Lonesome Dave - Larry McMurtry

A great western and a true adventure story filled with humor and sadness.

The Snow Leopard - Peter Matthiessen

Reread, repost:
Journeys are what we make of them. The heart, friendship, loss, memory, or love can measure the vast expanses of an undiscovered continent as surely as miles beyond miles in faraway lands. Similarly, the mind and heart can be explored and found anywhere - habits of both precede our footsteps on the road which rises up to meet us, just as we are needed to land our paces.

Matthiessen's work is a true travelogue - in that the landscape ends up evoking and reflecting the traveler's internal life. Matthiessen looks into the mountains of the Dolpo region and time and again sees himself reflected, looking back at him. Do we find it strange that Matthiessen titles his book after a most elusive creature which he will never see? We should not. This is a book about death and emptiness, about missing and longing. Matthiessen's journey is in search of himself amidst spaces of loneliness, both internal and external. To be one's own companion, or, rather, to be acquainted with the companionship of the universe - this too is the traveler's road. V. S. Naipaul famously wrote that "the world is what it is." Such a sentiment could be comfortably appended to this journey.

Home: Tales of a Heritage Farm - Amy Scoones

A thoughtful book about we all make our own sense of place, how the world impinges upon us and enables us to live our lives.

A Time to Kill - John Grisham

Having recently re-watched The Firm, I was in the mood for Grisham. Captures the foibles of the interactions of America's justice system and race in a divide landscape.

The Covenant - James Michener

Reread, repost:

Reread, repost: An epic of South Africa. From prehistory when the rhythm of the land was counted in moons and migrations, through age of exploration and the coming of the Europeans, to the British conflict, and apartheid, Michener weaves a tale of the land and its people that walks the balance between truth and fiction. It is interesting that a novelization of a nation's past (and present) can feel like it encapsulates more of a country's true spirit than a strictly historical account can. Michener's is clearly a thoroughly researched and painstakingly crafted account. He tries to disentagle relationships between people, animals, and the land, and to even account for the historical motive forces behind the seemingly impenetrable walls of apartheid and the multivalent divisions between whites and blacks, British and Boer, Coloureds, and Xhosa, Zulu, and Khoikhoi. The reader is left wondering at the questions that may have no discernible answer: how does an unfinished nation function as a coherency? Worth the investment to meet the 1,000+ pages.