Diamond-Cut Life

My experience is that great books are like life-blood to the Diamond-Cut Life (a life rich in joy and low in consumption). I have often been dollar-poor, and though I’m not any longer, good books give me — I think us — an exciting inner life whatever our external status in the world. Reading an excellent book can be like taking a vacation or living out a whole alternate reality. Some novels are more vividly memorable to me than trips I have physically taken. And reading them spews no carbon emissions into our shared atmosphere.

I alternate my recommendations below between non-fiction and fiction. I’ll be adding to this list periodically, and I welcome comments that tell me about your favorite books.

Better Off: Flipping The Switch On Technology by Eric Brende

The author, a Yale and M.I.T. graduate, took his new bride to live in a farming community that was happily using community, i.e. people working together, to replace fossil-fueled technology. He’s a great writer, not at all preachy, and I laughed my head off.

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Never has a novel given me characters and a setting (rural Appalachia) that feel more vibrantly real to me than this one. It enchanted and fascinated me, and I learned a lot about animals and biology at the same time. Other great novels by Ms. Kingsolver that I keep rereading are The Bean Trees and its sequel Pigs In Heaven. The characters in these are poor in dollars, rich in energy and heart.

Guns, Germs And Steel and its sequel Collapse by Jared Diamond.

The first of these two was a Pulitzer prize-winner, and I’d suggest it has given the world more insight into human history and current reality than . . .  any other book in human history. Mr. Diamond is that rare academic who renders complex information and ideas fully understandable, with wit and humor thrown into the mix. Collapse shows how some civilizations destroyed their own resource-base and thus themselves, and other cultures have disciplined their resource-use for much happier outcomes. I’m a fan of the latter path.

Blue Shoe and other novels by Anne Lamott, especially Crooked Little Heart.

Like a great many people, I love Anne Lamott, who could be described as the funniest, quirkiest, recovering alcoholic/addict to ever embrace liberal Christianity and progressive politics. I saw her in person in 2007 at the Bagdad Theater here in Portland, which was packed as if for a rock star. She read from her latest non-fiction bookGrace (Eventually) and made me laugh harder than any comedian since Harvey Korman’s skits with Carol Burnett on her TV show in the 70’s. She’s wise, warm and honest as well as funny. I really recommend Anne Lamott to you.

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