Books for Spring

Since I'm nearly done with the last list and have all these books stacking up with no organization for reading them, here's my next reading list. The object is to get everything set in North America and northern Europe all wrapped up before it's time for this year's Sun Books (which are generally set in the Mediterranean, India, Persia, etc. -- warm and pungent places for reading about in summer sunshine).

• Walden by H.D. Thoreau -- halfway done!


• Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke -- also halfway done!


• Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain (following up on the Thoreau hermit theme, though I guess Merton probably doesn't start the hermit thing 'til after this book)


• The Cincinnati Arch: Learning from Nature in the City by John Tallmadge, which I expect to be the opposite of Walden


• Wilderness Walks: Twelve Great Walks in Scotland


• Then a bunch to get ready for the ASLE conference, starting with Holdfast by Kathleen Dean Moore


• The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder


• The Great Work by Thomas Berry


• The New Ecological Order by Luc Ferry, and more chapters in that deep ecology book, Beneath the Surface


• Anatomy of a Conflict, by Terre Satterfield, about Oregon's old growth debates


• Teilhard in the 21st Century, unless I've run out of steam for this sort of thing


• Rilke's The Book of Hours


• The Phoenix Guards by Steven Brust, and his work with Emma Bull, Freedom & Necessity, which I think could be a bit like JS&MN above

Oh, and speaking of books -- and also because Monarch of the Glen comes on in an hour and a half, yesterday when I looked at the NYT Sunday book review page, I was pleased but startled to see an old friend's face: Julian Fellowes, the actor who played Monarch's Lord Kilwillie, the rich, foolish, tender-hearted neighbor. I was also pleased but startled to read that not only has his first novel just been published, but the man has an Oscar, for writing Gosford Park! Not just a "pretty" face.