Books like The Word for World Is Forest

01

Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell · Memoir

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's firsthand account of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, which he joined in late 1936 as a volunteer with the POUM militia — a Trotskyist revolutionary organization that was later suppressed by the Soviet-backed Stalinist wing of the Republican forces.

A kindred science fiction read.

02

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

Suzanne Simard · Science

Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who discovered that trees communicate and share resources through underground mycorrhizal fungal networks — the research that gave rise to the concept of the "mother tree" and, at several removes, Peter Wohlleben's popular writing on the subject.

A kindred science fiction read.

03

Annihilation

Jeff VanderMeer · Science fiction

A team of four unnamed women — the biologist, the anthropologist, the surveyor, and the psychologist — enter Area X, a forbidden coastal wilderness where something has gone wrong for decades.

A kindred science fiction read.

04

The Things They Carried

Tim O'Brien · Memoir

Tim O'Brien served as a foot soldier in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970.

A kindred science fiction read.

05

Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse · Religion & Spirituality

Siddhartha is Hermann Hesse's 1922 novel of spiritual seeking, written at a time when Hesse was deeply studying Buddhist and Hindu texts.

A kindred science fiction read.

06

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

N.K. Jemisin · Fantasy

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the first book in N.K.

Both dig into colonialism and resistance.

07

2001: A Space Odyssey

Arthur C. Clarke · Science fiction

2001: A Space Odyssey begins with prehistoric man-apes encountering a featureless black monolith that somehow catalyzes their cognitive leap from prey to hunter.

A kindred science fiction read.

08

A Fire Upon the Deep

Vernor Vinge · Science fiction

The galaxy in A Fire Upon the Deep is zoned by the speed of thought: near the galactic core, the Slowness, where intelligence itself is limited; farther out, the Unthinking Depths; and further still, the Transcend, where entities of incomprehensible intelligence emerge and occasionally intervene in the affairs of the merely civilized.

A kindred science fiction read.

09

A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Becky Chambers · Science fiction

Rosemary Harper boards the Wayfarer under a false identity, hoping to escape a family history she cannot speak about.

A kindred science fiction read.

10

A Memory Called Empire

Arkady Martine · Science fiction

Mahit Dzmare, ambassador from a small, semi-independent mining station to the vast Teixcalaanli Empire, arrives at the capital to find her predecessor has died under suspicious circumstances and the neural implant that was supposed to give her access to his memories and knowledge is three years out of date.

A kindred science fiction read.

11

All Systems Red

Martha Wells · Science fiction

Murderbot is a SecUnit — part robot, part cloned human tissue — that has hacked its own governor module and is technically free, though it has chosen not to tell anyone.

A kindred science fiction read.

12

Blindsight

Peter Watts · Science fiction

Blindsight follows a crew of post-human specialists sent to intercept an alien object at the edge of the solar system in 2082.

A kindred science fiction read.