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.
1 Like
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.)
1 Like
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.
1 Like
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. 
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.