Here are 67 books that Trees in Paradise fans have personally recommended if you like
Trees in Paradise.
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I am an early medieval European historian who, in the last decades, branched out into environmental history. Having grown up in semi-rustic conditions, I have always been curious about rural things and past agricultural practices. I watch carefully as plows slice through fields, mind how birds and bees weave together their ecosystems, and pay attention to the phases by which trees put on and take off their leaves. Now a professional historian, my job involves reading a lot of rural and environmental history, so I have developed a good sense of books that mix academic rigor and approachability.
“The face that launched a thousand ships,” as Homer would say. Pollan’s witty and well-written treatment of how plants think and act to modulate their environments inspired 21st-century “critical plant studies” in the Anglophone world, including mine.
The book starts you thinking about the thousands of ways plants elbow into your world and how much they matter to your existence on earth, in economic but also spiritual senses. You end up agape in wonder.
A farmer cultivates genetically modified potatoes so that a customer at McDonald's half a world away can enjoy a long, golden french fry. A gardener plants tulip bulbs in the autumn and in the spring has a riotous patch of colour to admire. Two simple examples of how humans act on nature to get what we want. Or are they? What if those potatoes and tulips have evolved to gratify certain human desires so that humans will help them multiply? What if, in other words, these plants are using us just as we use them? In blending history, memoir and…
During two decades as a gardening columnist for the Toronto Star, I wrote about hundreds of different plants. I also penned, for various publishers, over half a dozen books with titles ranging from Incredible Edibles: 40 Fun Things to Grow in the City and The Untamed Garden: A Revealing Look at our Love Affair with Plants. And in doing so, I got hooked. Even if you aren’t interested in gardening, the botanical world is chock-a-block with terrific stories. My new novel, for instance, published in 2022, begins with an extraordinary tale about a plant called The Corpse Flower which bloomed for the first time in 70 years at Brooklyn Botanical Garden.
A good book provides me with information, but it must also be entertaining and free of annoying jargon. This one became a bestseller after it appeared back in 1998, with good reason. In fact, I’ve read it three times (a rarity for me) and I always get a chuckle or two. Susan Orlean crafts a fascinating tale about the wonderful subculture of orchid fanciers in Florida. The writing is vivid, the characters she meets are off the wall, and I learned a lot about these weird, sometimes creepy flowers.
The story of orchid thief and obsessive, John Laroche, and the bizarre world of the orchid fanciers of Florida. The world of the orchid hunters, breeders and showmen, their rivalries, vendettas and crimes, smuggling, thefts and worse provide the backdrop to an exploration of one of the byways of human nature, the obsessive world of the collector.
All my writing starts with the question, How did we get here? As the granddaughter of a grocer and the daughter of a food editor, I grew up wondering about the quest for new and better foods—especially when other people began saying “new” and “better” were contradictions. Which is better, native or imported? Heirloom or hybrid? Our roses today are patented, and our food supplies are dominated by multi-national seed companies, but not very long ago, the new sciences of evolution and genetics promised an end to scarcity and monotony. If we explore the sources of our gardens, we can understand our world. That‘s what I tried to do in The Garden of Invention, and that’s why I recommend these books.
David Fairchild was one of the early leaders of the US Department of Agriculture, traveling the world like a botanical Indiana Jones to gather cuttings and learn about local methods of cultivation and pest control. He introduced thousands of new crops to the United States, from mangos to soybeans. Wouldn’t you love to list “plant explorer” as your job description?
David Fairchild wrote this book to describe his extensive world travels and his work introducing new plant species to the United States. In addition to sharing his legendary tropical botanical expertise, Fairchild provided graphic accounts of native cultures he was able to see before their modernization. He was an accomplished photographer and illustrated the book himself.
This is his personal story of his experiences, traveling endlessly, absorbing information about plant life and sending back cuttings to experiment with, investigating plant disease, and so on. His training and experiences in European laboratories and his travels brought him into contact with most…
All my writing starts with the question, How did we get here? As the granddaughter of a grocer and the daughter of a food editor, I grew up wondering about the quest for new and better foods—especially when other people began saying “new” and “better” were contradictions. Which is better, native or imported? Heirloom or hybrid? Our roses today are patented, and our food supplies are dominated by multi-national seed companies, but not very long ago, the new sciences of evolution and genetics promised an end to scarcity and monotony. If we explore the sources of our gardens, we can understand our world. That‘s what I tried to do in The Garden of Invention, and that’s why I recommend these books.
This gorgeous and touching book shows the many ways community gardens are more than a name—they build community. In a time when it’s so easy to feel helpless, here are ordinary people taking small steps with a big impact. I particularly loved the use of community garden time as alternative sentencing for teen offenders, and how the kids turned around and used their skills to help homebound seniors.
Fifteen people plus a class of first graders tell how local food, farms, and gardens changed their lives and their community . . . and how they can change yours, too. Urban Farming Handbook includes: Fifteen first-person stories of personal and civic transformation from a range of individuals, including farmers and community garden members, a low-income senior and a troubled teen, a foodie, a food bank officer, and many more Seven in-depth "How It Works" sections on student farms, community gardens, community-supported agriculture (CSA), community education, farm work therapy, community outreach, and more Detailed information on dozens of additional resources…
I’ve always been interested in art and architecture. I studied Fine Arts at CalArts. I’ve written three books on Mid-century home builders and designers, William Mellenthin, Jean Vandruff, and Robert Byrd, whose life and work in Southern California had gone mostly unnoticed during their lifetimes—with very little information written about them in the press. I spent three years on each book working with the families to uncover their lives and place in local history. This is information that would have otherwise been lost. When you research the life of one person in this profession, you inevitably learn about the life and work of others—some famous, some not.
I was born in Burbank, CA. This book details the early land development deals made by Fritz Burns for new single-family homes in Burbank and the surrounding area beginning in the 1930s.
Fritz Burns was an innovator, showman, and very successful businessman. His office once occupied the historic House of Tomorrow located at the corner of Highland Ave. and Wilshire Blvd. that he commissioned architects Walter Wurdeman and Welton Becket to design and build.
He also helped develop the Kaiser tract homes in the San Fernando Valley, and some of the first large hotels in Hawaii in the 1950s. When driving around the neighborhoods of Southern California I’m always searching for historically important buildings and residences.
Visiting journalists regularly misinterpret California. Outside politicians twist it into bizarre caricatures. I know because I have worked as a journalist in all parts of the state. I covered crime for the LA Herald Examiner, spent 27 years at the LA Times, was a columnist and editorial page editor at the Sacramento Bee and, finally, was senior editor of the nonprofit news organization, CalMatters. I’ve covered governors, wildfires, a major earthquake, politics, mass incarceration, mass shootings, an execution, and all manner of policy. There are many great nonfiction books about California, including Jim Newton’s biographies of Earl Warren and Jerry Brown, Randy Shilts’s The Mayor of Castro Street, and Gladwin Hill’s Dancing Bear.
Mark Arax is a lovely writer who tells a riveting story about the place he knows best, California’s Central Valley. He describes the flawed giants who carved up California’s water for their benefit and the workers who toiled to make their dreams happen. Mark makes his hometown of Fresno and the rest of the Valley a compelling character in the drama. His book as essential reading for anyone who hopes to understand California.
A vivid, searching journey into California's capture of water and soil—the epic story of a people's defiance of nature and the wonders, and ruin, it has wrought
Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth.
I enjoyed writing The Karma Kaper. Just as there's tragedy and comedy in every aspect of our lives there's humor in crime. It's fun bringing that humor to my audience. I also believe in justice for all. Sadly, as American courts are currently more concerned with criminals' rights than victims' rights there are no guarantees victims will receive the justice they deserve. No one can predict if a jury of 12 will find a defendant who has committed a crime guilty. Then, there's the highest court of appeal - fiction! Between the covers of a novel, a crafty writer can ensure just verdicts and devise macabre punishments for the bad guys! It doesn't get any better!
John Steinbeck wrote the Working Days... journals while writing The Grapes of Wrath.
The intent of the journal was to establish a schedule, including a completion date for the novel. What he reveals about his self-doubt is tonic for any writer who is haunted by the same malaise.
Here is the entry for June 18, "…I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty to it… If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time."
Sometimes, I seem to do a good little piece of work, but when it is done it slides into mediocrity…John Steinbeck’s honesty and humility remind me that self-doubt is a part of the creative process.
John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath during an astonishing burst of activity between June and October of 1938. Throughout the time he was creating his greatest work, Steinbeck faithfully kept a journal revealing his arduous journey toward its completion.
The journal, like the novel it chronicles, tells a tale of dramatic proportions—of dogged determination and inspiration, yet also of paranoia, self-doubt, and obstacles. It records in intimate detail the conception and genesis of The Grapes of Wrath and its huge though controversial success. It is a unique and penetrating portrait of an emblematic American writer creating an essential American…
We’ve all read them: the girl who is unknowingly of royal blood but was sequestered to an ordinary family to protect her identity. The detective with the broken home and a drink problem is driven to solve the crime. The action hero who can shoot their way out of any encounter. While these tropes are the bread and butter of genre fiction, they get overused. I found that my favorite and most engaging characters were those with complicated lives whose pasts might catch up with them at an inconvenient moment. Here are some of my favorite stories with unconventional characters that shine through the narrative.
My copies of this series are so worn by reading and re-reading that they are falling apart. There’s no higher praise from me as a reader.
This is my comfort read, which is odd because it’s about the fall of a civilization—and The Dark, in particular, is terrifying. We never really see them. That’s partly because they aren’t entirely corporeal and can change size and shape at will. It’s also because anyone we know in the story who encounters them is almost certainly fighting for their life.
Are The Dark one character or many? Certainly, what one of them knows, they all know. The key to this conundrum is what motivates them to do as they do, and alien as they are; their motivations are as unexpected as they are profound.
This is beautifully written classic fantasy in all its glory. If you only read one book of these five,…
Gil, a graduate student, discovers that her nightmares of people fleeing in panic from a hideous evil are not dreams and that she is standing in the doorway to another world
My expertise as a scholar of the women’s music movement spans 40 years--ever since I attended my first concert and music festival in 1981. A lecturer at UC-Berkeley, I’m the author of 19 books on women’s history, and published the first book on women’s music festivals, Eden Built By Eves, in 1999 (now out of print.) More recently I’ve organized exhibits on the women’s music movement for the Library of Congress, co-authored The Feminist Revolution(which made Oprah’s list), and I’m now the archivist and historian for Olivia Records.
Possibly the best and rarest of all publications about the start of the women’s music movement, this volume was prepared by the students at the University of California at Santa Cruz to serve as a textbook (and record of their experiences) for the first-ever course on feminism and music. Still available to good sleuths who find used copies floating around, the title page is Women in American Music. Women’s Studies, Kresge College, University of California, Santa Cruz, Spring 1975.
The idea for the class was initiated by Karlene Faith, who went on to be an influential producer and distributor; the book she helped edit includes interviews with early Olivia artists who were guest speakers and performers in the class. Before her untimely death, she too was working on a history of Olivia Records.
Like my narrator Maggie, I was a child, then a teen wandering the woods and dreaming of a life. I’ve always hated those books/TV shows/films where women, especially young women, are helpless and reliant on a man to get them out of trouble. I gravitate toward stories where females figure out their own paths, not always to a happy ending. I’m still a wanderer today, mostly solo, from New York City to the vast Highlands of Scotland, and while the world can seem scary, I’m confident and free on my own.
This is an incredibly intricate book, braiding many strands together to tell the story of people who “might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California.” One thread tying it all together is Stone Telling, a young girl caught between her mother’s rich tribal life and the militaristic city life of the man who is her father. She tells him, “I am a woman, and make my own choices,” but learns that is not the case in the land of the Condors. Her story illuminates two of the many ways to be human. (I’m re-reading this now.)
An "ethnographic" novel that portrays life in California's Napa Valley as it might be a very long time from now, imagined not as a high tech future but as a time of people once again living close to the land.
