Book picks similar to
Rivers & Birds by Merrill Gilfillan


mfa-preparation-list
nature
nonfiction-narrative
science-and-nature

Litter: How Other People's Rubbish Shapes Our Lives


Theodore Dalrymple - 2011
    What does it mean when a country tips its rubbish anywhere it likes? At the very least, it suggests that a modern Englishman's street has become his dining room...This short, brief book, then, sifts through the excesses of Britain's public 'dining room' and analyses what litter says about our brave new world. Have we become barbarians?

'Scuse Me While I Whip This Out: Reflections on Country Singers, Presidents, and Other Troublemakers


Kinky Friedman - 2004
    In this collection of twisted takes on life, the Kinkster gives us funny, irreverent, and insightful looks at outsized personalities, from people he's known -- Bill Clinton and George W. to Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, not to mention Joseph Heller and Don Imus -- to people he's known in spirit -- Moses, Jesus, Jack Ruby, and Hank Williams. With his meditations on subjects ranging from sleeping at the White House to marriage, his pets, fishing in Borneo, country music, cigars, and the tribulations of possessing talent, Kinky doesn't deny us the "flashes of brilliance and laugh-out-loud observations"* that are present in all his other work.Hilarious and irreverent, and passionately twisted, 'Scuse Me While I Whip This Out reads as if it were written by a slightly ill modern-day Mark Twain.*Rocky Mountain News (Denver)

The Sense of Wonder


Rachel Carson - 1965
    Stunning new photographs by Nick Kelsh beautifully complement Carson's intimate account of adventures with her young nephew, Roger, as they enjoy walks along the rocky coast of Maine and through dense forests and open fields, observing wildlife, strange plants, moonlight and storm clouds, and listening to the "living music" of insects in the underbrush. "If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder." Writes Carson, "he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." The Sense of Wonder is a refreshing antidote to indifference and a guide to capturing the simple power of discovery that Carson views as essential to life.In her insightful new introduction, Linda Lear remembers Rachel Carson's groundbreaking achievements in the context of the legendary environmentalist's personal commitment to introducing young and old to the miracles of nature.Kelsh's lush photographs inspire sensual, tactile reactions: masses of leaves floating in a puddle are just waiting to be scooped up and examined more closely. An image of a narrow path through the trees evokes the earthy scent of the woods after a summer rain. Close-ups of mosses and miniature lichen fantasy-lands will spark innocent'as well as more jaded'imaginations. Like a curious child studying things underfoot and within reach, Kelsh's camera is drawn to patterns in nature that too often elude hurried adults'a stand of beech trees in the springtime, patches of melting snow and the ripples from a pebble tossed into a slow-moving stream.The Sense of Wonder is a timeless volume that will be passed on from children to grandchildren, as treasured as the memory of an early-morning walk when the song of a whippoorwill was heard as if for the first time.

The Deer Pasture


Rick Bass - 1985
    More than a place to stalk the white-tail, this is a place to get together, chase armadillos, swap campfire stories, listen to quail, make biscuits, and enjoy the antics of ringtails. It's the sort of place where a man is only as good as his dog, where memories last longer, where the hunter's moon is the perfect light for chasing raccoons. Most important, it is a place to recharge the spirit and renew family ties.

The Best of Dave Barry


Dave Barry - 1992
    There's no such thing as too many laughs! Dave Barry's quirky take on American life will shed new light on popular culture.

Out of the Box: Watching the Game We Love


Harsha Bhogle - 2009
    Out of the Box brings together the very best of Harsha’s writings, in a book that will be a veritable delight for any cricket fan.Knowledgeable, frank and witty, and with a sense of drama comparable to that of cricket itself, Harsha brings the nation’s cricketing ethos inimitably to life. And he is at his best when paying tribute to some cricketing greats—Lara, Inzamam, Jayasuriya, Ganguly, Sehwag, and the incomparable Tendulkar.As he follows India’s fortunes on the cricket field at home and overseas, Harsha asks the question: can India really be no.1 in all three forms of the game? The answer lies in our history, and in the pages of Out of the Box.

A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There


Aldo Leopold - 1949
    As the forerunner of such important books as Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and Robert Finch's The Primal Place, this classic work remains as relevant today as it was sixty-five years ago.

A Moose and A Lobster Walk into A Bar: Tales from Maine


John McDonald - 2002
    In this collection of essays and stories, John extols the important economic power of Maine's yard sale industry, bemoans the fact that Massachusetts, still upset because it allowed Maine to become a state in 1820, is buying it back one house at a time, and relates how the state's infamous black fly was really just an attempt at controlling tourists gone haywire. You will also meet Maine characters like Uncle Abner, Merrill Minzey, and Hollis Eaton, and find yourself pondering just where the truth ends and the story begins.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2010


Freeman Dyson - 2010
    Freeman Dyson, renowned physicist and public intellectual, edits this year’s volume of the finest science and nature writing.

Traveling Light


Linda Pastan - 2011
    “Pastan . . . expresses a full range of the possibilities and potencies of the human, feminine voice” (Boston Globe).from "In the Forest" The trees are lit from within like Sabbath candlesbefore they are snuffed out.Autumn is such a Jewish season,the whole minor key of it.Hear how the wind trembles through the branches, vibratoas notes of cello music.

Cold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map


Barton Sutter - 1998
    Cold Comfort is his temperamental tribute to the city of Duluth, Minnesota, where bears wander the streets and canoe racks are standard equipment.

Graceland, at Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South


Margaret Renkl - 2021
    Now more than sixty of those pieces have been brought together in this sparkling new collection."People have often asked me how it feels to be the 'voice of the South, '" writes Renkl in her introduction. "But I'm not the voice of the South, and no one else is, either." There are many Souths--red and blue, rural and urban, mountain and coast, Black and white and brown--and no one writer could possibly represent all of them. In Graceland, At Last, Renkl writes instead from her own experience about the complexities of her homeland, demonstrating along the way how much more there is to this tangled region than many people understand.In a patchwork quilt of personal and reported essays, Renkl also highlights some other voices of the South, people who are fighting for a better future for the region. A group of teenagers who organized a youth march for Black Lives Matter. An urban shepherd whose sheep remove invasive vegetation. Church parishioners sheltering the homeless. Throughout, readers will find the generosity of spirit and deep attention to the world, human and nonhuman, that keep readers returning to her columns each Monday morning.From a writer who "makes one of all the world's beings" (NPR), Graceland, At Last is a book full of gifts for Southerners and non-Southerners alike.

The Immense Journey


Loren Eiseley - 1957
    Anthropologist and naturalist, Dr. Eiseley reveals life's endless mysteries in his own experiences, departing from their immediacy into meditations on the long past, wandering—intimate with nature—along the paths and byways of time, and then returning to the present.

Rough Likeness: Essays


Lia Purpura - 2011
    These elegant, conversational excursions refuse to let a reader slide over anything, from the tiniest shards of beach glass to barren big-box wastelands. They detonate distractedness, superficiality, artificiality. In the process, Purpura inhabits many stances: metaphysician and biologist, sensualist and witness—all in service of illuminating that which Virginia Woolf called “moments of being”—previously unworded but palpably felt states of existence and knowing. Rough Likeness finds worlds in the minute, and crafts monuments to beauty and strangeness.

Selected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers


George Oppen - 2007
    Editor Stephen Cope has made a judicious selection of Oppen's extant writings outside of poetry, including the essay "The Mind's Own Place" as well as "Twenty-Six Fragments," which were found on the wall of Oppen's study after his death. Most notable are Oppen's "Daybooks," composed in the decade following his return to poetry in 1958. iSelected Prose, Daybooks, and Papers is an inspiring portrait of this essential writer and a testament to the creative process itself.