Read the trees

By Edmée Pardo

Reading is my profession and also one of my greatest pleasures. I think about reading, I talk about reading, I read, I plan the reading, I share the reading, I write about the reading experience. All this happens with curiosity, planning, reflection, in various times and formats. The thread that weaves this universe of words in books, audiobooks, documentaries, podcasts and movies is a question. I ask myself what I want to read next year and based on that I start a horizontal and free exploration on the subject.

Last year I decided that this year I wanted to read about trees. To investigate in fiction, essay and poetry, how these beings that I had always taken for granted are recorded. I searched the internet for titles, asked biologists and arborists, looked at lists of awards, asked colleagues and reader friends. Any books that have fascinated you where the central character or context is trees? New landscapes began to appear: jungles, forests, gardens, orchards, parks, nurseries and the vegetable, mineral, animal, even fantastic characters that they include in their ecosystem. The more I read, the more my appetite grew, the more I became hungry, the more I wanted to read and to go out for a coffee just to stop in front of the tree on the corner, the plant peeking out of a house, the leaves that cover the street. How wonderful trees are.