Cover of The Body Artist

The Body Artist

A Novel

Don DeLillo

An artist living in a lonely rented house discovers a mysterious man with inexplicable knowledge of her own life. This novella is at once a sort of ghost story, an exploration of grief and solitude, and a surprising dive into the mysterious depths of the artistic process. DeLillo's impeccable sentences helped to pull me through the arid, sunwashed mountains, and Laurie Anderson's mesmerising, low-affext voice making it all the more surreal. This was one of the only audiobook recommendations I received before heading out on the trail (thanks Andy!), and it worked its magic on me.

What this book is like (for me): sitting in the noonday desert sun listening to someone insisting that it is midnight on a moonless night, and believing them because they are that good at telling a story.

Book Info

Publisher
Scribner Book Company (2002), 140 pages
ISBN/EAN Product Code
9780743203968
Publisher Description

From the award-winning, bestselling author of "White Noise" and "Underworld" comes a spare, seductive, novel about marriage, loneliness, and the nature of creativity. Widow Lauren Hardke encounters a strange man possessed of knowledge of her life, and accompanies him on an extraordinary exploration of time, love, and human perception. (Publisher's Description)

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Cover of Heavy

Heavy

An American Memoir

Kiese Laymon

This memoir was just obscenely lauded before I even had a chance to crack it open. This unflinching recounting of the kinds of secrets and struggles most of us have a hard time sharing with anyone is riveting and rewarding. Expect hard truths about America, about societal violence and family violence, about family and art and identity. There's a through-line about the value of reading and writing, but it's a bruising account from start to finish.

Leymon and I grew up in the same town at the same time, but his skill as a writer showed me in new clarity how different his experience as a black youth in Mississippi in the 80s and 90s was than mine as a white one. I remember getting hooked into this immediately the day I listened to the first chapter. I was hiking around one of the more scenic spots in all of Oregon, Crater Lake, as I pressed play. About five minutes in, the clouds descended and it began to hail. Somehow it was fitting.

This is one of those books you finish and think: there isn't a person in America who shouldn't read this. Or, perhaps even better, listen to the author read his own text in the audiobook (this short piece written while recording the audiobook can give you a flavor for Leymon's flinty, beautiful but unvarnished prose).

Book Info

Publisher
Scribner (2019), 256 pages
ISBN/EAN Product Code
9781501125669
Publisher Description

Named a Best Book of 2018 by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, Library Journal (Biography/Memoirs), The Washington Post (Nonfiction), Southern Living (Southern), Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Critics In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir—winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize—genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon “provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot” (Entertainment Weekly). In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting…generous” (The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free. “A book for people who appreciated Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. “You won’t be able to put [this memoir] down…It is packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred, yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities” (The Atlantic). (Publisher's Description)

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Cover of The Uninhabitable Earth

The Uninhabitable Earth

Life After Warming

David Wallace-Wells

The simplicity of its first line says almost everything you need to know: "It is worse, much worse, than you think." Listening to The Uninhabitable Earth was a one of the definitive "there's no going back" moments of global warming contemplateion for me. I actually listened to it twice. It terrified and radicalized me. It felt like nothing short of our generation's Silent Spring. I stopped worrying about sounding like a kook and began sounding the alarm.

The year I hiked the PCT was anamolous for the few forest fires that impacted the thru-hiking season. We were all expecting to have our hikes interrupted by the world on fire as it burned closer to us. It probably won't happen again. Reading this on the trail felt like a memento mori. Every step felt like a gift, but also like a step towards eventual confrontation with this crisis.

I would recommend this book to people who somehow don't feel urgency about this crisis, or who somehow need validation that their fears are real.

Book Info

Publisher
Crown (2020), 386 pages
ISBN/EAN Product Code
9780525576716
Publisher Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon With a new afterword It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (The Guardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it—the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation—today’s. Praise for The Uninhabitable Earth “The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”—Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times “Riveting. . . . Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too.”—The Economist “Potent and evocative. . . . Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change. . . . He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times “The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring.”—The Washington Post “The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear. . . . I encourage people to read this book.”—Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books (Publisher's Description)

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Cover of How to Change Your Mind

How to Change Your Mind

What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence

Michael Pollan

Michael Pollen made me crave psychedelic mushrooms. Mega-star nonfiction author Pollan changed American food culture almost single-handedly with The Omnivore's Dilemma. This one won't do the same for psychedelic drugs, but perhaps it should. Pollan's gift for weaving his own experiences and perspectives with historical and scientific research and firsthand accounts makes this compelling and digestible. He makes a near-watertight case that the closing off of these drugs to (at the very least) scientifc and pharmaceutical research and testing makes zero sense. Along the way, there are interesting insights into some of the recent literature on neuroscience and neuropsychology.

I read this one in the "green tunnel" of Oregon, dodging mosquitos, swimming in cool lakes and watching as the mushrooms proliferate to disturbing density on the trail. If it was a sign for me to turn my trip into a trip, I wasn't bold enough to do so. But it got me thinking about suffering, joy, perspectives and consciousness. Just like the trail itself.

Book Info

Publisher
Penguin (2019), 482 pages
ISBN/EAN Product Code
9780735224155
Publisher Description

Now on Netflix as a 4-part documentary series! “Pollan keeps you turning the pages . . . cleareyed and assured.” —New York Times A #1 New York Times Bestseller, New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2018, and New York Times Notable Book A brilliant and brave investigation into the medical and scientific revolution taking place around psychedelic drugs--and the spellbinding story of his own life-changing psychedelic experiences When Michael Pollan set out to research how LSD and psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) are being used to provide relief to people suffering from difficult-to-treat conditions such as depression, addiction and anxiety, he did not intend to write what is undoubtedly his most personal book. But upon discovering how these remarkable substances are improving the lives not only of the mentally ill but also of healthy people coming to grips with the challenges of everyday life, he decided to explore the landscape of the mind in the first person as well as the third. Thus began a singular adventure into various altered states of consciousness, along with a dive deep into both the latest brain science and the thriving underground community of psychedelic therapists. Pollan sifts the historical record to separate the truth about these mysterious drugs from the myths that have surrounded them since the 1960s, when a handful of psychedelic evangelists inadvertently catalyzed a powerful backlash against what was then a promising field of research. A unique and elegant blend of science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, How to Change Your Mind is a triumph of participatory journalism. By turns dazzling and edifying, it is the gripping account of a journey to an exciting and unexpected new frontier in our understanding of the mind, the self, and our place in the world. The true subject of Pollan's "mental travelogue" is not just psychedelic drugs but also the eternal puzzle of human consciousness and how, in a world that offers us both suffering and joy, we can do our best to be fully present and find meaning in our lives. (Publisher's Description)

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Cover of Kristin Lavransdatter

Kristin Lavransdatter

(Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Sigrid Undset

Get ready to have all of your preconceived notions about fourteenth-century Norway totally upended. Wait a second... anyone with ideas about fourteenth-century Norway who hasn't read this must reside in the overlappy part of a venn diagram so small that the normal rules of book recommendations just won't work. These aren't quantum rules. Anyway this is a massive epic about early Christian Norway, and it's... epic.

But listen. Don't listen to the audiobook. Just don't. This was Type II fun, bordering on type III, for me. By all means, read this epic tale from slept-on nobel laureate Undset. But I think you're going to enjoy turning pages for this kind of thing. So I've put the link to a paper copy of this one. (It doesn't help that this audiobook is only available via Audible, which I'm not interested in supporting.)

I will say that the day I knew I was going to finish this book was a great feeling of triumph that totally compensated for arriving at one of my least favorite trail towns of the whole thing (sorry, Belden, CA).

Book Info

Publisher
Penguin (2005), 1169 pages
ISBN/EAN Product Code
9780143039167
Publisher Description

“[Sigrid Undset] should be the next Elena Ferrante.” —Slate The turbulent historical masterpiece of Norway’s literary master A Penguin Classic In her great historical epic Kristin Lavransdatter, set in fourteenth-century Norway, Nobel laureate Sigrid Undset tells the life story of one passionate and headstrong woman. Painting a richly detailed backdrop, Undset immerses readers in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political and religious undercurrents of the period. Now in one volume, Tiina Nunnally’s award-winning definitive translation brings this remarkable work to life with clarity and lyrical beauty. As a young girl, Kristin is deeply devoted to her father, a kind and courageous man. But when as a student in a convent school she meets the charming and impetuous Erlend Nikulaussøn, she defies her parents in pursuit of her own desires. Her saga continues through her marriage to Erlend, their tumultuous life together raising seven sons as Erlend seeks to strengthen his political influence, and finally their estrangement as the world around them tumbles into uncertainty. With its captivating heroine and emotional potency, Kristin Lavransdatter is the masterwork of Norway’s most beloved author—one of the twentieth century’s most prodigious and engaged literary minds—and, in Nunnally’s exquisite translation, a story that continues to enthrall. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition includes an introduction by Brad Leithauser and features French flaps and deckle-edged paper. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. (Publisher's Description)

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Cover of Why Buddhism is True

Why Buddhism is True

The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

Robert Wright

From one of America’s most brilliant writers, a New York Times bestselling journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness. At the heart of Buddhism is a simple claim: The reason we suffer—and the reason we make other people suffer—is that we don’t see the world clearly. At the heart of Buddhist meditative practice is a radical promise: We can learn to see the world, including ourselves, more clearly and so gain a deep and morally valid happiness. In this “sublime” (The New Yorker), pathbreaking book, Robert Wright shows how taking this promise seriously can change your life—how it can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and how it can deepen your appreciation of beauty and of other people. He also shows why this transformation works, drawing on the latest in neuroscience and psychology, and armed with an acute understanding of human evolution. This book is the culmination of a personal journey that began with Wright’s landmark book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal, and deepened as he immersed himself in meditative practice and conversed with some of the world’s most skilled meditators. The result is a story that is “provocative, informative and...deeply rewarding” (The New York Times Book Review), and as entertaining as it is illuminating. Written with the wit, clarity, and grace for which Wright is famous, Why Buddhism Is True lays the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age and shows how, in a time of technological distraction and social division, we can save ourselves from ourselves, both as individuals and as a species. (from Google Books)

Book Info

Publisher
Simon & Schuster (2018)
ISBN/EAN Product Code
9781439195468
Publisher Description

From one of America’s most brilliant writers, a New York Times bestselling journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness. At the heart of Buddhism is a simple claim: The reason we suffer—and the reason we make other people suffer—is that we don’t see the world clearly. At the heart of Buddhist meditative practice is a radical promise: We can learn to see the world, including ourselves, more clearly and so gain a deep and morally valid happiness. In this “sublime” (The New Yorker), pathbreaking book, Robert Wright shows how taking this promise seriously can change your life—how it can loosen the grip of anxiety, regret, and hatred, and how it can deepen your appreciation of beauty and of other people. He also shows why this transformation works, drawing on the latest in neuroscience and psychology, and armed with an acute understanding of human evolution. This book is the culmination of a personal journey that began with Wright’s landmark book on evolutionary psychology, The Moral Animal, and deepened as he immersed himself in meditative practice and conversed with some of the world’s most skilled meditators. The result is a story that is “provocative, informative and...deeply rewarding” (The New York Times Book Review), and as entertaining as it is illuminating. Written with the wit, clarity, and grace for which Wright is famous, Why Buddhism Is True lays the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age and shows how, in a time of technological distraction and social division, we can save ourselves from ourselves, both as individuals and as a species. (Publisher's Description)

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Cover of Wolf Hall

Wolf Hall

A Novel

Hilary Mantel

Hillary Mantel's trilogy is justly celebrated. It's compulsively readable, and the depth of her characterization of of Thomas Cromwell, is nothing short of miraculous. An absolutely unforgettable character. The narration of Ben Miles (Mantel's choice to play Cromwell in the Royal Shakespeare Company adaptation of the text) is perfect. If you have Mark Rylance's portrayal from BBC series version, you may be skeptical. But this is great.

Book Info

Publisher
Picador (2021), 640 pages
ISBN/EAN Product Code
9781250806710
Publisher Description

WINNER OF THE 2009 MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR FICTION A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The first novel in Hilary Mantel’s magnificent trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII, in a gorgeous new edition to celebrate the trilogy’s completion with the #1 New York Times-bestselling The Mirror & the Light England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell rises to heights no one could have imagined. The Boleyns, the Howards, the old families and the new, cannot fathom why the king so trusts and relies on a man of no title and an obscured past, even after Cromwell’s mentor Cardinal Wolsey falls from favor. Cromwell manages to deliver the king’s wishes, but what will be the price of his triumph? In Wolf Hall, Mantel inhabits the fascinating mind of a man little understood and widely mythologized, bringing his influence on the making of Britain into new, dazzling light. (Publisher's Description)

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Cover of The Odyssey

The Odyssey

Homer

This is one for which there is no audiobook on librofm and I am really sorry about that. The Emily Wilson text is read by Claire Danes on the evil empire's audiobook tributary. It is mighty fine. The text itself is fresh and lovely but Wilson's introduction is essential.

Book Info

Publisher
National Geographic Books (2018)
ISBN/EAN Product Code
9780393356250
Publisher Description

A New York Times Notable Book of 2018 "Wilson’s language is fresh, unpretentious and lean…It is rare to find a translation that is at once so effortlessly easy to read and so rigorously considered." —Madeline Miller, author of Circe Composed at the rosy-fingered dawn of world literature almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home. This fresh, authoritative translation captures the beauty of this ancient poem as well as the drama of its narrative. Its characters are unforgettable, none more so than the “complicated” hero himself, a man of many disguises, many tricks, and many moods, who emerges in this version as a more fully rounded human being than ever before. Written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom, Emily Wilson’s Odyssey sings with a voice that echoes Homer’s music; matching the number of lines in the Greek original, the poem sails along at Homer’s swift, smooth pace. A fascinating, informative introduction explores the Bronze Age milieu that produced the epic, the poem’s major themes, the controversies about its origins, and the unparalleled scope of its impact and influence. Maps drawn especially for this volume, a pronunciation glossary, and extensive notes and summaries of each book make this is an Odyssey that will be treasured by a new generation of readers. (Publisher's Description)

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Cover of Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

Samuel R. Delany

When I began this text I confess to being caught off-guard. It was my first Delany. I'd read about him before but never took the plunge. Some of this was disorienting and shocking, but I stuck with it and fell so hard for it. Hat Creek Rim is one of the hottest, hardest parts of the trail. This blew my mind and rekindled my interest in speculative fiction. A truly wild ride.

Book Info

Publisher
Wesleyan University Press (2004), 377 pages
ISBN/EAN Product Code
9780819567147
Publisher Description

The story of a truly galactic civilization with over 6,000 inhabited worlds. Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a science fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First published in 1984, the novel's central issues—technology, globalization, gender, sexuality, and multiculturalism—have only become more pressing with the passage of time. The novel's topic is information itself: What are the repercussions, once it has been made public, that two individuals have been found to be each other's perfect erotic object out to "point nine-nine-nine and several nines percent more"? What will it do to the individuals involved, to the city they inhabit, to their geosector, to their entire world society, especially when one is an illiterate worker, the sole survivor of a world destroyed by "cultural fugue," and the other is—you! (Publisher's Description)

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Cover of Ghost Wall

Ghost Wall

A Novel

Sarah Moss

Ghost Wall is a bit of a cheat, but it's the last book I read. Dark mornings and evenings in March, this book carried me on 10 mile hikes. It's fun.

Book Info

Publisher
Picador (2019), 144 pages
ISBN/EAN Product Code
9781250234957
Publisher Description

A Southern Living Best New Book of Winter 2019; A Refinery29 Best Book of January 2019; A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 at The Week, Huffington Post, Nylon, and Lit Hub; An Indie Next Pick for January 2019 “Ghost Wall has subtlety, wit, and the force of a rock to the head: an instant classic.” —Emma Donoghue, author of Room "A worthy match for 3 a.m. disquiet, a book that evoked existential dread, but contained it, beautifully, like a shipwreck in a bottle.” —Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker A taut, gripping tale of a young woman and an Iron Age reenactment trip that unearths frightening behavior The light blinds you; there’s a lot you miss by gathering at the fireside. In the north of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age. For two weeks, the length of her father’s vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in simpler times. They are surrounded by forests of birch and rowan; they make stew from foraged roots and hunted rabbit. The students are fulfilling their coursework; Silvie’s father is fulfilling his lifelong obsession. He has raised her on stories of early man, taken her to witness rare artifacts, recounted time and again their rituals and beliefs—particularly their sacrifices to the bog. Mixing with the students, Silvie begins to see, hear, and imagine another kind of life, one that might include going to university, traveling beyond England, choosing her own clothes and food, speaking her mind. The ancient Britons built ghost walls to ward off enemy invaders, rude barricades of stakes topped with ancestral skulls. When the group builds one of their own, they find a spiritual connection to the past. What comes next but human sacrifice? A story at once mythic and strikingly timely, Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall urges us to wonder how far we have come from the “primitive minds” of our ancestors. (Publisher's Description)

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