Rating: 5/5 Wendell Berry, Home Economics: Fourteen Essays by Wendell Berry (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1987). One thing I love about editing is the opportunity to read so many different types of texts I would never normally pick up. Sometimes, even if the book I’m editing is not particularly interesting, I...

Rating: 5/5 Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Viking, 2000). I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is beautifully written and I think hits some very powerful points. It’s not a history of walking per se (what would that look like?) but more a history of what walking has meant and how the...

Rating: 3/5 Mark Kurlansky, Salt: A World History (A. Knopf Canada, 2002). If you like reading history, then you’ll enjoy the book. It’s well organized and clearly written—very accessible writing style. If history bores you, then the book will bore you. It is just what it says it is, a book on the history of salt...

Rating: 4/5 Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (W. W. Norton, 1997). Well now I know. After 6 months, I’m still not recovered from grad school. After reading some “art for art’s sake” books, I thought I’d try Guns, Germs, and Steel, a book on my to-read list for some time. After 100-odd pages, I finally had to give...