I read two books recently which I really enjoyed and felt totally absorbed in and would absolutely recommend, which I thought I would briefly review here. You can take the girl out of the book blog but you can’t take the book blog out of the girl! 

Becoming Earth by Ferris Jabr 

This is a reported book by which I mean: Jabr sent himself on a LOT of fun trips to write this and the joy of reading it is that you get to come along too. From scientists scooping water out of a mine deep, deep under the earth to the tallest tower in the Amazon to the kelp forests of California to Jabr’s amazing garden, the description is always vivid. 

Two things really struck me as I read. First, the structure: it’s incredibly elegant. Becoming Earth makes the argument for a modern day understanding of Gaia theory, that the systems of the earth beget life, and that earth creates the conditions for life to continue. Jabr sets the book up into three sections, for each of the materials that life has sprung out of. In each section, there’s a one chapter about microorganisms, one about macro-organisms and one about the impact of humans. 

While the ‘impact of humans’ chapter was particularly clear about it, it was distinct how Becoming Earth was was a ‘climate science’ book without being solely focused on the climate. Instead, it draws the reader’s attention to how wholly, and how fast, humans have reshaped earth’s systems. Jabr manages to do this while retaining an essential wonder and awe at the miracle of biodiversity. It’s quite reminiscent of Ed Yong, if you enjoyed I Contain Multitudes or An Immense World. Becoming Earth imagines its way deep into earth’s past, and into our future. It also introduces heaps of scientists who are doing the mahi to make the earth more knowable, and is an argument for why that is so vital. 

I particularly liked all the parts about microorganisms, like the endless diversity of microorganisms in deep rock, and the great migration up and down through the layers of ocean each night, and the way that fungal spores (!) help seed clouds (!!). There’s more about this here if you’re interested. Jabr repeatedly emphasises that fossil fuels are literally fossils which really reminded me of Spencer R. Scott’s writing about how absurd it is to burn this intensely concentrated ancient sunlight. 

The Anthropologists by Aysegül Savas

I got this book from the library and read it in two days, which was delightful; it’s very short and slim, the perfect novel for a weekend. I think it would be most ideal to read if you were in an unfamiliar city wondering if you should make it your home. I was drawn to its title (that latent anthropology degree) and found that it very much delivered on the part of studying anthropology I most liked; feeling equipped to wonder and observe with wide eyes the people around me. 

The Anthropologists is a novel in vignettes, telling the story of Asya and Manu, a couple who are foreigners in a city (each with a different homeland), wondering if they should build a life there. It’s sort of the opposite of Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies, which Shreyas and I read earlier this year; instead of having an unnamed protagonist in The Hague, a specific city, it is about named protagonists in a non-specific city. Asya, a documentary maker who narrates the book, and Manu who works for a non-profit but never talks about it, are trying to buy a house, with all of the imagining future selves that goes with that. They mooch around with their friend Ravi; friends and parents visit; they make friends with their upstairs neighbour, an increasingly frail old woman. Meanwhile, Aysa is trying to make a documentary about parks and public space, the ordinary routines of people’s lives which are meaningful. 

Savas also writes short stories (one called Future Selves was the seed of The Anthropologists) and I can see that precise writing at work here. The language isn’t ostentatious, but phrases like “even after all this time, technological intimacy still thrilled [my grandma]” and “The light in our apartment has so much space to fill” paint beautiful pictures, like frames in a short documentary. I liked how The Anthropologists explored the quality of weirdness and wondering, emic and etic, routines but distance from home, that propels good writing. 

I also loved how friends and family members moved through the story, instead of it being a marriage plot focused on the interior of Aysa and Manu’s relationship, which, while clearly stable and largely happy, is almost unexamined. I think I liked it because I liked how Aysa thought, always examining and qualifying her friendships, going along to things because of obligation, feeling so much love for the people around her, and the world. I suppose in that way, I liked it because of my own future selves: the idea that being wondering and curious and foreign is something I can carry with me. Maybe even a strength. Maybe even a gift.