Catherine's Picks
Were the middles ages really "dark"? Perhaps they weren't as bad as we were taught.
For five months each year Philip Connors climbs a tower atop a peak in the wilderness of southern New Mexico to watch for fires. It's a fine tradition for writers. Abbey, Snyder, and even Jack Kerouac were fire lookouts. The job must breed brilliance in writing. This is a lovely book, one fans of Desert Solitaire and Garlic Testament will enjoy.
How High We Go in the Dark has been favorably compared to Cloud Atlas. Though its narrative structure and time travel recall that book, How High We Go in the Dark is its own book, a novel about global society following a terrible plague that changes the world forever more. From antarctica to a theme park for dying children to funerary skyscrapers and a mission to a new world, Nagamatu's narrative explores often untenable seeming situations that are of humanity's own making and that challenge the characters' own human-ness. Grief, loss, alienation, and hope saturate the pages of this well crafted novel.
The story of an unmangageable woman sent away to a convent is an old one. Groff's tale of a woman who is too big in too many ways being sent to manage a 12th century convent by her unrequited love is just as big and bold as its visionary protagonist.
Deeply and magically strange.
From ant trails along the edge of Richard Feynman's bathtub to the information superhighway, Robert Moor's book provides a deep, engaging investigation of the very animal need to create established pathways for travel. An experienced through-hiker of hte Appalachian Trail, Moor's natural history is a must read for hikers and nature lovers.
Doctorow's science fiction shows us positive ways we can evolve, not ways our world can continue to devolve. Walkaway is a book that can give a jaded reader hope.