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This spring, as you step out to your local weekend farmers market, closest beach or favorite hiking trail, you may want to take a moment to reflect on the living world around you. At BookBrowse, our Nature and the Environment category of Beyond the Book articles covers the ways humans are intimately tied to and dependent upon the plants and animals we share the planet with, the responsibility we have towards them in turn, and additional topics involving environmental politics, biodiversity, natural wonders and much more. Below is a small sampling of freely available articles for you to enjoy.
Every "beyond the book" article we write accompanies a book we review and focuses on a cultural, historical or contextual topic related to that book. These pieces are a great way to discover new titles and learn about all kinds of subjects! BookBrowse members get full access to thousands of Beyond the Book articles across nine categories, including Nature and the Environment.
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith's A City on Mars discusses what a space colony on that planet might look like. Science fiction authors, though, have been imagining life on the Red Planet for well over a century (some coming closer to reality than others).
The concept of intelligent life on Mars was likely sparked in the late 19th century. Improved telescopes allowed scientists to notice long, straight lines on its surface (first described by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1877). Some speculated that these channels or canals were engineered by some sort of native creature. Although this notion was debunked in the early 20th century, it triggered the idea that there could be intelligent life on Mars, which over the ensuing decades became a staple of science fiction.
At BookBrowse, we regularly bring you author interviews that offer insight into the origins, processes and intentions behind our featured works. As we look back over 2023, we would like to take the opportunity to share with you our favorite writer Q&As of the year. We invite you to explore Eleanor Shearer's inspiration and research for her historical novel River Sing Me Home, Costanza Casati's fascination with the subject of her Greek myth retelling Clytemnestra, how Anne Berest's family history informed the writing of her memoir-tinged work of fiction The Postcard and much more.
For book lovers, reading about magical libraries can have a special appeal—a place that, in the real world, already feels enchanted and full of possibility can literally be so in fantasy. Below are six books set in extraordinary enchanted libraries.
In addition to browsing by genre, time period, setting and a wide range of themes, BookBrowse offers specialized reading lists in our "beyond the book" section. These lists are curated by our professional reviewers to accompany featured works, and they can help you familiarize yourself with many fascinating niches of the book world.
Below are just a few examples of the hundreds of articles available in our Reading Lists category.
Unsurprisingly, stories featuring the circumstances of child or teenage protagonists during World War II tend to appear prominently in the category of young adult literature, with classics like Lois Lowry's Number the Stars existing as staples of historical fiction in schools and libraries all over. But as is the case with Jennifer Rosner's Once We Were Home, which follows grown-up characters reckoning with how they were displaced away from their Jewish families during the Holocaust, some books written for adults also center the specific viewpoints of those who experienced the war as children. Below are just a few.
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