40 Books Like The Light Eaters

I first read this book when I was developing a course for undergraduates at Cornell titled Nature Rx, based on the book I had co-authored. I immediately felt like Florence Williams had written this book just for me. Her tales of traveling to various points in Asia, Europe, and the American southwest to experience firsthand the impact of nature's immersions on humans in various states of health or illness was exactly what I needed to frame the syllabus for this course.

And Williams is more than a casual observer—whether it’s hiking through a Korean forest to gain the benefits of shinrin-roku (forest bathing) or shooting rapids down the Salmon River with a group of injured female war veterans, she makes us feel every aching joint and bead of sweat, engaging the reader in her real-life experiences. While we clearly live in a time in which cynicism is rampant, this book… show more.

I’ve been fascinated by all living organisms since my early childhood on Long Island. In our suburban yard, I would sit raptured, watching the hunting techniques of praying mantises, the burrowing ability of earthworms, or the seemingly drunk behavior of cedar waxwings after feasting on over-ripe berries. But I never fully appreciated the intricacies of animal behavior until I read this book. 

What Ed Yong masterfully achieves in this 400-page text is neither a Disney-like humanizing of other species nor an overly scientific explanation of how creatures respond to their environment. Rather, he brings us to a place where we are no longer perceiving other organisms through human eyes but through their own complex senses. 

This greatly increased my fascination with the natural world and, consequently, my need to preserve every precious species on this earth.

When I go out for nearly daily walks, I’m reminded that time in nature can stimulate us in many ways–from identifying the species we encounter to considering the essential interactions between organisms to simply being awed by the status of humans in the complexity of life on earth.

It is this swirl of nature engagements that Lyanda Lynn Haupt captures so beautifully in Rooted. Part poetic reflections, part call to change our daily habits, Haupt finds wonders in urban green spaces and amazement in greater forests. Along the way, she urges us to walk barefoot, clear our minds of daily worries, engage in forest bathing (but to also get muddy on occasion), and to move beyond our human-centric perceptions. 

Haupt includes enough personal anecdotes to temper her more radical suggestions, weaving insights, excitement, and, yes, humor to grab and hold the reader throughout. After reading this book, I feel that… show more.

The COVID pandemic brought on a struggle of isolation and reduced options, made worse in 2020 and ’21 for those of us in northern climes where winters stretch on for nearly half the year. If you’re like me and you wait impatiently for the first true signs of spring, then you may find the simple structure Angela Douglas employs in Nature on the Doorstep to be just the antidote you need.

Starting on March 22, 2020 (a day after the spring equinox, but nature follows its own calendar), Douglas filled her pandemic days by writing family members one letter each week for a full year’s cycle. She chose as the focus of her missives her own modest backyard and the life–and death–portrayed on that stage. It’s the modesty of this work that was its greatest appeal to me. 

In clear, non-esoteric language, Douglas finds beauty and wonder in Vultures and… show more.

If you don’t know much about what plants can do, this is a great place to start.

Learn what a plant sees, smells, and feels. Yes, they can do all that. They know what color shirt you’re wearing. They can smell the warning from a neighbor plant being eaten by a bug. They know when you touch them. They know where they are, and they remember things. Plants are not passive, and they are acutely aware of the world around them.

Blogger and podcaster Matt Candeias used to think plants were boring. Then, in college, he got a summer job in habitat restoration at an old quarry, and he fell in love.

He learned about the strange ways plants have sex, how they conquer new territories, and what animals they prefer to eat. Most of all, they fight for survival. It’s not exactly war, but there is never enough water, nutrients, space, and light, and there are always predators. Plants meet their challenges in surprising, wonderful ways.

So go outside, he says, and get to know your local plants like you know your friends.

Marder’s book is a brilliant exploration of plants in a philosophical (not a botanical) sense. It’s one of the most eye-opening (and accessible) philosophy books I’ve ever read, illuminating a swathe of life on Earth I honestly had never thought much about before.

Marder writes clearly and cogently about how we’ve thought about plants and how we’ve been wrong: we’ve been blind to plants; we’ve shaped them as our absolute opposite; we’ve treated them only instrumentally, exploiting them for what they can do for us. And then he makes a real effort to think through what plants are–what vegetal being actually is. One of the most mind-blowing things, he argues, in my view, is that we are much closer to plants than we think–we have our own buried “vegetal being.”

Marder’s elaboration of plant life–and how we’ve misunderstood and abused it–is literally the theoretical scaffold of all fiction and film… show more.

This author is well known for her nonfiction picture books that clearly explain science topics, in this case, the growth of plants. Step by step, Gibbons walks young readers through pollination, the growth of seeds, and how seeds are distributed, such as by squirrels and birds. Then she goes on to talk about how plants grow. The whole process is reader-friendly, and the illustrations are clean and attractive. A great introduction for kindergarten through third graders.

I suspect that many of us now know someone who’s been to the Amazon to take the psychedelic beverage, ayahuasca, returning with wide eyes and tales of profound healing. Here, anthropologist Stephan Beyer cuts through the romanticisation to present an accurate and engaging picture of ayahuasca shamanism in the Upper Amazon. He asks difficult questions, such as how well shamans actually cure sickness and why so many shamans engage in sorcery, but his inquiry is never less than sympathetic. That he peppers the book with his own psychedelic, ayahuasca visions, makes this one of the most accessible and engaging books on the subject.

When I was younger, I stayed overnight in a haunted house, or at least a house that felt haunted. I was in a big, creepy room by myself, and sleep was impossible. Instead, I sat up through the night, feeling very alone. During that long wait for dawn, this book was there for me.

It’s a satire that’s now more famous than many of the grim rural novels that inspired it; more important to me then, it’s the very funny story of Flora Poste, a modern young woman who goes to stay at a remote country farm with her relatives, the dramatic Starkadders, ruled over by Aunt Ada Doom, who once saw something nasty in the woodshed. Flora’s story is a glorious triumph of common sense over an ominous atmosphere.