21 Books Like The Land of Little Rain

This remains one of the most haunting novels I have ever read. I cannot shake the character of Judge Holden, a formidable man both physically and intellectually, who deploys his insidious intellect to justify acts of abject violence seemingly only for the sake of violence itself. I was mesmerized by a world where “all covenants were brittle.” This was no straight-up Western as I had expected. It was something more.

McCarthy pushed the boundaries of the classic Western by challenging the notion that good will ultimately overcome evil and the hero will save the day. There was no hero here, and the day was truly lost to forces beyond the characters’ control, hallmarks of the Southern Gothic tradition. I was hooked on this curious blend of genres!

The famous opening lines of this book are: “I came to Comala because they told me my father, a man called Pedro Páramo, lived here.” I’ve heard many Mexicans quote the opening paragraph in Spanish. Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel Prize-winning Columbian writer, claimed he could recite the entire book forwards and backward.

Rulfo’s short novel influenced all Latin American fiction written after it. Ghostly, innovative, and mystical, the book takes place in an imaginary desert, a place of barren fields, dusty roads, and cracked earth that mirrors the desolation haunting all of its characters.

Not in the best of shape but energized by their imaginations, two friends set out with an overabundance of gear (including two eight-thousand dollar cameras, batteries, solar panels, and all sorts of other accessories) to hike all of the 750-mile Grand Canyon.

Starting in the Sonora Desert to the east, they plan to walk along the Great Basin Desert ecosystem of the canyon floor, shambling westward into the Mojave Desert. The heat—bouncing back and forth between canyon walls—reaches 120 degrees, hot enough to “denature and congeal” human blood. What could go wrong?

Fedarko writes about the riveting adventure (an adventure in both hiking and friendship) with humility and grim humor.

William Carlos Williams’ book The Desert Music was published first in 1954 and later collected in volume two of New Directions’ The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. It remains one of William Carlos Williams’ most tender, innovative, and emotionally exigent books.

The so-called desert music becomes, among other things, an enactment and valuing of the “inescapable and insistent” background soundscapes in our lives. Geographically, the poems of the title sequence are situated in the Chihuahua Desert, where Williams, after having suffered a stroke, travels between Juárez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas.

From characteristically astute descriptions—for instance, of a twisted wild mustard flower (that I still see in my mind’s eye)—the poems segue into meditations on art, love, and mortality. 

I heard an interview with Kim Stanley Robinson on an Ezra Klein podcast while we were traveling in California, and I immediately bought this book.

I devoured it while we were exploring and writing about the Sierra Nevada. As the title suggests, Kim has had a lifelong love affair with the Sierras, and this book is filled with his deep knowledge of geology, geography, and personal adventures.

The joy, respect, and wonder are contagious. I love how he talks about the Sierras as a place that has anchored his life through many phases. 

Daniel Arnold’s book describes his journey to climb 15 of the Sierra’s most prominent peaks by their first-ascent routes—and mostly using similar gear to the first-ascent party. As a Sierra mountaineer and backpacker, his writing immediately captivated me because he wove his adventure together with that of the first ascent party. His careful historical research drew me back in time, providing context for why each climber was pursuing the summit, their personalities and passions, and, importantly, how well (or poorly…) documented the Sierra’s topography was at the time of their explorations. My mind kept wandering into the past, imagining a time when I didn’t have ready access to detailed maps and thinking how different Sierra exploring once was. 

Ron Morehead is a true explorer in the field of Bigfoot research. He could easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Clive Cussler in the category of author, explorer, and adventurer. Voices in the Wilderness chronicles Morehead’s four-decade journey of trying to understand what he heard in the Sierra Nevada woods back in the early 1970s. Toward the end of the book, Moorehead explores ideas and theories on the origins of Bigfoot and what researchers are searching for in the forest.

The Last Season recounts the disappearance of ranger Randy Morgenstern in California’s High Sierra. A legend in the NPS for his devotion to wild places, Morgenson spent more than 25 seasons as a backcountry ranger in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks before disappearing without a trace in 1996. An introspective sort who knew every corner of the territory he patrolled, Morgenson left behind a tantalizing mystery that writer Eric Blehm turns into a page-turning, psychological thriller. Did he fall off a cliff? Was he murdered? Did he take his own life? As a young ranger, I read this book late into the night under the hissing gas light of my duty station. We’ve had campers vanish in our wilderness—and a ranger die in the line of duty—so every page rang true. 

The Chinese American presence in the USA started with the gold rush and the building of the transcontinental railroad.

It was a blessing to find Chang’s non-fiction work because he utilized a tremendous about of research to accurately cover the book’s topic. I’m also grateful that his writing style is not dull.

Building a railroad trestle through the High Sierra mountains in winter implies work conditions that affect laborers as well as investors. Chang strings the human sentiments throughout the history of those who participated in noble fashion, Chinese and non-Chinese alike.

In portraying the Chinese experience, Chang’s book as underscores how vital the transcontinental railroad was to the development of America. 

I’ve read and enjoyed reading nearly every trail narrative on the John Muir Trail (JMT). I find it difficult to pick one to highlight as a favorite and ultimately selected Christy’s because I truly connected to her descriptions of self-discovery as she hiked the JMT. She reflected and learned from each mistake and internally celebrated each success. She describes her trip with humility, happily laughing at her own mistakes, yet simultaneously has a wonderful sense that she knew she would emerge from her trip stronger and she knew what was important to her. I cannot imagine a better book for a newcomer to long distance hiking; you’ll learn how much planning is required, but also how much you can only learn once on the trail.