March NatureKIT: Landscapes

This month's challenge is to read a book about landscapes. This is a really wide topic - you could choose deserts, mountains, tundra, meadows, for example, or the different landscapes in a particular geographical area. The landscape could be the subject of the book, or a significant setting underpinning a story. You could read a coffee table book about a national park, or do a deep dive into the geology of a place. You could read a story set entirely in a desert. This could be the prompt you need to finally tackle Walden. Just as long as the landscape is a significant part of the book.

Authors who write beautifully about landscape include Robert Macfarlane, Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, Richard Mabey, Jim Crumley, Amy Liptrot, Annie Worsley, amongst many others.

My tastes always veer towards the non-fiction, so if anyone is able to recommend some good fiction where the landscape is vital to the story and beautifully evoked, I'm all ears!

Don't forget to add your books to the wiki ( https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2025_NatureKIT#March:_Landscape ) and review here. I can't wait to see what you're going to read!

I'm planning on reading Noreen Masud's A Flat Place and Tir: The Story of the Welsh Landscape by Carwyn Graves for this month.

I'm planning on Something in the Woods Loves You. I've heard the writing is gorgeous, so I'm anxious to get to it!

>3 whitewavedarling: Ooh that's a new one for me, I'll have to check that out!

I may go with Mudlarking by Lara Maiklem, a book about estuaries and tidal riverbanks.

I've changed my mind more than once but have finally decided on Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn. It answers the question, what happens in the absence of humans?

I think I will read Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert which is a series of essays about the desert.

>6 clue: I have had that on my list for a while - interested to hear what you think.
I will be reading The Place of Tides by James Rebanks.

I'm planning to read Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women by Annabel Abbs. Might be a stretch, but I think it works for this. I guess I'll know once I finish it.

This might be a bit of a stretch, but I am reading Legend in Green Velvet. It is set in Scotland and the main characters spend a lot of time trekking through woods and highlands to escape from the baddies. The descriptions are pretty cool too.

I’m hoping to read something by Robert Macfarlane, possibly Landmarks or The Wild Places, depending on what’s at the library.

Another one I had hoped to read this month (I got behind due to my few days of not reading, so there are a few I will not get to this month that I'd hoped to!):

Where the Buffalo Roam / Anne Matthews

Where the buffalo roam looks quite interesting!

A few fiction books that may be interesting.

• The overstory by Richard Powers (trees)


• The summer book by Tove Jansson (island)

On my Mt. TBR

• When I sing mountains dance by Irene Solà (mountains) winner of the European Union Prize


• Mink river by Brian Doyle (coast of NW USA)


• Deep river by Karl Marlantes (logging family, forests in NW USA)

ETA: touchstones not working

and a nonfiction title I'm interested in: Amy Tan's The backyard bird chronicles (nonfiction)

I picked another youth literature for this round. This One Summer takes place in a small beach-side town, and the landscape features prominently throughout the story.

This coming-of-age graphic novel follows a young teen on her family's annual vacation to a summer beach cabin, as she deals with family arguments, disagreements with a childhood friend, and witnessing the very public drama of the older teens who live in the area. It was a very fast read, and it was such a realistic depiction of being that age — trying desperately to be mature and be seen as mature whilst even those a few years older view you as a kid, having such a temper for no apparent reason, shifting your view on your parents — it would have been a nice book to read when I was 14 or so, to know that what I was going through was normal. The language the characters use was realistic, but at times so course I was very surprised it won so many awards. I expected the committees for these awards to be more judgemental of that sort of thing, I guess.

I'm not sure it would hold the attention of someone with more mature tastes, but I thought it was a very good coming-of-age book.

I read Winterkill by Ragnar Jonasson.
There is no denying that the landscape of Iceland is a strong feature of this mystery making it a good fit for the category. The story of Ari Thor’s measured investigation into the death of a young woman who fell to her death from an upstairs balcony. Was it suicide, an accident, or murder? Sadly it is the last in the Ari Thor series but as I have read them out of order I still have some ahead.

I read Guilty Creatures: Sex, God, and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida, which is maybe a bit of a stretch for this topic, but the north Florida landscape plays a strong role in both establishing the atmosphere of this true crime account and in the circumstances of the victim's death.

I had a couple of false starts this month. I did try a Robert Macfarlane book, Landmarks, but despite the lovely writing, I found it at first tedious and then infuriating, so I abandoned it. I thought I’d try fiction, so I started Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver, which I’m still in the middle of. It’s really good, but more about climate change than landscapes, so I didn’t think it really qualified (though it would be perfect for next month’s Flying Creatures).

In desperation not to fall even farther behind in the NatureKIT (I’m still working on February’s book), I searched on LT for books in the same subject category as Landmarks, hopefully short ones, and by blind luck happened on The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. It is a beautiful description of the Cairngorm Mountains in Scotland. What a delightful surprise to find this gem that I otherwise would never have heard of!

>19 Charon07: The Living Mountain is an absolute classic of Scottish landscape writing - and actually has Robert Macfarlane to thank in large part for championing it once it was rediscovered. A more recent book which takes The Living Mountain as its inspiration, revisiting the Cairngorms and really providing a literary conversation with The Living Mountain, is Merryn Glover's The Hidden Fires: A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd. That one is very good too.

I finished Tir: The Story of the Welsh Landscape by Carwyn Graves which was a very interesting look at seven different aspects of the Welsh countryside - including moor, woodland, hedges, orchards, amongst others - and looking at how the landscape is inescapably linked both to cultural forces (particularly looking at how it is represented in the Welsh language and folklore), and to human agriculture. The author is an ecologist, but draws on history, archaeology, cultural studies etc as well as ecology. It was possibly a bit nerdy (not a problem in my opinion!!) but always fascinating.

I'm running late this month and I'm not sure about next month. I've had family in the hospital for several weeks and will be needed as caretaker fulltime when once she comes home in a few days.

>22 clue: The important thing is that you look after your family member, and yourself. The KIT, and all the books, will still be here waiting for you when you're ready.

I finished an audiobook today which I didn't intend for this challenge but I realise that it also fits. Lyndon Penner's The Way of the Gardener: Lost in the Weeds Along the Camino de Santiago is an account of his journey along the Camino in northern Spain. As befits his profession (gardener, environmentalist, gardening columnist) a lot of the book is taken up with descriptions of the trees, shrubs and flowers that can be found along the way.

A couple of days late, I've finished Noreen Masud's A Flat Place. This is a memoir of exploring flat landscapes across Britain, and discussing how they reflect and soothe her inner 'flat place', her memories of a traumatic childhood in Pakistan and subsequent complex PTSD. I thought it was stunning.

I've been slow to come back and report because I needed to sit with it, but I finished Something in the Woods Loves You by Jarod K. Anderson, and it was simply wonderful. One of those rare books that I know will be a forever favorite of mine, and which I wish I could put into every reader's hands. If you have any interest at all in reading nonfiction, or know of anyone who does, I highly recommend it. Full review written.