Our Favourite books of 2024
Over the course of an amazing year for climate and ecological books in all genres, and to celebrate the first anniversary of the Library, we’ve decided to share some of the books we’ve enjoyed most – both old and new. So if you’re looking to give someone special a book for Christmas, here are some of our favourites, all of which you can find in your local independent bookstore: https://bookshop.org/pages/bookstores
Liz Jensen
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
In fiction, I loved Tim Winton’s Juice, as well as Briefly Very Beautiful, a stunning debut from Roz Dineen, and Samantha Harvey’s Orbital. Winner of the 2024 Booker prize, it’s a luminous reminder that Earth is not just a home, but a treasure to be cherished with fierce devotion. It centres on a group of astronauts who, from their orbiting vantage point, are constantly aware of the planet’s splendour and fragility: “It looks like it should break, or dissolve like the thinnest glass,” thinks one of them. “You realize you’ve never loved it enough. None of us have.” This observation is not merely aesthetic; it is a moral reckoning. Written in precise, lyrical prose, the novel is an invitation to see the world anew.
Not too Late, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua
In non-fiction my top pick is Not too Late, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua, is an essay collection that re-imagines the narrative of the climate crisis, emphasising the possibility of meaningful change through collective action, local initiatives, and a commitment to justice. The contributors – climate activists, Indigenous leaders, and academics—underscore the effectiveness of both direct and indirect impacts of activism, and Solnit’s insistence that “difficult is not the same as impossible” makes Not Too Late both a call to action and a source of solace for those grappling with climate anxiety.
Matt Rose
To The Ends Of The Earth: A Grand Tour of the 21st Century by Richard Weller
A 21st century ‘Grand Tour’ of 120 of the most pertinent places in the world today. This grand tour is not about escaping reality, but confronting it. The places are divided into six chapters: Paradises, Utopias, Machines, Monsters, Ruins and Instruments, and they include the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada, Steve Jobs’ Apple Park in California, a national park in Costa Rica, the Green Wall in Central Africa and the border wall between Israel and Palestine.
Local by Alistair Humphreys
After two decades of grand expeditions spanning the globe, adventurer Alastair Humphreys embarked on a project to get to know his uninspiring corner of England through undertaking weekly microadventures within one local map. Armed with curiosity, his camera and a selection of apps, Alastair set out to traverse the 20 km area on foot and by bike, noticing and researching everything he encountered. From winter frosts to summer meadows, ancient woodlands to housing estates, farmers’ fields to fly-tipped rubbish, Alastair embraced his local map in meticulous square kilometre segments. What emerges is a chronicle brimming with humour, history, emotion and insight. A story about slowing down and opening your eyes to the wonders and issues in plain sight on your own doorstep. A reminder that you don’t need to burn carbon travelling the world to find connection, perspective and inspiration. You just need to look closer to home.
Anne Enith Cooper
The Tao of Revolution: A field guide to global transformation, compiled and curated by Chris Taylor
This is a book that has touched me deeply. Described by publisher Stairwell Books as “a book on climate and societal change that isn’t about the coming chaos, but about how we learn to live with the future”, it is part anthology, part introduction to the I Ching, and part poetic narration by the curator. At its heart is the idea of returning to live in harmony with nature, embracing the commons and restoring the earth. Chris Taylor cites and includes testimony from projects around the world that are in many different ways endeavouring to do this right now. It is in essence a text that does not deny the risks of extinction, the climate emergency, or the danger of ecosystem breakdown, but rather, sees a way through to profound transformation through spiritual and material change.
The Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
This book is possibly my favourite cli-fi novel of all time. It’s a book I return to often as I feel it serves as a warning against authoritarianism and what the world could look like without a just transition to climate change. In this dystopian fiction set in California in 2024, Lauren Olamina, a young African American teenage girl, collects seeds and necessities for survival, knowing danger is afoot. Against the backdrop of a brutal collapsing society, wracked by climate breakdown, a newly elected authoritarian president enacts labour laws that will increase the growing inequality, corporate power and the existing vast homelessness. Violence grows, slavery and debt bondage return. Yet at its heart the book bears a message about hope, faith and the value of community. When Lauren’s home in a community is burnt down, her neighbours and family members killed in a raid by outsiders, she sets out to travel north to find safety. A long perilous journey begins. On the way she is joined by others and begins to spread the word of her Earthseed philosophy with the ideas that “God is change” and people can “shape God”.
Philiip Webb Gregory
The Rime of the Modern Mariner by Nick Hayes
Just what it sounds like: a modern retelling of the Coleridge poem. Told by a grizzled old codger to a young screen-eyed stranger in a park, Hayes takes the original eco-fable and updates it, weaving in plastic pollution and the dehumanisation of humanity when disconnected from the natural world. There are vengeful apparitions, oil slicks and raging tsunamis, not to mention the endlessly mounting corpses of the creatures of the ocean.
Hayes’s poetry is lyrical and energetic, alternately summoning laughter, tears, and moments of reflection. But the real magic at play here is the artwork. Reminiscent of Japanese woodcuts, there’s a simplicity to his highly-detailed lines that allows breathing space while demanding fervent attention. Of course, you won’t be surprised to learn that nobody listens to our modern mariner. His tale is disregarded as the ravings of a mad hobo, and he is left alone on a park bench, listening to the wind and wondering at the strangeness of humanity.
Walking the Woods and the Water by Nick Hunt
In 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out in a pair of hobnailed boots to chance and charm his way across Europe ‘like a tramp, a pilgrim or a wandering scholar’, from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul. Seventy-eight years later, Nick Hunt followed in his footsteps.
His journey takes him on a seven-month walk through Holland, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey on a quest to discover what remains of hospitality, kindness to strangers, freedom, wildness, adventure and the deeper currents of myth and story that still flow beneath Europe’s surface.
Sandy Winterbottom
Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen
One of my very favourite reads of 2024. In the midst of grieving for her son and for the planet he was so deeply connected to, Jensen not only finds room for joy, humour and love, but finds them essential for the sixth stage of grief: meaning. She brings the same open heart and bravery to the climate emergency:
“in times of reckoning, anxiety, trauma and grief are just part of the story. With every crisis – and this is without doubt the biggest and most fully global one that humans have ever faced – comes an opportunity for fundamental and regenerative change.”
Your Wild and Precious Life is a brave exploration of grief and also a fierce call to action, to speak-up for what is precious and to live as wild as we dare. A well-deserved Waterstones Best Biography of 2024.
Thirsty Animals by Rachelle Atalla
What makes this book so compelling and terrifying in equal measure, is how Atalla manages to write fiction within a hair’s breadth of reality. It is the combining of the mundane (the job at the local service station) with the apocalyptic (the border between Scotland and England is closed due to prolonged drought and water shortages). This is a slow onset apocalypse that mirrors the creeping nature of climate change for many, where normal life still seems plausible even when juxtaposed with the barely imaginable fates of those who’s taps have been turned off. This novel faces up to the stark reality of the climate emergency. A must read.
Poetry
Finally, the Rebel Library’s Christmas poem is a beautiful, haunting elegy about the transformation of grief and despair into love and action, from author and poet Rebecca Stonehill.
Grief, Underwater by Rebecca Stonehill
On a squally late summer’s day
that smelled of rosehips and salt
I pulled myself deep beneath the waves
and screamed.
I thought that the sea would come
rushing into my mouth
and I would have to rise, spluttering,
to the surface.
But it didn’t.
And I found that the ocean could
receive my rage and grief
in a vast, echoing, underwater cavern
without the judgement or questions
I found from most.
Emboldened by the way
the waves
received my pain, I
dragged myself down
again and again. I screamed for drought,
flood, wildfire, for turtle doves
and hazel dormice, for falling bombs and
my friends sitting in prison cells
for wanting to protect this world,
for loving it so much, too much
for the myopic pillars of power
who peddle business as usual.
And when I rose, gasping,
to the surface
I wept into the salt-whipped
wind as my tears joined those
of the world’s oceans and I
felt watery arms around me,
embracing me, whispering
that I could continue crying,
that only my grief held
the gentle power to carve tracks
across our scarred, scared world
into knowing,
into healing,
into lasting change.
Contact our Librarian if you would like themed book lists to support teaching about climate change.
We’re always looking for contributors to our growing collection of literature to explain and explore the climate and biodiversity emergency. If you’re a writer or poet and would like to share your work or ideas, please get in touch! Contact mattroselibrary@gmail.com for prose or poetsrebelxr@gmail.com for poetry.