Stuck at Home? Check out These 5 Books for Nature Lovers

For a while I’ve been wanting to feature some nature books that I have totally loved, thinking that you too might enjoy them. It just seemed that all kinds of other things got in the way and the task never left my To-do list. But now that we’re all being asked to stay at home (or be outside alone) to limit the spread of Covid-19, we might suddenly have time for things that we were always too busy for before.

Want to read a good book? Me too! Reading is a great escape from all of the stress of the news and current events. Why not find a good spot outside, maybe on a mountainside, leaning against a tree or on a rock away from other people and spend some time alone, just enjoying a good book?

Here are 5 recommendations (and you can buy them all from the links below. These won’t make the books cost more, but as an Amazon affiliate, I will earn a small percentage with each purchase) :

1. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens Have you heard of this novel? Have you read it? What did you think? I have to admit that I loved this book more than any I have read in a LONG TIME. There is so much nature in this book as the main character, Kya is most at home outside, in “her” marsh on the coast of North Carolina. With few human friends, she learns to survive on her own, making friends with the gulls, herons and other wildlife. Despite unimaginable hardships, she learns to be self-sufficient as she becomes intimately acquainted with her “backyard.” There is a little bit of everything thrown into this book, from a murder mystery, to romance and the ties of family and friends. I did not want it to end! If you read it, please let me know what you thought of it!

2. The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben This nonfiction book opened my eyes to a whole new world, leaving me astonished at the complexity of trees and their relationships to each other, to the plants around them and to the earth. Who knew? Looking at them, one would never suspect there is such a hidden world. This book was fabulous! There is a text version, and also, a big, coffee table book that has beautiful photography that will awe and inspire you.

3. Winter World: The Ingenuity of Animal Survival by Bernd Heinrich Yes, I know winter is almost over and all of us are already looking towards spring, but I have always loved and been fascinated with this book. It is a factual account of what happens to animals in the winter. Do they hibernate? Migrate? Die? Or stay active? Heinrich talks about all of it in an interesting and engaging way, and like the tree book, it is just fascinating. How do wood frogs, flying squirrels, kinglets, bears and other animals make it through the long winter? This book will tell you! And will leave you never looking at winter in quite the same way.

4. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver As a lover of Barbara Kingsolver books and nature, I really enjoyed this book. It is the kind of story that you want to luxuriate in, to read slowly and savor. Like Where the Crawdads Sing, there was a lot of natural history information stuffed into this book.

5. The Secret Lives of Bats: My adventures with the World’s Most Misunderstood Mammals, by Merlin Tuttle I had the honor of meeting world-renowned biologist and photographer, Merlin Tuttle some years ago and have stayed in touch ever since. He is an inspiring man who has changed the way many people see bats. This book offers an inside look at what it’s like to study bats, why we should care about them and what we can learn from them. For anyone interested in this amazing mammal, this is the perfect book to cuddle up with on a rainy day.

What books would you put on the list? Do you have any nature books, fiction or nonfiction that really influenced or enthralled you? Please share! I’d love to hear from you and maybe you will suggest something that some of us have never read before. Use the comment box below, and I hope to hear from you soon!