don’t know. Each volume can be purchased separately but together they paint an absorbing panorama across four centuries. I like to teach the volumes. They are fresh each time I read them, with lively prose and compelling vignettes. Reading them is like walking the streets of Gotham with a great guide.

We read several popular novels that explore competitive school environments. One of the best in this sub-genre is Small Admissions, by Amy Poeppel, which provides a fictional glimpse into the cut-throat world of Manhattan prep school admissions and ultra-competitive parents. Poeppel crafts a fun, wicked read with sharp dialogue. We could easily imagine what would happen when the children in Small Admissions apply to college…their parents would fit in well with the characters in our book.

I am definitely recommending some very big books here! 

This one is easily recognizable because of the size of its spine, but it’s also incredibly interesting – an economic, social, and political history of New York City from its founding to consolidation, I think the best thing about this book is all the subjects it covers which I knew nothing about. 

New York City during the American Revolution comes to mind. So does the early history of New York’s apartment buildings. There’s a reason this book won a Pulitzer Prize. 

I like the sequel too (called Greater Gotham, only by Wallace), but prefer this book, I think, because I know the post-1898 history better while much of this book was novel to me.

Tough Jews is a short history of Jewish-American gangsters and their Italian colleagues with whom they made common cause. It is here for the first time that we understand why Arnold Rothstein was the most important gangster in America.  Having introduced "organized" into organized crime, he promised underworld figures the help of the famous attorney William Fallon if they landed in trouble and agreed to look after their families if they got sent up the Hudson (to Sing Sing). I am struck by the fact that Cohen makes his history personal, by means of his own contacts with the people who know the inside story of how the Jewish gangsters thrived—or didn't. He sits down with them; he eats with them; and he gets them to remember how it once was in the days of Dutch Schultz, Legs Diamond, and Arnold Rothstein.