Stranger than Fiction

  Most of us probably believe that nature is good for us. Trees and greenery in our environment improve the quality of the air and create a pleasant atmosphere. Interacting with plants is good for our well-being. But is there scientific proof of this? Kathy Willis is Professor of Biodiversity in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. A few years ago, she was asked to “do some writing for an international project detailing the societal benefits we gain from plants. [She was] asked to find tangible examples of the health benefits derived from having plants in our everyday environments.” She presents the results of her research in Good Nature: Improve Your Health and Happiness with Nature – One Simple Step at a Time (2024). This book is my choice for the category Garden for the 2025 Nonfiction Reader Challenge . Willis writes that “The more I looked into this, the more published studies I came across showing that, along with sight, the effect of smelling, hearin...

  “The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era”, by Gareth Russell, 2020, focuses on the story of the Titanic through the lives, experiences, and testimony of a variety of passengers. This book is my choice for the category Travel for the 2025 Nonfiction Reader Challenge . This book was previously published in Britain as The Darksome Bounds of a Failing World. Russell writes in his Author’s Note at the beginning of the book: “In the strictest sense, The Ship of Dreams is not solely an account of the Titanic disaster, nor a striving to replace the works of earlier scholars who examined the catastrophe as a whole. As its subtitle suggests, it is an attempt to look at her sinking as a fin de siècle , with a deliberate exploration of the voyage as a microcosm of the unsettled world of the Edwardian upper classes. … The focus of this narrative is six first-class passengers and their families: a British aristocrat, a patriotic maritime architect, ...