What's on your nightstand

  What’s on My Nightstand  April 2025

\Which book has moved or engaged you? Please share it with other CCW members. We accept all genres. Tell us what the book is about (without giving away any spoilers), your reaction to it and why. Please send book reviews to Barbara.siebeneick@gmail.com. (Please note that all book reviews are the opinion of the writer and not the Central Coast Writers.) This month’s review is from Matt Tracy

The Light Eaters by Zoe Schlanger

This is a fascinating look into plant senses and capabilities. The things they can do are amazing. 

Plants might have eyes. It certainly seems that they have light sensors, because they turn toward the light. But eyes? Well, there’s a vine that mimics exactly the foliage of whatever plant it is growing through.

Seeds might communicate with each other. How else would they know to stagger their sprouting when surrounded by genetically similar seeds and also know to sprout at the same time and grow fast when surrounded by competitor plants?

In any case, this book gave me a new appreciation for plants and their complexity, adaptability, and interrelationship with all of life.

As with the best of non-fiction, this book kept my attention throughout with interesting writing, a good mix of stories and facts, and very little digression into minutia that I wouldn’t remember anyway.

As a side note, I would recommend a trifecta of I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong which goes into the human microbiome, An Immense World by Ed Yong, which explores animal senses, and this book. Each one opened my eyes to a world I hadn’t known before.