Wednesday, October 28, 2020

Six of the best books on life outdoors

Stef Penney is a screenwriter and the author of three novels: The Tenderness of Wolves (2006), The Invisible Ones (2011), and Under a Pole Star (2016). She has also written extensively for radio, including adaptations of Moby Dick, The Worst Journey in the World, and, mostly recently, a third installment of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise series.

At the Guardian, Penney tagged six books "to remind us of the beauty and danger nature can offer," including:
Thirty-four years after it was first published, Barry Lopez’s naturalistic epic Arctic Dreams is more relevant than ever. Lopez combines nature writing at its finest, a history of arctic exploration, reflections on Inuit culture and musings on psychology, time and place, but it’s most astonishing for the exquisite quality of his noticing, and his ability to conjure beauty from the most introverted landscape. The prose shimmers. Dip in to shift your mental gears, and emerge with the ability to see the world – and yourself – differently.
Read about another entry on the list.

Arctic Dreams is among Helen Macdonald's six favorite books and Caspar Henderson's top ten natural histories.

--Marshal Zeringue