Another journal

Really did not read much this month (only four books!), partly because I was catching up on short stories, partly because it takes me what feels like one million years to read a non-fiction book. Hm, I need to do a short story roundup at some point. Well, let’s look at March reading stats.

And my Storygraph reviews for my top three books:

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane

What a lyrical, loving book. Driving between three journeys to rivers that answer the titles question with a resounding “YES!”, and time spent with a spring by home, this book courses along with stories of people and places enlivened by rivers and the fights to keep them flowing free.

I quite liked this book, Macfarlane does a lovely job describing how places and people change him on his journey to three different rivers while not overly centring himself. There’s some VERY good descriptions in here, like “Rasputined with injuries,” which I think I sent a screenshot of to most people I know, I was so tickled by the turn of phrase.

The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State by Lisa McGirr

A solid history of Prohibition that focuses on the crack it opened for the claws of the modern prison system and federal law enforcement power, as well as the opening salvos of the war on drugs.

My focus, in my particular interest in Prohibition, is how it integrates with the early Pure Food movement/food safety and the world described in Sinclair’s The Jungle, and the still-lasting effects around state laws and the choice of poison in denaturing alcohol. This book’s focus was more on the prison systems and supporting federal structure built to reinforce the eighteenth amendment, which is ALSO very important–but it always feels strange when a thing that is one’s focus is summarised in a few lines and not returned to. A very solid history, however.

Underland by Robert Macfarlane with Roy McMillan as narrator

I didn’t like this one as much as Is A River Alive?, and I think its a mix of author growth and subject (even though I do love a cave).

I’ve mentioned before that I listen to audiobooks with Chase and often they’re the audio version of something non-fiction I’ve recently read, as I try to get better at “hearing” audiobooks. This time though, the book that came through Chase’s holds was Underland, and I was like “well I like that stuff” so I listened along and eventually realised Macfarlane was also the author of a book I’d read earlier that month. There’s a good span of several years between Underland (2019) and Is A River Alive? (2025), and I don’t know if its just the nature of time or the particular experiences Macfarlane had gone through in the later book that led him to de-centring himself a bit more and approaching things with a little less judgement (which! noting not a wild amount, Underland just has moments where his comfortable middle class British life is clearly leading his inclinations of what is good and what is not).

That covers 3/4 of my reads for the month, but here’s the covers of ’em all anyway.

Hmm, do I have anything to say about the fourth book I read in March? No, not anything nice, really. A real “it’s fine” of a haunted house story.