Cosy Reading for Cooler Nights

In the introduction to his highly acclaimed book, An Immense World, the science writer Ed Yong creates an imaginary scenario with a room full of animals: an elephant, a mouse, a robin, an owl, a bat, a rattlesnake, a spider, a mosquito, a bumblebee, and a human. The chaos that ensues shows that these creatures “share the same physical space but experience it in wildly and wondrously different ways”. Whether you’re an elephant or a bat, an owl or a bumblebee, your perception of the world varies greatly from your neighbour.

“Every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness” sounds like metaphysics, but Yong is speaking of biology. Specifically, the unique biology of each species that allows it to see the world in its own unique way. “Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields” (p. 5).

Over 350 pages, Yong guides readers through the range of sensory experiences found in the animal kingdom. It’s a daring task: how, exactly, do you immerse the homo sapiens reader in the electric world of a Glass Knifefish? Or the smelly, odor-centric world of a Beagle?

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (Random House, 2022) is the OFNC Book Club Pick for November and December.

The book club will meet to discuss the book on Tuesday, January 13, 2026 at 7 p.m. on Zoom. All OFNC members are welcome, whether you’ve finished the book or not (though please note that you must have an OFNC membership to attend).

If you’d like to attend the meeting, please register in advance by following this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/HWzbzQe4TNWqSxxFgItnvQ

Et tu, C.S. Lewis?

On October 28, the book club got together to talk about Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter by Ben Goldfarb. We had a lively discussion about this divisive animal, and many members shared their own fraught histories with it.

In the book, Goldfarb insists that beavers are the answer to many of North America’s current environmental challenges—from drought to declining biodiversity. And he makes a compelling case.

From the brutal history of the North American fur trade and its devastating environmental consequences to a program of ‘paratrooping’ beavers, Eager is well-researched and peppered with many bizarre and fascinating anecdotes about the world’s second largest rodent. The characters that stand out most, however, are not the beavers themselves, but the people trying to change the public’s perception of them, also known as ‘Beaver Believers’.

And I was dismayed to learn that beloved children’s author C.S. Lewis is persona non grata among British Beaver Believers. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was a staple of my childhood, but apparently, when writing it, Lewis neglected to read up on his beaver facts. Thus, the two friendly castorid characters, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, eat fish in the books. Yet, Beavers are herbivores. For those trying to reintroduce beaver populations to places in the world where they used to thrive, they must convince landowners, farmers, ranchers, and government authorities that beavers will provide more benefits than nuisance. And, in the U.K., they can add nervous fishermen to that list who read Lewis’s Narnia books in school.

The lesson here is: always fact-check.

Interested in More Book Club News?

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We read nature-focussed non-fiction titles and meet roughly every two months online (via Zoom).