Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle
One of the first women travel writers I read and once I started her books, I couldn’t stop. I was so inspired by the power of Murphy’s imagination and her courage as a single woman traversing the globe on foot, pedal-power or mule, to name just three forms she utilizes.
When Did You Last See Your Father?: A Son’s Memoir of Love and Loss
For anyone who has a father with big ideas, big determination and a big heart, this is a book to read. I ached when I read it, so much did I connect with the story and the writing.
Beloved
My introduction to Morrison began with Beloved, and how fortunate I was. This book is my favorite of hers though her other books are just as sought after. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for its dazzling and commanding story of a woman haunted by the past.
The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine (Plus)
I found this after reading The Secret Life of Bees
A feminist journey of faith and awakening by a fabulous writer.
Dark Nights of the Soul
The perfect book for a midlife crisis or to help restore soul to self and couple-hood.
The Seven Storey Mountain
Here Merton shares his early years and the decisions that leads him becoming a Trappist monk, one of the most demanding Catholic orders, at the age of 26, and then his gradation through different types of monk-hood. Compelling.
The End of Nature
McKibben is very involved in the Occupy Movement and also writes for one of my other favourite magazines, Orion. McKibben continues to inspire a new generation of ecologists, eco-warriors, Occupy-ers and nature lovers with his incisive takes on what is happening to and of the world — and what we can do as citizens to preserve it.
The Tree in Changing Light
I used to walk the tree-streets of Kensington at night and feel so happy. This book is an evocation of tree life and light in all their types and timbres. A meditation on landscapes and an evocation of people’s own tree stories.
Dance of the Nomad: A Study of the Selected Notebooks of A.d. Hope
Gifted insights to the world and writings of AD Hope.
The Snow Leopard
I read this while traveling across Tibet. It’s similarly a pilgrim’s quest for understanding self and life through a cultural and wild immersion experience.
Collected Stories
The best collected stories I’ve ever read.
Craft for a Dry Lake
Shimmering memoir of her life connection to family, outback and identify. It’s a book at once individual and complete.