January 2019 Reads

I've decided to keep my book posts up for 2019, since without them I'd hardly have had any posts at all in 2018. And it should be easy this year, considering how few books I'm likely to read. After writing, mid-week hikes, and sleep, reading has been the biggest casualty of this whole job thing. Last month I managed only two books.



Nonfiction. I read the new book, Seaweed Chronicles, by Maine author Susan Hand Shetterly, whose work I always enjoy. Now you might think it would be hard to hold a reader's attnetion through a whole book about macroalgae, but Shetterly does it beautifully, weaving together biology, ecology, economics, and personal stories of the scientists and seaweed farmers, harvesters, and processors who are at the forefront of the burgeoining seaweed industry and have most at stake in the preservation of our ocean's gardens.

Fiction. Why, you may ask, when I have so little time available for reading, would I reread a book I've read at least twice, possibly three or four times before? The answer is, when it's cold and snowy outside and there's a fire in the woodstove, it's Jane Austen season. I hadn't read Emma in a good long while, so it was time, and Austen didn't disappoint. An utterly satisfying way of escaping January.