Nature reading can be relaxing, inspiring, infuriating, challenging, or perplexing. It all depends on what you are reading, your mindset at the time, and what you are expecting from this genre of literature.
Anytime is a good time to begin your adventure into nature reading. But summer is an especially appropriate time to begin the journey.
My bias, of course, is nature writing that somehow connects with water... and much of it does. Here are two top 10 lists of water and coastal related nature non-fiction writings:
Some classics for those of you just beginning:
Edge of the Sea — Rachel Carson (I)
The Winter Beach — Charlton Ogburn (I)
The Outermost House — Henry Beston (I)
Beautiful Swimmers — William Warner (I)
Pilgram at Tinker Creek — Annie Dillard (I)
The Island Within — Richard Nelson (I)
The Bay — Gilbert Klingel (I)
Among the Isle of Shoals — Celia Baxter (I)
A Place Between the Tides — Harry Thurston (I)
The Atlantic Shore — John Hay and Peter Farb (I)
More scientific or philosophical works:
Cape Cod — Henry David Thoreau (I) Nature — Ralph Waldo Emerson (I) Gift From the Sea — Anne Morrow Lindbergh (I) Life and Death of the Salt Marsh — John and Mildred Teal (I) The Founding Fish — John McPhee (I) Upstream — Mary Oliver (I) Little Rivers (Essays in Profitable Idleness) — Henry Van Dyke (I) Horizon — Barry Lopez (I) Confessions of a Beachcomber — E J Banfield (I) A Geologist’s View of Cape Cod — Arthur Strahler (I)
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