Yeah… those were pretty good. I thought they were a little too YA for me… the Stormlight Archives are legit!
The Hobb books are just wonderful. Can’t recommend enough!
I’ve never heard of Jade. Looked it up and it’s definitely piqued my interest. Will put it on my list! Thanks!!
Rest in peace, Tom Robbins. I love his books and am sad to learn that he’s gone. But he made it to 92 and lived a good life. Of his many books, I have read a number of them. Still Life With Woodpecker was my first and remains my favorite. One that doesn’t get mentioned much that is at the top of my list is Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates. You really can’t go wrong with his books.
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Huge fan dude. I can still remember reading Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas in like two stints. American treasure for sure.
Has anybody ever read this? I’m going to pick it up soon. Probably should have bought it at this cool bookstore I was just at in D.C. called Solid State books. Instead, I grabbed a 33 1/3 on Phish’s A Live One.
I used to read a lot of travel- and nature-related nonfiction, but over the last ten years or so I’ve gone back to reading a lot of fiction – mostly science fiction and some fantasy.
My main recommendation for almost everybody is the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. (I know there’s also a TV series, but we don’t have any streaming services right now.) The books are both fun and, if you’ve ever struggled to deal with modern “normal” life, extremely relatable. (If you like audiobooks, this series is read by Kevin R. Free, who does a great job. If you’ve listened to Welcome to Night Vale, he’s the same guy who played Kevin there.)
(If the “murder” in the title is offputting, it’s not a gory/super-violent series. The name is mostly ironic, but finding out why is part of the interest of the series.)
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I will check this out as I fit your description. But I have to say that I’m really curious about your taste in nature-connected nonfiction. That’s what I’m drawn to, as well. I recently read Is A River Alive? by Robert MacFarlane. That was a good one.
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I have a bunch of MacFarlane’s stuff on my “to read” list, but I need to get back into the habit of reading non-fiction again. Back when I was a kid, I started reading more travel-related stuff (Paul Theroux, Bruce Chatwin – cooled on them now; Colin Thubron, Jan Morris, etc.). I’ve kind of been all over the map with nature writers (Barry Lopez, Edward Abbey, David Quammen, Aldo Leopold, John McPhee, E.O. Wilson – a long list of white guys :-/ ), but I lean toward the more down-to-earth (ha) writers, rather than poetic/worshipful types. Nature is pretty amazing to me (hence the nature photography), but when the language goes spiritual/religious, I tend to tune out. David Rains Wallace has written a lot of the naturalist-traveler stuff that appeals to me.
I need find more women nature writers whose stuff I like. I’ve really enjoyed Rebecca Solnit’s writing for a long time, even though one of her books (Savage Dreams) gave me nightmares, and she yelled at me online one time. 
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Have you ever read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard? That’s one of my very favorite books. A more recent and practical one is The Green Amendment by Maya van Rossum.
I recently finished Desert Solitaire by Ed Abbey. It’d taken me a while to get through that one but I’m glad that I did. I grew a healthy fascination with the desert driving between Vegas, Phoenix, and Albuquerque for Gizz in ‘24. My first real taste of the Southwest.
I haven’t read Tinker Creek, but that’s a good reminder that I should. I’ll look up The Green Amendment.
We live in the east, but my wife is from AZ, so we’ve had several chances to go birding and exploring in central and southeastern AZ. We really need to get back there again – it’s an amazing part of the world.
About halfway through this book that is just awesome. I was a little too young for a lot of this, but I inherited the scene when I started seeing jamband shows around '98. The stories about Col. Bruce Hampton and Aquarium Rescue Unit have me listening back and realizing there’s a world of music I need to catch up on in those shows. Reading about the start of Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, the H.O.R.D.E. tour, Bill Graham’s involvement and all of that is just fascinating. I knew a lot of the history that involved Phish, but had been uninformed about so much of the rest.
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Big reader and always have a handful of books going:
- A Bridge Too Far - About the failed Market-Garden operation in WWII
- A Hero of Two Worlds - Biography of the Marquis de La Fayette - particularly about his involvement in both the American & French Revolutions.
- Democracy in America - 1835/1840 book on life in America
- Hyperion - Sci-Fi that I heard about from someone at FoV last year!
Guess I’m on a bit of an American history kick, I’m boycotting America for the 4th this year and trying to focus on the better parts of American history this year.
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Interesting picks. It’s been a while since I’ve read a straight up history book. You might have me interested.
I’ve been cruising through a good number of books lately. My favorite has been Herscht 07769 by László Krásznahorkai. Absolutely crazy book written as a 400-page block of text that deals with fanaticism, neo-Nazis, and Bach. I’m going to start his first novel, Satantango, soon. That’s another challenging one from what I hear.
Another excellent book that I just finished is Erasure by Percival Everett. He’s one of my very favorite authors after reading James, Trees, and Dr. No within the past year.
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Hero of Two worlds is a really good read so far, while it is a “History Book” it’s really interesting and pretty easy. “A Bridge Too Far” is more of a military play-by-play with interviews of US, British, Polish, and German soldiers.
Would love to read a Krásznahorkai novel - I believe he recently won the Nobel prize for literature? Stantango is an incredible movie directed by Bela Tarr, 7.5hrs black & white, but somehow enthralling - definitely give it a watch after the book!
Desert Solitaire is staring out at me from the to-read pile. Might have crack it open this week.
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Ooh, really curious about Krásznahorkai. Hadn’t heard about him at all until he won the Nobel Prize, but going by what I’ve heard since, his books are 1,000% my thing. I love a bizarre, dense, experimental novel.
Would you say Herscht 07769 is a good place to start with his work? Or, if you’ve read any of his others, is there one you’d recommend?
After reading Herscht 07769, I tried Satantango and got stuck midway through. It’s just as challenging as Herscht, and I just couldn’t buckle down for that this summer. I will go back to it, and I did really love Herscht. Sounds like you’d love it.
This summer, I’ve done a good amount of reading. My favorite book of the summer was Contrapposto by Dave Eggers. My family and I listened to The Eyes and the Impossible, also by Eggers, on a road trip. That was such a great experience. Ha-ha-hoooo!
I’m reading Bog Queen by Anna North right now and that’s pretty good. Next up is Jeff Vandermeer’s 4th book in the Southern Reach series.
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Anyone read Ducks, Newburyport? I’m intrigued by the concept and found it for $10 online.
I just finished “A World Appears” by Michael Pollan about consciousness on the flight to Denver. It was decent but imo his weakest book.
I just started Stay Alive Berlin about what life for normal people in Berlin was like from ‘39-‘45 when the Nazis were in power. The authors father was a Dutch citizen compelled to work in a factory in the city… definitely interested to learn more about that era.
I adored Ducks, Newburyport. There were moments while reading it that I found myself frustrated and considered putting it down—I chafed against the pace of the novel. Though by the time I reached the end, I looked back on the book with this soaring, overwhelming feeling that I would never read anything like it again. If you’ll forgive the cliché, it felt like the rush you sometimes get at the end of a long and gruelling session of exercise. You suddenly feel like you could carry on forever. You look back on the exertion with a kind of awe that you’ve made it through, and a retrospective sense that what had seemed interminable frustration only a moment ago is—from a little distance—energising and uplifting. After hemming and hawing about whether I should carry on after the first 500 pages, I felt myself—1,000 pages in—wanting to turn back to page one and start again.
If you’d like to read my thoughts closer to the time, here’s my review on StoryGraph. I haven’t revisited the book, but it’s in a prominent position on my bookshelf and every few months I look at its distinctive spine and think, “Maybe it’s time.”
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ok I’m sold! Your comments make me think of how I felt reading Infinite Jest - I even put that down after my first attempt and the second time it just clicked and I was feeling sad at the end that there wasn’t more.
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