Friday, July 11, 2014

Approaching the forest

Last week, I posted this question in a couple of different spots on Facebook:

"So I've been reading a lot of creative non-fiction books about small farms (Brian Brett's Trauma Farm and Luanne Armstrong's The Light Through the Trees being my favourites) and conservation generally (Trevor Herriot's The Road is How and J.B. MacKinnon's The Once and Future World). And I just started Charlotte Gill's Eating Dirt. But I'd like something forest-y, and, failing that, something on urban nature. Got any suggestions, internets?"

And the internet provided. People recommended books I knew, books I'd heard of, and books waaay outside my usual stomping grounds.

As the suggestions came in, thick and fast, I thought it might be useful to share the lit bounty here. And then, when I saw how long it took me to cut and paste everything out, I was sure...

So here's the list, arranged roughly by subject area:

Trevor Herriot's The Road is How: A Prairie Pilgrimage through Nature, Desire and Soul
J.B. MacKinnon's The Once and Future World
Sharon Butala's The Perfection of the Morning & Wild Stone Heart
Brenda Schmidt's Flight Calls: An Apprentice on the Art of Listening 
Brian Bartlett’s Ringing Here & There: A Nature Calendar
Iain Reid's One Bird's Choice: A Year in the Life of an Overeducated, Underemployed Twenty-Something Who Moves Back Home

Deanna Kawatski’s Wilderness Mother: The Chronicles Of a Modern Pioneer
Richard Louv's The Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder
Beth Powning's Seeds of Another Summer: Finding The Spirit of Home in Nature
R. D. Lawrence's The Place in the Forest
Roy MacGregor's A Life in the Bush: Lessons from my Father
Sigurd Olson's Songs of the North
Paul Lehmberg's In The Strong Woods: A Season Alone in the North Country
Bernd Heinrich's The Trees in My Forest
Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods

Brian Brett's Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life
Luanne Armstrong’s The Light Through the Trees: Reflections on Land and Farming
Robert Hart’s Forest Gardening: Cultivating an Edible Landscape
Rhona McAdam’s Digging the City: An Urban Agriculture Manifesto
Novella Carpenter’s Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer 
Jenna Woginrich’s Made From Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life
& Barnheart: The Incurable Longing for a Farm of One's Own
Kristin Kimball’s The Dirty Life: A Memoir of Farming, Food, and Love

John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed
Charlotte Gill's Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe

Barbara Klar's The Blue Field & Cypress
Nora Gould's I see my love more clearly from a distance
Di Brandt's Now You Care
Jan Conn’s Jaguar Rain & Beauties on Mad River
Alissa York's Fauna

David George Haskell's The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature
John Waldman’s (edited collection) Still the Same Hawk: Reflections on Nature and New York 
 Charles Siebert's Wickerby: An Urban Pastoral
Jonathan Rosen’s The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature

p.s. If you're curious about the photo, I stopped by the U of M Bookstore to try to find Alissa York's Fauna after it was recommended twice. They didn't have Fauna, but they did have this title, which looked too interesting to pass up.

p.p.s. Please suggest any additional titles, if you've got a moment!

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