Today's grativibe is about giving small, amazing gifts - to others AND yourself.
My birthday is coming up. About a month ago, my sister Tama asked me what I might like to receive as a gift. I responded by asking if she would write a guest post for grativibe.com. Tama works for the Multnomah County Library system, and she has read more books than anyone else I know. When she agreed to write the post, I knew it was going to be good!
Tama gifted us with her top eight non-fiction books. If you're looking for ideas for Father's Day gifts, or you'd like to find your next interesting read... this list is a great place to start. Or maybe you love to read, and you need more Recommended Reading lists in your life... well, Tama has all kinds of fun lists to peruse on her page of the Library's website.
I hope you and/or your gift recipient(s) enjoy my birthday gift as much as I do. - Doug
Hi, there! Tama here.
Let’s face it -- most of us need to economize right now. With that in mind, all of the following books are available in paperback, making them reasonable gifts. So if you’re able, you might get that special person a couple books.
Do they love to listen to a great story? Maybe get them an Audible subscription along with a couple of these to start them off right. They’re worth it, and you’ll be the favorite when they read them. It’s a win-win!
The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel
In 1986, when he was twenty years old, Christopher Knight drove his pickup into the Maine Woods, got out, tossed the keys into the front seat, and walked away. He had almost nothing with him. He was not seen or heard from again until 2013. His family never reported him missing. This is not a modern-day Thoreau, back-to-the-land story -- far from it. Not a book I’ll forget for many reasons, not the least of which is the question “how far is too far for a reporter to go to get the story?”
Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina
A gem of a book that weaves decades of field observations by experts in elephant, wolf, and orca biology and behavior with new discoveries in human brain science. These incredible animals think, feel, nurture, mourn, make complex plans, and communicate in ways similar to our own. Safina, a Ph.D. in Ecology, is a brilliant writer who offers an intimate view of animal behavior that challenges the boundary between human and non-human animals. And he does it all by making it accessible for the lay reader, yet without dumbing it down. (Tama's Note: There are scenes involving graphic violence against animals.)
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
Larson’s writing always makes history uncommonly personal, so you’re a fly on the wall with whatever is happening. I love that. There are loads of interesting people in this book, and most were on either the Lusitania as it sailed from NYC to England in the spring of 1915, or on the U-boat that was tailing random freighters and passenger liners across the Atlantic, hoping to score the tonnage of a sinking with a lucky torpedo shot. We know the ending of the book, of course, and my God, it’s devastating and brilliant. Easily my favorite of Larson’s books.
The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature by J. Drew Lanham
Growing up on the lush, South Carolina land that his ancestors were once enslaved on, Lanham writes of the many pathways he trod with family and through nature, leading him to become an extremely rare breed: an African American ornithologist. His gorgeous writing, almost meditative in its quality, is lyrical. You can feel the big heart of the author beating behind each word. (Tama's Note: the audio of this book is especially wonderful, and read by the author.)
The Long Haul: A Trucker’s Tales of Life on the Road by Finn Murphy
Murphy was the fifth of eight children born into a large Irish Catholic family in Greenwich, Connecticut. Education was important, and there were expectations that one would, at the very least, get a bachelor’s degree. When Finn dropped out of college after his junior year to get his commercial driver’s license and become a long haul trucker, his parents were, well, disappointed, to put it mildly. A highly intelligent man, writing with candor and wit about a world often looked at by many as “lesser", gave me some of the most memorable scenes I’ve ever read. (Tama's Note: I’m sure you already do this, but in case you don’t always treat people the way you’d like to be treated, you should start -- especially before you hire movers! Second Note: When my book group at work read this, we had the biggest attendance of the past ten years, including a trucker.)
The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London by Christopher Skaife
Before you skip right over this one, because your dad doesn’t like birds or whatever, let me say this: Skaife is a man’s man; he served in the British Army for 24 years. He is a machine gun specialist, and an expert in survival and interrogation resistance (I don’t even want to know). He has been employed since 2011 in the service of Queen Elizabeth II as a Yeoman Warder caring for the ravens at the Tower of London. He is also a brilliant storyteller. The birds rule that posh roost in the Tower, and they have Skaife on a tight tether. (Tama's Note: The audio of this book is especially wonderful, read by the author.)
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
When white settlers forced the Osage out of their territory in Kansas in the late 1800s, the tribe was relocated to Oklahoma and forced to buy their new land from the Federal Government. By the 1920s oil had been discovered, and they became the richest people, per capita, in the world. Let me repeat that: the richest people in the world. And then the murders began. This is where the story begins, and it is unbelievable. One of my top ten lifetime reads.
The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession and the Natural History Heist of the Century by Kirk Wallace Johnson
From the category of “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” comes the true story of the theft, by a talented young American flutist, of hundreds of rare and extinct bird specimens from the British Museum of Natural History. The twenty-year-old thief stole them with the intention of using their feathers for tying flies in the same manner that Victorian fly fishermen did a century ago. In addition, he sold them to the “feather underground,” a secret brotherhood of people equally obsessed. This nonviolent true crime story will get you thinking about all kinds of things like talent, hobbies, what actually happened to all those bird skins, and what is justice anyway?
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