A beautifully told story of a man’s journey from the United States to his soul’s home in Santiago Atitlan, where he becomes a village shaman. His stories and insights into the indigenous belief system from his sacred place within their lives is a marked departure from outsider’s interpretation of the Guatemalan people described by simple observation.

I usually don’t like abridged books on tape, and authors don’t necessarily make good readers, but this one is a jewel. I’m sure that the full length version of this book has plenty of more nuggets, but the distillation done here is masterful.

This was suggested by a teacher who had it as required summer reading for staff. I’m not sure how to thank him yet, because this is one with ideas that you don’t come across often. The timing was right, too, with a slightly to radically different way of viewing (depending on how you think of it) the current Iraqi and Afgan war.

Life in egghead heaven isn’t exactly what everyone thinks it is cracked up to be, but then again it doesn’t sound all that bad either. The casual tone and clear descriptions of complicated pieces of high science make this a great read.

Controlling the Mississippi, directing a volcano’s flows, stopping mountain erosion; it’s not just about human hubrus that thinks it can “win” against nature, but about how we cope in settings where our scope of time and effort are so short. All told in the inimitable style of a master writing craftsman.

Beautiful essays, lovingly crafted, full of the usual passion and personality. As an added bonus, I listened to this as a book-on-tape with the author reading it. Not all writers are good readers, but she is an exception.

I had never heard of Josephine Tey before, but she is apparently famous in the field. I can see why.

The original, published in 1989, blew me away. I would like to go back and read this new edition in light of the changes that the web has brought in the past 15 years.

Perhaps it was Barbara Kingsolver’s mention of “the personal as political” in one of her essays in Small Wonders, but the idea of paying closer attention to the ways the seemingly small and personal choices in life can affect you and the world must have made me ready to find this book interesting. I’ve seen it and thumbed through it on others bookshelves any number of times, but haven’t been ready to listen to it until now. Perhaps it was a bad run-in with meat a few weeks ago helped too.

A tremendous story of a tragedy that shaped fire fighting as practiced today. Stories of forest fires from my brother-in-law put the events it describes into even starker and sadder relief.