On the Bookshelf
Minor Black Figures
Brandon Taylor is an extraordinary writer, mesmerizing and profound. This has something to do with his voice and also the quality of his mind. He’s very contemporary and yet there’s something very classical in his writing style and themes. On the surface the novel tells the story of a young black painter trying to find…
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A Walk in the Park, by Kevin Fedarko
A Walk in the Park is a work of nonfiction should join the ranks of the best stories of outside adventure, and so much much more. The overarching story is of two friends who, over the course of several trips and with a lot of help, succeed at a risky end-to-end traverse the Grand Canyon,…
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Wild Dark Shore, by Charlotte McConaghy
An exceptional novel that is something of an environmental and literary thriller.
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This Is Happiness by Niall Williams
Oh, how I loved this book! My primary interest in fiction is a sense of place, and this novel explores place in a variety of ways. It’s set in the Irish village of Faha in County Clare, which was also featured in Niall Williams’ previous novel, “History of the Rain” (longlisted for the 2014 Man Booker…
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Book Recommendation
The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean by Susan Casey The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean, by best-selling science journalist Susan Casey, is shockingly fascinating. Much of it is so unlikely as to seem completely fictional. Just about everything in this book was unknown to me, from the depth of the…
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The Sea House by Esther Freud Once in a while you come upon a novel you fall so deeply in love with that it becomes a lifetime favorites. This novel became that for me. I’d never heard of Esther Freud, and was shocked I hadn’t. For one thing, she wrote the novel that became one of…
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Book Recommendation
Those People Behind Us, by Mary Camarillo In recommending books, I focus primarily on novels that relate in some way to social issues, particularly the environment, and have a strong sense of place. Mary Camarillo’s novel touches on all three. It’s a joy to read—astute, wry, propulsive—and has much to say about our modern social and political…
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The best novels for immersing yourself in nature
I’ve always been drawn to novels of place – novels that plunge you into a world you’venever been before. As a child the novels that made indelible impressions on meincluded The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, A Tale of Two Cities byCharles Dickens, and Heidi, by Johanna Spryi. As an adult I’ve…
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Heroes of the Frontier, a novel by Dave Eggers
Heroes of the Frontier, by Dave Eggers, is deeply philosophical, deeply felt, and deeply funny. The novel centers on a woman who escapes to Alaska with her two children and makes her way across the state in a beat-up rented recreational vehicle they call the Chateau. If you’ve ever gone camping, you’ll adore all the…
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Orient, a novel by Christopher Bollen
Orient, a novel by Christopher Bollen, is truly atmospheric, a literary work in the guise of a thriller, that kept me completely riveted https://www.harpercollins.com/9780062329950/orient/. The novel is set on Long Island, the rural tip of the North Fork in the hamlet of Orient. It’s an area I know, though nothing as well as I’d like,…
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