The Utne Weeder
By Utne Staff, Utne Reader
FOODThis Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteaderby Joan Dye Gussow (Chelsea Green, $22.95). With intimate details about living the gardening life, Gussow, an expert on nutrition and health, describes how, and why, she became vegetally self-sufficient. While she makes a compelling argument—both ecological and moral—for growing our own food, Gussow’s book is also a great read, filled with insightful, down-home stories and fabulous recipes.
—Karen Olson
BEAT GENERATIONBeat Down to Your Soulby Ann Charters (Penguin, $17). A hefty anthology of (as the subtitle accurately promises) "Poems, Essays, Memoirs, Notes, Protests, Attacks and Apologies—from the Beat Explosion That Rocked the World." From works by Kerouac and Ferlinghetti to commentary from Grace Paley and Tom Wolfe, there’s a fascinating gathering of material that, taken all together, explains why this explosive literary movement has burned for so long in the souls of readers around the world.
—Jay Walljasper
HEALTHThe Camera My Mother Gave Meby Susanna Kaysen (Knopf, $21). Almost too revealing, this memoir of illness and desire is the story of Kaysen’s journey to uncover the source of a sudden and mysterious pain in her vagina. In sadly familiar detail, Kaysen, author
of the best-selling Girl, Interrupted, describes countless frustrating visits with medical professionals and her unflinching resolve to make the pain go away.
—Andy Steiner
SPIRITUALITY Grassroots Zenby Manfred Steger and Perle Besserman (Tuttle, $24.95). The rigidity and hierarchy of traditional Buddhist practice sent the authors on an exploration of the Chinese concept of community practice—teachings without masters, robes, or the trappings of authority. What they found was a spiritual path open to regular folks.
—Craig Cox
ECOLOGYA Language Older Than Wordsby Derrick Jensen (Context Books, $16). A beekeeper, chicken farmer, and writer, Jensen asks himself daily whether he should pick up a pen or blow up a dam. He blends inquiries into the philosophy of nature with memoir and firsthand accounts of human-animal communication. Examining the psychology of coercion and alienation—and the roots of violence and rape—the author comes to terms with his own childhood sexual abuse by reconnecting with the wild and fostering a deep awareness of biological interdependence.
—Chris Dodge
Navigating the Tides of Change: Stories from Science, the Sacred, and a Wise
Planet by David La Chapelle (New Society Publishers, $16.95) Spiritual ecologist David La Chapelle weaves scientific and natural lore, personal experience, mystical wisdom, and stories of our elders into a poetic exhortation calling us to dive into the deeper patterns of human consciousness and our evolutionary place in the natural world. His is an affirming and hopeful vision that our latent spiritual, animal, and psychological abilities contain all the tools we need to create and respond to change in our time.
—Nina Utne
LITERARY ESSAYSStranger Shores: Literary Essays, 1986–1999by J.M. Coetzee (Viking, $24.95). A master novelist surveys the work of others in his trade, both present and past, from fellow South African Nadine Gordimer to Argentine fabulist Jorge Luis Borges and the 18th-century English author Daniel Defoe. Coetzee’s rare blend of intelligence and generosity is applied to a recurring concern: the role history plays in shaping the writer’s imagination.
—Jeremiah Creedon
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