December NatureKIT: Wild Card!

Welcome to December! Let us end 2025 in fun and style.

The December NatureKIT is a "wild card!" Make it a "Reader's Choice" and select whatever you want to read that fits in with this challenge.

Maybe you did not get to finish an earlier selection, or found a book you want to read but it did not readily fit any monthly topic for NatureKIT.

On the other hand, you might want to read something about wild animals, wild nature travel, wild plants, wild waters, wild weather. The choice is yours!

Here is the wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2025_NatureKIT

I’ll probably read either Rewild Yourself by Simon Barnes or The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild by ‪Craig Childs, depending on which I get my hands on first. I was hoping maybe to get to Walden this month, but I’m so far behind on my reading that it’s not likely to happen.

I finished Song of Sweetbrook for this challenge.

I'm going to read The Ghost Orchard about Helen Humphries. It's about apple trees and their history including the diminishing number of them.

I've read The Serviceberry which would have satsified May's topic.

I read Birds of the Pacific Northwest for Kids by Tom Myers, which would make a nice starter field guide for a person of any age looking to get started in birding in Oregon, Washington, or British Columbia.

I also read The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I really enjoyed this and look forward to reading more of her works.

Eve

I learned an incredible amount from this book, including some facts I didn't even realize I didn't know. This book is a little palaeontology, a little anthropology, a little biology, a little sociology, and a little history, all tied together meaningfully. I found the endnotes very educational, and wish the bits that were more than simply a source (I'd wager maybe half) were part of the text itself, instead of tucked away at the back. There were one or two times I disagreed with the author, feeling the evidence she presents contradicts an assertion she follows up with, but for a book I enjoyed as much as this one, I can forgive that.

I read The Ghost Orchard by Helen Humphreys. A 4* read for me.

We are getting closer to the end of the year! Thanks to all who have been participating in this challenge.

I had several false starts with books that just didn’t click with me before starting Walden by Henry David Thoreau. It’s not clicking either, but I figure it’s such an iconic book that I’ll finish it eventually, but not this month.

>11 LadyoftheLodge: Thanks for organizing this challenge. I've read some books I might not have without it and have enjoyed seeing what others have read, resulting of course in too many BBs.

I didn't quite manage to finish my book in 2025, but did finish it on New Year's Day. It was The Nature Chronicles Prize: 1, the collection of the winning and shortlisted entries for the inaugural Nature Chronicles Prize. It was an excellent and very diverse set of essays.

REDBIRD CHRISTMAS
by Fannie Flagg