A Winter Reading List

Books on place, community, and more

Allen Tucker, Madison Square, Snow, 1904

A reader sent along the following question via email:

“I write to ask you about a winter reading list. Hoping you might consider providing (in Granola, maybe!) a few suggested books for the months ahead. 

… I've been seeking a more positive and hopeful focus / emphasis for my inquiry into some big life questions. The theme in your work of "place" and rootedness is very meaningful to me, and my exploration.

I missed out on the Wendell Berry book club  last winter, and am interested in what you might suggest, foremost, of his work. … And any others whose fiction or non-fiction explore relationships of people and their land or place.”

Below, I’ve put together a book list around the question of place, and our relationship to it. I hope the recommendations are helpful and interesting for some of you. If you would like to contribute your own recommendations, please do so via email or in the comments!

Cheers,
Gracy

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The World-Ending Fire, by Wendell Berry

This is an excellent collection of essays by Berry. In the opening essay, “A Native Hill,” Berry offers an intimate glimpse into his life’s journey away from and back toward Kentucky, all the while constructing a reverent portrait of the land he loves. He considers the violence, injustice, and exploitation in the history of his landscape, the wisdom of Indigenous communities, and the destructive habits of modern agriculture. He asks how we might actually inhabit our places well.

“I think of the country as a kind of palimpsest scrawled over with the comings and goings of people, the erasure of time already in process even as the marks of passage are put down,” he writes. Other beautiful essays in this volume: “Think Little,” “Nature as Measure,” “The Unsettling of America,” and “The Pleasures of Eating.”

This Day, by Wendell Berry

This collection of Sabbath Poems from Berry is poignant and lovely. It is a volume of quiet thoughts, remembrances, and observations. It settles softly into your soul as you read. It is easy to flip through the volume at random and find little blessings.

I reach the last stand in my going

of woodland never felled, a little patch

of trees on ground too poor to plow, spared

the belittlement of human intention

from time before human thought. They bring

that time to mind: their long standing, and

our longing to understand. But a man

is small before those who have stood so long.

He stands under them, looks up, sees, knowns,

and knows that he does not know.
(1987, II)

Why Place Matters, ed. by Wilfred McClay and Ted V. McAllister

A fascinating and diverse volume, this book considers everything from space vs. place to local history, urban development to poverty. I think my favorite essay is Ari N. Schulman’s “GPS and the End of the Road.”

Schulman writes, “just as important as what we see in the world is how we go about seeing it. We are adept at identifying points of interest, but pay scant attention to the importance of our approaches to exploring them; our efforts to facilitate the experience of place often end up being self-defeating.”

Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer

One of my favorite books of essays, Kimmerer’s work is compelling, lovely, and convicting. Each essay in this volume speaks volumes. In “Asters and Goldenrod,” Kimmerer pinpoints the scientific establishment’s discomfort with questions of beauty, and considers the way her own upbringing as a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation never thought to separate truth, goodness, and beauty in this way. Kimmerer wanted to study botany because she wondered why the world is so beautiful when “it could so easily be otherwise.” Kimmerer argues for the reciprocity that ought to exist between science and Indigenous knowledge, like the reciprocity that exists between asters and goldenrod. In other essays, such as “Allegiance to Gratitude,” “In the Footsteps of Nanabozho,” and “Defeating Windigo,” she considers the exploitation of plant, animal, and human life throughout North America, and urges modern readers to change their demeanors toward their places.

Belonging: A Culture of Place, by bell hooks

In this brilliant book, hooks chronicles her “own thinking about issues of place and belonging,” and offers readers a compelling portrait of her own journey homeward to Kentucky. She chronicles the stories of Kentucky’s Black farmers, and writes about the history of slavery, segregation, and racism in her state. She also considers environmental crisis in Kentucky—from poor farming practices to mining and mountain-top removal.

“If one has chosen to live mindfully,” hooks writes, “then choosing a place to die is as vital as choosing where and how to live.”

Agrarian Spirit and From Nature to Creation, by Norman Wirzba
Wirzba’s books offer profound philosophical, theological, and environmental meditations on environmental stewardship, embodiment, and creation care. In his newest book, Agrarian Spirit, Wirzba makes the principles of agrarian thinking accessible to people in both urban and rural environments, urging use to embrace environmental stewardship wherever we live.

A favorite quote: “Agrarians are distinguished by their commitment to work for the well-being of their places and communities, and they do this by developing the practical skills that cultivate the material and social goods … that promote a thriving world.” I highly recommend his work to those who want to consider in greater depth the biblical foundations of environmental stewardship.

Landmarks, Robert MacFarlane

Landmarks is a beautiful book about place knowledge, the intimate understanding of the local and particular that might call us to stewardship and love. MacFarlane’s prose is absolutely gorgeous, his collection of place words compelling and lovely. But I think I loved most his portrait of Nan Shepherd, modernist and author of The Living Mountain, in this book. “The Living Mountain needs to be understood as a parochial work in the most expansive sense,” MacFarlane writes:

“Over the past century, parochial has soured as a word. The adjectival form of parish, it has come to connote sectarianism, insularity, boundedness: a mind or a community turned inward upon itself, a pejorative finitude. It hasn’t always been this way, though. Patrick Kavanagh (1904–67), the great poet of the Irish mundane, was sure of the parish’s importance. For Kavanagh, the parish was not a perimeter but an aperture: a space through which the world could be seen. … [The mountains] were [Shepherd’s] inland-island, her personal parish, the area of territory that she loved, walked and studied over time such that concentration within its perimeters led to knowledge cubed rather than knowledge curbed.”

“Knowledge cubed rather than knowledge curbed.” Such a beautiful and powerful thought.

The Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral, by James Rebanks

While these books can be read separately, I believe they work beautifully together in telling the story of Rebanks’s life and work. The first, a memoir, tells the story of Rebanks’s early life in England’s Lake District, his journey away from it (to Oxford University), and his eventual return to the shepherding work of his father and grandfather.

In his second book, written several years later, Rebanks adopts a softer and more persuasive tone. He is concerned not just with the traditions and vocations of his past and his place, but also with the work—at once universal and indispensably particular—of ecological renewal and agricultural reform. The Shepherd’s Life shows us where Rebanks came from, what inspired his vision for the Lake District. English Pastoral shows us where he’s going, and why he believes the sacrifices and struggles of the present might bring about the possibility of a restored, healthy, whole Lake District.

Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

This is the book we’re reading in our November book club! As I confessed to subscribers, I did not like Walden when I first read it. I found Thoreau’s style and arguments aggrandizing and rather boastful. Upon rereading the book, however, I realized how valuable many of Thoreau’s reminiscences and arguments in Walden are. I saw the beauty of his particular, reverent meditations on place. And I began to consider the ways in which Walden presents a call to wonder that is particularly important in a disillusioned age, one in which we are far more like to look at smartphone screens than to stare at the stars.

Middlemarch, by George Eliot

It is perhaps cliché to say that Eliot’s masterful novel gives us a compelling vision of the work of love and community, or of love in community. But it is true, nevertheless. Middlemarch challenges the idea that important, dignified work must be done outside the parochial, the quiet, or the mundane. She challenges us to see the beauty and the holiness in the everyday, and to give ourselves to it. Her finishing lines are timeless:

"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky

In stark contrast to Middlemarch’s vision of life-in-place properly invested, bearing fruit and “growing good,” we have Dostoevsky’s Demons. In it, Dostoevsky considers the impact of political and moral nihilism (or perhaps, more broadly, of “ideas”) not on national/global politics, but on one particular community. Pyotr Verkhovensky, the son of a high-minded intellectual, seeks to start a revolution in a fictional town. Chaos, tragedy, and death ensue. Dostoevsky’s novel forces his readers to consider politics and ideas in a particular and rooted, rather than an abstract and universal, way. It is haunting and powerful.

My Ántonia, by Willa Cather

In this lovely novel, Cather considers the stories of pioneers who moved to Nebraska towards the end of the 19th century. Jim Burden narrates the life story of Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants, who experiences tragedy, loss, and misuse over the course of her life. Ántonia’s tenacity and determination in the face of hardship and injustice, her determination to live well, and to farm well, offers readers a resilient and inspiring portrait of courage and fidelity.

Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck

While this is not my favorite Steinbeck novel (any East of Eden fans out there?), it’s a vital portrait of the patterns of land abuse, economic exploitation, and injustice that have dominated the history of U.S. agriculture. Through his portrait of the the Joads, tenant farmers driven out of Oklahoma by the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, Steinbeck asks vital questions about the industrialization of agriculture and resultant periods of economic and environmental devastation. How have we destroyed the land, and the people who depend on it? How have our systems of agricultural production trampled on the rights of agricultural laborers? What—and who—is agriculture for?

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Obviously, dozens of other books can and should be included in this list. This barely scratches the surface. Perhaps I can update this list with other titles in the months to come—with titles that you might suggest, as well!

What books have you read on place, community, and/or ecological stewardship that greatly impacted you?

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George Elbert Burr, The First Snow (no.2), c. 1926

news + essays

• A beautiful piece on multigenerational living from the Washington Post. “When Max’s grandmother died, it was not in a nursing home or a hospital. She died in her son’s home. But the biggest benefits may be for Max and Jonah’s kids. Younger children in intergenerational housing ‘demonstrate more interactive and cooperative play, increased empathy and mood management, and improved academic performance,’ the Center for Aging Research and Education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison reports.”

• The United States is in the midst of a pedestrian fatality crisis.

• A stunningly beautiful piece by Alan Jacobs on truth: “The only way out of this prison of self-deception and self-justification is to love and seek the truth—and to believe that truth is something we share: not “my truth” and “your truth” but the truth, truth as a commons, a potentially fertile plot of ground we tend together and that is nurtured by our collective work or ruined by our neglect.”

• Researchers at Yunnan University have developed a perennial rice hybrid that could have both economic and ecological benefits, Dan Charles reports.

• A perfect piece for the holiday season: Alexandra Frost urges readers to buy less, and offers some tips on how to do so.

• Emmanuel Katolonge explains the work of the Bethany Land Institute in Uganda, and his hopes for renewal in the face of violence, injustice, and loss: “These three faces of Africa’s ecological crisis – the burgeoning slum and the vanishing village and forest – confirm a number of things. First, they are evidence of the extent to which the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are interconnected, as Pope Francis expresses it in Laudato si’. In fact, they reveal the unique modernity underway in Africa, characterized by what journalist Christian Parenti has called a ‘catastrophic convergence’ of poverty, violence, and ecological degradation. As Pope Francis notes, addressing this triple challenge requires an integrated approach that addresses poverty, cares for creation, and advances human dignity for poor and marginalized people.”

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Auguste Lepère, Paris under Snow, View from St.-Gervais (Paris sous la neige, vu du haut de St.-Gervaais), 1890

food + drink

• One of my favorite winter dinners, adapted from a recipe my parents-in-law always make: put huge handfuls of kale on the bottom of a casserole dish. Cover it with chicken (thighs, legs, breasts, or a combination), sliced red onion, and thinly sliced lemons. Sprinkle kalamata olives, cloves of garlic, and big chunks of feta cheese on top. Drizzle everything with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper. Cover and bake it at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for ~45 minutes.

• In the rotating contest for best chocolate chip cookies, this recipe is fantastic.

• Recipes to try: seared scallops and lemon parmesan risotto, caramelized lemon butter orzo with breadcrumbs, this focaccia bread recipe, and blackened miso salmon with a coconut cucumber salad.

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listening

• It’s that time of year… the time when I waffle between listening to Vince Guaraldi nonstop, and getting angry over the fact that Thomas Newman didn’t get an Oscar for this score.

• Elizabeth Oldfield interviews Paul Kingsnorth on “The Sacred.”

• Karen Swallow Prior discusses The Scarlet Letter on Jennifer Frey’s podcast, “Sacred and Profane Love.”

• Chuck Marohn and Amanda Lanata discuss the impact of systemic racism on Jackson, Mississippi’s water crisis.