Where is your nonfiction section please.
Book review: Gory Details, by Erika Engelhaupt Beyond satisfying my own weird inquisitiveness, the larger goal of Gory Details has always been to create a place where it's OK to talk about gross, taboo, or morbid topics -- and then to examine them, up close, through the lens of science. Science writer and editor Erika... Continue Reading →
An unexpected benefit of lockdown (we have to take little joys where we find them) has been getting to virtually snoop through people's bookshelves in Zoom meetings. Some journalists have done the good work of putting together lists of titles they've spotted on shelves during interviews. Dr. Fauci's books made it into one of these... Continue Reading →
Writers on walking stretches of England, weaving memoir with nature and various musings, has become a popular little sub-genre. I'm intrigued but not totally sold on it yet. Let's explore two of them. "When it hurts," wrote the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, "we return to the banks of certain rivers," and I take comfort in... Continue Reading →
Essay mini reviews today, plus exciting news from the wonderful Shelleyrae @ Book'd Out: the Nonfiction Reader Challenge is back! Annie Dillard's 1977 Holy the Firm is a brief book, more like an extended essay. From 1975, Dillard lived in a one-room cabin on an island at Puget Sound for two years. It seemed like... Continue Reading →
Reading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek last year was one of those infrequent, world-altering reading experiences for me. Exciting, then, to realize what a back catalog of nonfiction Dillard has. I read Teaching a Stone to Talk, an essay collection, last year as well. I find her writing worlds apart from any other author I... Continue Reading →
Book review: To the Lake, by Kapka Kassabova (Amazon) When I lay in bed, I could hear the splash of waves on the shore as if they were outside the door. I dreamt of the lake rising in the night and engulfing the town, like an old prophecy. Bulgarian-born, Scottish-based author Kapka Kassabova became an... Continue Reading →
Book review: Owls of the Eastern Ice, by Jonathan C. Slaght Jonathan C. Slaght is a wildlife conservationist dedicated to preserving and documenting the Blakiston fish owl, a rare species found primarily in Siberia. In Owls of the Eastern Ice, he documents his time in the Russian Far East, and the unique challenges of trying to research... Continue Reading →
Under the Sea Wind and The Sea Around Us, by Rachel Carson The island lay in shadows only a little deeper than those that were swiftly stealing across the sound from the east. On its western shore the wet sand of the narrow beach caught the same reflection of palely gleaming sky that laid a... Continue Reading →
Walking: One Step at a Time, by Erling Kagge, translated from Norwegian by Becky L. Crook (Amazon/ Book Depository) I've been on short walks; I've been on long walks. I've walked from villages and to cities. I've walked through the day and through the night, from lovers and to friends. I have walked in deep forests and... Continue Reading →
Rough Beauty, by Karen Auvinen (Amazon / Book Depository) March was thick with anticipation—the pendulum between winter and spring, between dormancy and growth—the month of hope, the month of change. Its arrival meant winter was certain to end. By then, I’d had nearly four and a half months of cold and isolation. And although I... Continue Reading →
Review: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey (Amazon / Book Depository) Twilight vanishes the hills into the mountains; then all is lost to the dark. Elisabeth Tova Bailey was at the end of a vacation, staying at a hotel in an Alpine village, when she started to feel ill. Her... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Imperiled Ocean, by Laura Trethewey (Amazon / Book Depository) This story about a village by the sea, a complicated past behind it, a challenging future ahead, is like so many stories I’ve heard about the ocean... the theme of unavoidable change is omnipresent, change so deep and wide-reaching that it is beyond... Continue Reading →
