2007 books

20) Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, 1992   ( RE-READ )
A lecture delivered in 1990, good enough to be enshrined as a book in its own right. Lopez calls for a complete rejection of America's wealth-driven lifestyle, first established with the arrival of the Spanish in 1492, and to replace it with something more in tune with Native American, Amish or Mennonite respect for land and the environment. Confronting the rapacity of 'civilisation', Lopez wrote these excellent lines which have stuck with me for years:

But I ask myself, where is the man or woman, standing before lifeless porpoises strangled and bloated in a beachcast driftnet, or standing on farmland ankle deep in soil gone to flour dust, or flying over the Cascade Mountains and seeing the clearcuts stretching for forty miles, the sunbaked earth, the streams running with mud, who does not want to say, "Forgive me, thou bleeding Earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers"?

A memorable, idealistic and quietly angry book.

word of the day:
querencia (Sp., n.): The 'safe' area in the bullring to which a fighting bull returns to gather himself; in human terms it is therefore the unspecified place in life's arena where one feels safe, serene.