Here are 100 books that Scraping Heaven fans have personally recommended if you like
Scraping Heaven.
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I look to my bookshelf and can visit with old friends by the simple and profound act of reading. And by reading, I learn of myself and of others. These books have sharpened my attention to life’s particulars, are places of refuge, fortresses or encampments from which I/we can safely view the harsh realities and impenetrable riddles confronting us. Books create sparks. Sparks build into a fire.
The reasons for loving the books I listed below are many: The characters enchant, infuriate, and humble you. They inhabit your mind in a waking dream. Their story is your story and after reading the book, you know something about yourself which you otherwise would not have known.
Again and again, Terry Tempest Williams shows us we can live in a disaster zone, literal and emotional, and survive.
Refuge, her fourth major book, testifies to the calamities set in motion by the atomic testing that occurred in the Nevada desert during the 1950’s. The book weaves the story of her mother and grandmother’s resultant deaths from cancer and the flooding of the Great Salt Lake that has endangered native bird species.
The loss she records is human and non-human, bringing home a truth we have yet to learn: that sullying the Great Mother, our earth, threatens our own bodies and those of future generations. If Refuge is a record of lamentations, it is also a missive for restoration and regeneration and a document of hope.
In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
The natural world is where I feel at home, and it is also the focus of my work as a writer. In Virginia, where I grew up, I always felt calmest walking footpaths in the mountains. Now I live on a windswept island in Scotland, my little aging caravan a couple of dozen feet from crashing waves. I have always felt curious about how we shape our surroundings and how our surroundings shape us. As a writer and a reader, I probe these questions every day.
In an afterword, Dillard writes that, as she aged, she came to regret the grandeur of the sentences in this book. But I’m grateful that she wrote it—a chronicle of two years in the Shenandoah Valley—exactly as she did.
I carry this book around like a bible, reading its paragraphs like poems.
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek has continued to change people's lives for over thirty years. A passionate and poetic reflection on the mystery of creation with its beauty on the one hand and cruelty on the other, it has become a modern American literary classic in the tradition of Thoreau. Living in solitude in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia, and observing the changing seasons, the flora and fauna, the author reflects on the nature of creation and of the God who set it in motion. Whether the images are cruel or lovely, the language is memorably beautiful and poetic,…
I’m a Colorado gal living in Maine, where I make the most of the long winters and gloomy springs by spending as much time as I can outside in our 20 acres of woods and fields. I hiked the Colorado Trail twice, in 1996 with my husband and in 2016 with my husband and three kids. My book tells the story of this second hike, as well as the natural and environmental history of Colorado. I’m a Maine Master Naturalist, and I’m passionate about connecting people to the natural world through nature journaling and nature writing workshops.
After the birth of my second and third children (twins!), I felt further than ever from my dreams of being a nature writer. Even the natural world outside my window seemed impossibly far away while I was indoors, contending with the demands of two babies and a preschooler.
When those babies were about two years old, I discovered, by accident, this book, and my life changed. In its pages, Louise Erdrich showed that careful attention to and contemplation of the natural world was not only possible for mothers of small children but that motherhood itself can make us more attuned to nature, more empathetic, and more clear-eyed and fierce.
New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s moving meditation on the experience of motherhood—the first nonfiction work by one of the most acclaimed authors of our time.
Louise Erdrich’s first major work of nonfiction, The Blue Jay’s Dance, brilliantly and poignantly examines the joys and frustrations, the compromises and insights, and the difficult struggles and profound emotional satisfactions the acclaimed author experienced in the course of one twelve-month period—from a winter pregnancy through a spring and summer of new motherhood to her return to writing in the fall. In exquisitely lyrical prose, Erdrich illuminates afresh the large and…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
My seven novels all celebrate the natural world—while, I hope, telling a good story. Nature has always been my solace and delight. I’ve also had the honor of developing and directing an MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University, one of the few nationwide programs to focus on cutting-edge environmental writing. While I mainly write novels, I’m the author of two nonfiction books and one play and the editor of three environmental anthologies. When not writing or teaching, I can be found sauntering around the West, especially in my home state of Colorado. I love travel and adventuring, and I like looking at birds, stars, clouds, and sea glass.
Memoirs can be delightful, too, although they also have a bad rap for being depressing! This is one of my favorite Earth-based recent nonfiction reads. It focuses on the joys of gardening—even in a small suburban plot—and focuses on being a black gardener in a predominately white town.
The plants she grows are used as a metaphor to discuss cultural diversity, particularly in how we must cultivate diverse and intersectional language to protect our planet. Dungy is also the editor of an anthology entitled Black Nature, which covers decades of poetry by Black writers.
A seminal work that expands how we talk about the natural world and the environment as National Book Critics Circle Criticism finalist Camille T. Dungy diversifies her garden to reflect her heritage.
In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.
In resistance to the homogenous policies that limited…
Keith Foskett has hiked around 15,000 miles on classic hiking trails including the Pacific Crest Trail, El Camino de Santiago, and the Appalachian Trail. He has written four books, and contributes to various outdoor publications. Having once been described as an anomaly (it was apparently a compliment), he now divides his time between walking, cycling, and delving into the merits of woollen underwear.
The first line of the description roused my curiosity with this one: "Richard Grant has never spent more than twenty-two consecutive nights under the same roof." Curious about his own wanderlust, and theorising that America is full of wanderers, he went out to prove it. Delving into the whys of nomads and travellers, I now understand my own nomadic tendencies.
Richard Grant has never spent more than 22 consecutive nights under the same roof. Motivated partly by his own wanderlust and partly by his realisation that America is a land populated by wanderers, he set out to test his theory and this book is the result. Grant follows the trails of the first European to wander across the American West (a failed conquistador); joins a group of rodeo-competing cowboys (and gets thrown by a mechanical bull); tells the story of the vanishing nomadic Indians and links up with 300,000 "gerito gypsies" - old people who live and travel in their…
I went through some very tough times growing up. I was an undiagnosed autistic teen, terribly shy, with no real guidance, and I was often bullied and bewildered. But my heart was filled with only goodwill and good intentions, and a yearning to connect meaningfully with others. So, stories of adversity, of characters making it through very tough times, through trauma—these stories were like shining beacons that said, “survival is possible.” Now that I’m a grownup writer, it’s at the root of what I want to offer—hope—to today’s kids who may be going through similar tough stuff. Survival is possible.
Dusti Bowling’s ability to keep you on the edge is incredible.
Nora lost her mom via a random shooting, and now she is trapped in a desert canyon where a flash flood swept her dad away. The stakes are so high. And yet: Nora’s will to survive, her love for Dad, and her inner strength, pull her beautifully through.
One year since she lost her mother to a random shooting, Nora and her father are exploring a slot canyon deep in the Arizona desert. They like to stay far away from other people now, or at least Nora's father does. Nora has been working with a therapist to try to heal, and she longs to have a normal life again, to be "just an ordinary girl" like she was when her mother was still alive.
But when she and her father reach the bottom of the canyon, a flash flood rips past them, sweeping away Nora's father and all…
Big Ideas... For Small Businesses
by
John Lamerton,
Big Ideas… for Small Businesses is a straight-talking, no-nonsense guide to growing a small business without sacrificing your lifestyle. Written by a former civil servant turned entrepreneur, the book challenges hustle culture and instead champions the idea of an "ambitious lifestyle business" - one that provides freedom and financial stability,…
I didn’t really take up hiking until I was in my 30s, but outdoor adventures have become a way of life. I love walking along a trail, marveling at my surroundings and wondering what new delight I’ll discover around the next bend or over the next hill. Upon turning 70, I tackled my most challenging walk yet – trekking over 250 miles along the spectacular South West Coast Path in Cornwall, England. I found the immersion in focusing solely on walking each day to be both meditative and uplifting. The books on this list reflect my love for the outdoors, with some inspiring me to try something new, while others I prefer to experience vicariously.
As someone who has hiked a few sections of the Pacific Crest Trail, I found this memoir of the author’s experiences while through-hiking the PCT to be visually stunning and delightful.
He managed to describe his daily progress with enough variety that I never grew tired of his quest. This story has inspired me to return to the trail for another section or two!
In 1997, I was hired by the Northwest Youth Corps as a trail crew leader. That season, and across five more seasons, I built trails across the Pacific Northwest and Desert Southwest, including in many national parks. Since then, I have been in love with backpacking trails (including hiking the Long Trail and Colorado Trail), building trails, and writing about trails (Crosscut: Poems). I now live in Vermont with my wife and daughter. We have a trail we built that weaves through our woods.
On Trails: An Exploration is a completely different style of book. Rather than exploring trails through the lens of trail building, Moor, an Appalachian Trail thru-hiker, examines trails from a variety of angles. In a book that spans from the beginning of animal life to today’s digital age, Moor examines the world’s oldest trail, learns how to build trails, and even thinks about roads and the internet.
New York Times Bestseller • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award • Winner of the Saroyan International Prize for Writing • Winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award • “The best outdoors book of the year.” —Sierra Club
From a talent who’s been compared to Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, David Quammen, and Jared Diamond, On Trails is a wondrous exploration of how trails help us understand the world—from invisible ant trails to hiking paths that span continents, from interstate highways to the Internet.
While thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor began to wonder about the paths that lie…
Outdoors has always been a nourishing place for me, even when I edged into risky or dangerous places, especially solo. When I got rid of my car (for financial reasons), I found my options to reach outdoor adventures limited. Soon after, I began working in transportation, tourism, and recreation and sought ways for everyone to access outdoor recreational opportunities, regardless of their abilities or any limiting barriers. Slow travel is broadly inclusive, enabling anyone to benefit from outdoor experiences and their transformative potential. Slow travel helped me feel less alone, more connected, more balanced emotionally, healthier physically, and more creative; it revealed the path to Love.
This book broadened my understanding of what it means for the outdoors to be a place where everyone feels they are welcome and belong. I felt Whitely’s discomfort and shame at being a tall, overweight woman among slender, fit climbers on Mt. Kilimanjaro.
I celebrated how she transformed shame into motivation. I could also feel the effort of lifting heavy legs at altitude. I appreciated her attention to the world around her, the guides, the camp staff, and the local language. She gave me a picture of the landscape, people, and sound of the place.
Kara knew she could reach the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. She had done it once before. That's why, when she failed in a second attempt, it brought her so low. As she struggled with food addiction and looked for ways to cope with feelings of failure and shame, Kara's weight shot to more than 300 pounds. Deep in her personal gorge, Kara realized the only way out was up. She resolved to climb the mountain again,and this time, she would reach the summit without waiting for her plus-sized status to disappear. Gorge: My Journey Up Kilimanjaro at 300 Pounds is…
The problem is not with the actions young women take but with the toxic, sexist conditions they are responding to.
Tanenbaum found, based on six years of interviews with young people ages 14-30, that young women are navigating a culture littered with gendered dress codes, revenge porn, and sexually explicit…
I grew up in a family of nature lovers and went with my parents and my brother on numerous nature hikes. These are my most precious childhood memories. I learned as a child to appreciate nature, I was fascinated by wild animals and inspired by the beauty of the natural world. As I grew up, I became more and more aware of how fragile the natural world is today and how important it is to protect it. This is one of the main motivators for me to create books for kids that will inspire them to love and respect nature.
I loved the characters of the moose, the bear, and the beaver, who go together on a trip full of challenges. At first, they decide to do a race all the way to the top of the mountain, but they get into trouble in a series of funny mishaps. Luckily they are good friends and manage to save each other.
This book reminded me of my family trips as a child, when my dad always enjoyed going fast, while my mom enjoyed stopping to photograph a flower or spot a butterfly. And I–sometimes hurried with my father and sometimes slowed down with my mother. This book shows these two ways to enjoy a trip, but eventually, it proves that the best way is to enjoy the hike together, with good friends or family.
design- and practice-based applied research in architecture, and how students, and both young and seasoned architects, can learn from the innovative contemporary architecture and their architects.
