The magnolias are in bloom – spring has arrived!
After completing their work managing the library collections and offering research and education support, the librarians for the humanities love to lounge in the sun and read their favourite books. We hope and think you might, too.
To that end, we have compiled a varied reading list for you; whether you like poring over centuries-old poetry, learning about nature and plants, or discovering what a smellscape is, we hope this list inspires you.
If you have questions about the library or the (e)book collection, or need help finding sources for your assignments, don't hesitate to Ask Your Librarian.
Ali Smith – Spring (2019)
"From the Man Booker-shortlisted author of Autumn and Winter comes the highly anticipated third novel in the acclaimed Seasonal Quartet. On the heels of Autumn and Winter comes Spring, the continuation of Ali Smith's celebrated Seasonal Quartet, a series of stand-alone novels, separate but interconnected (as the seasons are), wide-ranging in timescale and light-footed through histories"
Xuelei Huang - Scents of China : a modern history of smell (2023)
"Drawing on recent developments in sensory studies, Xuelei Huang presents a pioneering cultural history of smell in China from the High Qing to the Mao period. Utilising interdisciplinary methodology, she shows how this period of tumultuous change in China was experienced through the body and the senses"-- Provided by publisher.In this vivid and highly original reading of recent Chinese history, Xuelei Huang documents the eclectic array of smells that permeated Chinese life from the High Qing through to the Mao period. Utilizing interdisciplinary methodology and critically engaging with scholarship in the expanding fields of sensory and smell studies, she shows how this period of tumultuous change in China was experienced through the body and the senses. Drawing on unexplored archival materials, readers are introduced to the 'smellscapes' of China from the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth, via perfumes, food, body odours, public-health projects, consumerism and cosmetics, travel literature, fiction, and political language. This pioneering and evocative study takes the reader on a sensory journey through modern Chinese history, examining the ways in which the experience of scent and modernity have intertwined.
Edward S. Casey & Michael Marder - Plants in place : a phenomenology of the vegetal (2024)
"Plants are commonly considered immobile, in contrast to humans and other animals. But vegetal existence involves many place-based forms of change: stems growing upward, roots spreading outward, fronds unfurling in response to sunlight, seeds traveling across wide distances, and other intricate relationships with the surrounding world. How do plants as sessile, growing, decaying, and metamorphosing beings shape the places they inhabit, and how are they shaped by them? How do human places interact with those of plants-in lived experience; in landscape painting; in cultivation and contemplation; in forests, fields, gardens, and cities? Examining these questions and many more, Plants in Place is a collaborative study of vegetal phenomenology at the intersection of Edward S. Casey's phenomenology of place and Michael Marder's plant-thinking. It focuses on both the microlevel of the dynamic constitution of plant edges or a child's engagement with moss and the macrolevel of habitats that include the sociality of trees. This compelling portrait of plants and their places provides readers with new ways to appreciate the complexity and vitality of vegetal life. Eloquent, descriptively rich, and insightful, the book also shows how the worlds of plants can enhance our understanding and experience of place more broadly"
Angela Hume & Gillian Osborne - Ecopoetics : essays in the field (2018)
Ecopoetics: Essays in the Field makes a formidable intervention into the emerging field of ecopoetics. The volume's essays model new and provocative methods for reading twentieth and twenty-first century ecological poetry and poetics, drawing on the insights of ecocriticism, contemporary philosophy, gender and sexuality studies, black studies, Native studies, critical race theory, and disability studies, among others.
Thomas Stearns Eliot, Ezra Pound & Valerie Eliot - The waste land : a facsimile and transcript of the original drafts, incl. the annotations of Ezra Pound (1971)
"April is the cruellest month" - you may have seen this phrase before. If you wish to satisfy your curiosity as to why this may be so, dive into T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land. If you need some help studying this modernist puzzle, be sure to consult the library, which stocks many commentaries and critical essays that discuss this poem.
The Gawain-Poet, Israel Gollancz & Mabel Day - Sir Gawain and the green knight (1940)
Need a (medieval) romance to pine for as the spring sun warms your face? Perhaps you've seen Dev Patel star as Sir Gawain - now's the time to read the 14th-century poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." It's available as ebook, with the original Middle English and modern translation side-by-side, but the library also holds many other translations - including the one by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Daniel P. Corrigan & Markku Oksanen - Rights of nature : a re-examination (2021)
"Rights of nature is an idea that has come of age. In recent years, a diverse range of countries and jurisdictions have adopted these norms, which involve granting legal rights to nature or natural objects, such as rivers, forests, or ecosystems. This book critically examines the idea of natural objects as right-holders, and analyses legal cases, policies, and philosophical issues relating to this development. Drawing on contributions from a range of experts in the field, Rights of Nature: A Re-examination investigates the potential for this innovative idea to revolutionize the concepts of rights, standing, and recognition as traditionally understood in many legal systems. Taking as its starting point Stone's influential 1972 article 'Should Trees Have Standing?', the book examines the progress rights of nature have made since that time, by identifying central themes, unifying principles, and key distinctions in how rights of nature discourse has been operationalized in the disciplines of law, philosophy, and the social sciences. These themes and principles are illustrated through a wide variety of examples, including ecosystem services, indigenous thinking, and ecological restoration, demonstrating how the relationship between humanity and the natural world may be transforming. Taking a philosophical, political, and legal perspective, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental law and policy, environmental ethics, and philosophy"-- Provided by publisher.
Esther van Gelder, Norbert Peeters & Jan Kops - Flora Batava 1800-1934 : de wilde planten van Nederland (2023)
Het voorjaar is traditioneel het seizoen van ontluikende en bloeiende bomen, planten en bloemen. Voor wie zich wil verdiepen in de Nederlandse flora is er de heruitgave van Flora Batava, een boekenserie over de wilde planten, paddenstoelen, korstmossen en wieren van Nederland die liep van het jaar 1800 tot 1934. Uiteindelijk werden in 28 delen maar liefst 2630 soorten beschreven. Deze plantenbeschrijvingen werden voorzien van prachtige botanische illustraties. In de heruitgave, in 2023 verschenen, zijn alle illustraties gereproduceerd. Daarnaast zijn 100 soorten extra uitgelicht met een moderne tekstbijdrage door een team van meer dan zestig experts en plantenliefhebbers. De volgende experts van de Radboud Universiteit hebben bijgedragen aan deze 100 verhalen: Jeroen Bos, Barbara Gravendeel, Anneke van der Putte, Nils van Rooijen, Joop Schaminée en Nicoline van der Sijs.
Korte promo video 
Ishmael Reed - Japanese by spring (1993)
Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black junior professor at the overwhelmingly white Jack London College, lusts after tenure and its glorious perks (including a house in the Oakland Hills). He spends most of his time trying to divine the ideological climate of the school and obligingly adapting his beliefs to it. When Puttbutt's mysterious Japanese tutor, who promises to teach him Japanese by spring, suddenly becomes the school's new president and appoints Puttbutt as academic dean, the fun really begins—for Puttbutt sets out to stir things up and settle old scores.Turning every contemporary political and social movement on its head—from feminism to nationalism to jingoism—this boisterous and irreverent novel manages to be by turns hilarious and totally serious.
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