This month I haven’t managed to read as much as last, but this is partially a good thing, because the books I have read have required slow, thoughtful reading – the kind where some sentences cause you to look out into infinity for a long time.

I started on several books, and at least one of them will be devoured in the fullness of time, but I will hold myself to my self-imposed rule and only report on the two I have finished in February, both by the same author, Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Wall Kimmerer is a botanist and expert on mosses, and she combines her scientific knowledge with a native American’s approach to the natural world, which is deeply touching. The first book by her that I read is called Gathering Moss (4/5), and is a collection of essays on all things moss-related. It is very poetic at times, and makes you want to bring a magnifying glass to otherwise forgotten corners of the garden. I learnt a great deal from it and would recommend it to anyone interested in nature, but it is the second title that hit me like an iron rod.

At 85 pages this is a booklet rather than a full-sized book, and yet The Democracy of Species (5/5) is very, very powerful. It is one of those books that, like The Inner Life of Animals, I will carry with me for a long time, hopefully forever. The message is that Western culture, through the way in which our thinking and our language turns matter and animals into objects, has reduced nature to resources to be exploited, rather than intricate pieces in a vast, interconnected net of subjects, all bound together by our reciprocal gifts to one another. The concept of the Honorable Harvest, where you take only what is offered, and give something in return, is a practical reflection of what an alternative – and truly sustainable – approach looks like.

It is a title that I will buy over and over again, to gift to anyone and everyone, as it is the embodiment of perhaps the most important message of all. Read it.