Looking for book recs for my mom

[sasha_feather]

I sent a couple of books to my mom and she really enjoyed them. They were "Lab Girl" by Hope Jahren, and "Born a Crime" by Trevor Noah.

These two were such hits! I'm struggling to think of another book to send her that would be as good, and thus am seeking recommendations.

My mom likes: History, animals/plants/nature, medicine, farming and gardening, Swedish stuff, anything well-written and interesting. She's also read a couple of presidential biographies about Truman and John Adams, and I think she read and liked the book by Dr. Jan Pol, called "Never Turn your back on an Angus Cow." Fiction recs also wanted; she reads mostly main-stream fiction, not SF/F/Horror or romance.

I'm trying to avoid anything that is depressing, or about abuse or death. Bonus if a large-print text is available, though that is not necessary.

Books I'm considering, which i have not read myself:
My Journey with Maya by Tavis Smiley
Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

I bet Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer would match her tastes. Native biologist looks at the world with both those lenses!

Ebook https://www.roomofonesown.com/ebook/9781571318718 Audio download https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781515975908-braiding-sweetgrass?bookstore=roomofonesown

[sasha_feather]

Oh good thought, that sounds excellent! She likes a good-old-fashioned print book :). Will likely buy this one (from Room of course).

[kalmn]

The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande. It is about improving processes, but it is way more interesting than that sounds. It does talk specifically about surgery, and improving surgery, which involves detailing some screwups, so be aware of that. But I loved it.

[sasha_feather]

Thank you, that sounds super interesting!

[brainwane]

GAWANDE YESSSSS

[bibliofile]

Thirded.

Back to rec a forthcoming book that sounds cool, but I haven't read it: Iwígara, the Kinship of Plants and People: American Indian Ethnobotanical Traditions and Science by Enrique Salmón. (Timber, $34.95 (248p) ISBN 978-1-6046-9880-0)

[bibliofile]

At the library: https://www.linkcat.info/app/work/1487147

[starshipfox]

Two memoir that I, my mother, and my grandmother all enjoyed were "Once Upon A Time in the East" by Xialou Gou, and "The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating" by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. I also recommend Jenny Diski's non-fiction, especially "Sailing to Antarctica". Both Diski and Bailey's books are about animals and nature, while Gou's book is a very moving, but not depressing, memoir about growing up in China in the 1970s and 80s. If she likes books about nature and history, "The Living Mountain" by Nan Shepherd is fantastic, albeit short.

[sasha_feather]

Thank you! I will check those out, they sound great.

[some_stars]

The Soul of an Octopus is a really wonderful science book, if you/she haven't read it!

[sasha_feather]

Ooh, I did read that, good thought.

[bibliofile]

For fiction that's not depressing, I keep thinking of older books. Has your mom read any W. P. Kinsella? He started writing back in the late 1970s, so it's possible (and died in 2016, so no more books). Writes Wrote excellent stories about baseball and also First Nations people, taking place in smaller towns. The movie Field of dreams was based on his book Shoeless Joe, so she might have read that one already. Mostly used now, but I bet there are some in large print. ETA: Also, Canadian, which helps explain I think some of the gentleness? Not the best word, but if you've read any maybe you know what I mean?

For a more current writer, there's Zadie Smith. She's a Black British author who writes about people. I've only read NW and Swing time, but I haven't gotten around to White teeth and On beauty yet.

[sasha_feather]

Thank you for these recs! I enjoyed "White Teeth" a lot, but didn't like "On Beauty" very much. White Teeth was really fun and felt fresh.

recommendations

[brainwane]

Susan McCarthy's Becoming a Tiger on how baby animals learn in the wild. Witty and warm and fascinating. A strong rec.

Greg Milner's Perfecting Sound Forever on the history of sound recording and playback. Teaches the reader everything they need to know about pop music and physics along the way, and deepens their understanding of something they probably use a lot. A strong rec.

Walter Murch's In The Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing helped me understand how editing in film and TV works and I remember liking it. If she likes watching old movies I think this might especially be of interest.

Roy Porter's book The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity -- really comprehensive and littered with great anecdotes and quotes. I do remember this being somewhat dry, but if she really likes medical histories then I think this would be good -- although anything by Atul Gawande is a surer bet!

Jody Procter's memoir Toil: Building Yourself is a a diary of his work helping build one specific house in a small Oregon city. I remember liking it. If she likes quirky quiet memoirs then I think this might do nicely.

Ursula Nordstrom's letters (Dear Genius) -- she was a children's book editor. It blew my mind every twenty pages as she gave critique that helped mold classics of US children's lit (Trumpet of the Swan, for example). And she was amazing at coaching, criticizing, and cajoling creative people from afar. So if she read many of those (perhaps to you?) then I think this might be particularly interesting.

If she's interested in modern mainstream/literary/mimetic fiction about other countries, Lavanya Sankaran's short story collection (The Red Carpet) and novel (The Hope Factory) are set in India and are warm and I like them a lot. But if she has a bit of a hard time reading stuff where there will sometimes be words in another language, then this may not work.

Re: recommendations

[sasha_feather]

These are great recs, thank you so much! Becoming a Tiger sounds like my jam.