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Armchair Travel December 2020 |
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| A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the New American South by Cinelle Barnes (editor)What it is: a collection of wide-ranging essays about belonging written by people of color who have lived or are living in the Southern United States.
Writers include: Kiese Laymon; Toni Jensen; Soniah Kamal; Joy Priest; Natalia Sylvester; Regina Bradley; Aruni Kashyap; Ivelisse Rodriguez.
Reviewers say: "A sweet Southern sampling" (Kirkus Reviews); "a clear and nuanced picture of the contemporary south, delivered with humor, sass, and pride" (Booklist). |
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| The National Road: Dispatches from a Changing America by Tom ZoellnerWhat's inside: 14 entertaining, evocative essays filled with incisive musings on change and place and covering the author's eclectic travels, usually in a car, across the U.S. over three decades.
Locations include: Spillville, Iowa (where Dvořák composed Symphony No. 9); a porn studio in Los Angeles; the streets of St. Louis; a Mormon historical site after hours; his grandmother's house in Arizona.
For fans of: William Least Heat-Moon's classic Blue Highways; Paul Theroux's Deep South; James and Deborah Fallows' Our Towns. |
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The Moth and the Mountain: A True Story of Love, War, and Everest
by Ed Caesar
What it's about: the redemption journey of traumatized Great War veteran Maurice Wilson, who in 1933 flew a biplane to Everest to attempt a first solo ascent.
Reviewers say: “Irresistible...Caesar is a terrific writer...The Moth and the Mountain has many, many riveting moments of storytelling and insight.” (BookPage)
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| Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward AbbeyWhat it is: a classic account, first published in 1968, of author Edward Abbey's experiences, observations, and reflections as a seasonal park ranger in 1950s Arches National Monument in Utah, including a trip by boat down Glen Canyon.
Want a taste? "The ravens cry out in husky voices, blue-black wings flapping against the golden sky."
Read this next: for a newer contemplative look at the desert, try Ben Ehrenreich's Desert Notebooks; for another lyrical look at national parks, pick up Terry Tempest Williams' The Hour of the Land. |
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| Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey through Every National Park by Conor KnightonThe impetus: his fiancée unexpectedly called things off (and then got engaged to her co-worker), leaving him at a crossroads.
What it is: a thematically arranged (Animals, God, Ice, Love, People, etc.), personal look at 59 U.S. national parks over the course of a year.
Did you know? As part of a video series on the National Park Service's 100th anniversary in 2016, the author, a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent, also did TV segments at several of the locations he visited. |
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| Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary OliverWhat's inside: a lyrical collection of essays by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver, who died in 2019, that describes her lifelong wanderings in nature and how it inspired her creatively.
Why you might like it: Oliver contemplates artistic labor, observation, and great thinkers and writers of the past.
Want a taste? "I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple." |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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