TURNING TO BIRDS: The Power and Beauty of Noticing, inspiring readers to mindfulness practice

TURNING TO BIRDS: The Power and Beauty of Noticing
LILI TAYLOR
Crown Publishing (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$1.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2025

The Publisher Says: Accessible essays about searching for peace in the cacophony of birds and discovering a world of meaning in small moments—from award-winning actress Lili Taylor.

Most people don’t really know birds—or rather, they aren’t aware of them. Lili Taylor used to be one of those people. She knew birds existed. She thought about them, maybe even more than the average person. But she didn’t know them. And then something happened.

During a break from her work as an actor, Lili sought silence and instead found the bustling, symphonic world of birds that had always existed around her. Since then, she has kept a keen eye pressed to her binoculars in search of vivid stories that elevate the everyday, if only one pays attention.

Through a series of beautifully crafted essays, Taylor shares her intimate encounters with the birds that have captured her heart and imagination—from tracking flitting Zorros through oak trees to spotting majestic Bluejays perched on a Manhattan fire escape; from the exhilaration of chasing a migratory flock up the Empire State Building to the quiet joy of observing a nest of hatchlings in her own backyard.Through simply paying attention to birds, Lili has been shown a parallel world that is wider and deeper, one of constant change and movement, full of life and the will to survive.

This book is part-memoir, part-love letter to the beauty and resilience of the natural world—a reminder of the profound connections that exist between all living things. Taylor's lyrical prose and thoughtful meditations on both the art we make and the art we discover around us create a sense of intimacy and wonder, inviting readers to see the world through new eyes and to find joy in the most unexpected places.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Essays are tricky to recommend...they depend so much on how something is said, but possibly even more on who's saying it; never, of course, forgetting the all-important what the essays are about. These essays succeed, for this reader, at least in part because Author Taylor is an indie-film darling with a very clear body of work behind her, thus has solid credibility; and also stays busy by acting in shows like Outer Range and the Lincoln's assassination series Manhunt as Mrs. Lincoln.

In the midst of that, and raising a child, she's been active in conservation organizations like the Audubon Society...her work for them, her work life, her busy-ness, led her to seek time to spend enjoying the natural world she was working to protect.

Birding offered a way to do that while still working. Bird census, anyone? This collection is clearly by a deeply committed person, one with a lot of integrity, who does not simply sit and wait for things to change but stands up and gets into the fray.

The humor, the anecdotes, offer her acting-life fans the little jolts of familiarity that make books by celebrities so appealing. Those who came for the Mystic Pizza or the I Shot Andy Warhol girl will feel satisfied catching up to her; those who love her TV work will too. Both can get their fixes with a side of gentle encouragement to seek solace in the unhuman world we exist inside but so seldom look around at. The birding is a joy to her, it feels as though she's telling us her secret to long life abnd happiness (she's younger than I am, so I hope it works but won't be around to find out).

A novice birder's delight; a celebrity-follower's browsing garden; an example of how to be multifaceted in a world that would prefer you do one thing and shut up about everything else. What it isn't is a how-to, or a guide to the world of birding. It's meditating on the benefits of time in nature, not giving a how-to. Organizing the book by species watched with the whys and the hows of that moment in her life made me feel I was along with her...woodcocks, bluebirds, those awful house sparrows...and what happened while she was doing the watching...well, it worked for me.

As a reminder to seek a mindfulness practice, all five stars; as a birding book, four and three-quarters...but as a celebrity tell-all, three stars. Hence my weighted average of four and a half stars and a smile.

THE SIRENS OF MARS: Searching for Life on Another World, when history isn't a far-away enough holiday escape

THE SIRENS OF MARS: Searching for Life on Another World
SARAH STEWART JOHNSON
Crown
$17.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Mars was once similar to Earth, but today there are no rivers, no lakes, no oceans. Coated in red dust, the terrain is bewilderingly empty. And yet multiple spacecraft are circling Mars, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium, and Mare Sirenum—on the brink, perhaps, of a staggering find, one that would inspire humankind as much as any discovery in the history of modern science.

In this beautifully observed, deeply personal book, Georgetown scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson tells the story of how she and other researchers have scoured Mars for signs of life, transforming the planet from a distant point of light into a world of its own.

Johnson’s fascination with Mars began as a child in Kentucky, turning over rocks with her father and looking at planets in the night sky. She now conducts fieldwork in some of Earth’s most hostile environments, such as the Dry Valleys of Antarctica and the salt flats of Western Australia, developing methods for detecting life on other worlds. Here, with poetic precision, she interlaces her own personal journey—as a female scientist and a mother—with tales of other seekers, from Percival Lowell, who was convinced that a utopian society existed on Mars, to Audouin Dollfus, who tried to carry out astronomical observations from a stratospheric balloon. In the process, she shows how the story of Mars is also a story about Earth: This other world has been our mirror, our foil, a telltale reflection of our own anxieties and yearnings.

Empathetic and evocative, The Sirens of Mars offers an unlikely natural history of a place where no human has ever set foot, while providing a vivid portrait of our quest to defy our isolation in the cosmos.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Women in STEM fields are still outnumbered by men. I like reading about them because it gives me a hopeful feeling about the pace of change in our world. Once upon a time, Vera Rubin and Lise Mitner and Henrietta Swan Leavitt were just...not talked about, invisible in our public discourse about Science. Now, there are books and movies about the women who have always practiced in the STEM fields like Hidden Figures to educate us on this erased history.

About time, too.

What that doesn't do is tell us anything about the women actively working in the STEM fields, about their motivations and curiosities, their ideas about what the field they're working within is and should be doing. This book's main appeal to me, then, was to tell me about a woman's journey to, and progress within, planetary science—a field I find endlessly fascinating.

I get the whole enchilada here, the story of why the author became a planetary scientist...spoiler alert, the centuries-long Romance of it all had a lot to do with it...as well as her own précis of the state of modern research into the past and present of our neighbor. The reasons we should care about Mars and its past aren't stinted, either.

What I enjoyed most, I think, was her palpable pleasure and excitement as she tells us about the atmosphere of tension and the sense of relief in Mission Control as probes and rovers are launched toward and land on Mars. The description then weaves in the results, the science, that is the reason for all this highly educated and trained labor focusing on this place. Her narrative voice never descends into gee-whizzery. She is definitely writing out of passion and fascination but doesn't become a total fangirl squeeing her way around the world she is privileged to inhabit.

Since that's exactly what I'd do, I was impressed by this restraint. Of course, her long training in the field does instill a certain sense of remove from the raw passion of the fan. It's taken her a lifetime of learning to get to where she is. It wasn't, and isn't, easy to fully dedicate yourself to a passion. The compromises made are always hard...being away from family, the strains on one's marriage...and she deals with all those honestly.

An extensive Notes section offers the non-scientist a roadmap for further reading and discovery. As this is a personal story, a memoir of a woman who chose to serve her passion for science, it isn't a read I judge by how well-sourced her information is. I just went along with this intelligent, erudite guide as I visited the world of a practicing planetary scientist.

You should, too, whatever your sex or gender. Also a good last-minute ebook to gift to your high-school aged girl giftee as a proof that aspirations are very much achievable.

EVICTED, a nasty thing that happens to poor people every day, also my vote for 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards in Nonfiction

EVICTED: Poverty and Profit in the American City
MATTHEW DESMOND
Crown
$18.00 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the $20 a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stickup after her hours are cut. All are spending almost everything they have on rent, and all have fallen behind.

The fates of these families are in the hands of two landlords: Sherrena Tarver, a former schoolteacher turned inner-city entrepreneur, and Tobin Charney, who runs one of the worst trailer parks in Milwaukee. They loathe some of their tenants and are fond of others, but as Sherrena puts it, “Love don’t pay the bills.” She moves to evict Arleen and her boys a few days before Christmas.

Even in the most desolate areas of American cities, evictions used to be rare. But today, most poor renting families are spending more than half of their income on housing, and eviction has become ordinary, especially for single mothers. In vivid, intimate prose, Desmond provides a ground-level view of one of the most urgent issues facing America today. As we see families forced into shelters, squalid apartments, or more dangerous neighborhoods, we bear witness to the human cost of America’s vast inequality—and to people’s determination and intelligence in the face of hardship.

Based on years of embedded fieldwork and painstakingly gathered data, this masterful book transforms our understanding of extreme poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving a devastating, uniquely American problem. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

My Review: I voted for this book in the 2016 Goodreads Choice Awards. Why? Because I'm a radical who wants to re-rig the system and change the course of the Ship of State 180 degrees.

“Every condition exists,” Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, “simply because someone profits by its existence. This economic exploitation is crystallized in the slum.” Exploitation. Now, there’s a word that has been scrubbed out of the poverty debate—and there it is, simply and baldly put: The poor are exploited mercilessly by every single sector of capitalist society. Landlords charge small fortunes for horrendous living conditions. The Feds give counties money for Section 8 housing, but there is never any such housing available and the agencies don't maintain lists...or the wait is decades long. What happens to that money? Where does it go? Someone's pockets are fatter and the poor, the elderly, the disabled are no better housed.

“If poverty persists in America, it is not for lack of resources"—the author just made, in one short sentence, the only real and relevant case for Universal Basic Income.