Recommended by David E. Perry
If you, like me have eyes, hungry for glimpses and observations about the natural world that surrounds and sustains us, this is the guest bedroom at your favorite aunt's house, the one with all the cool books, the home that understands the heart-opening power of them and smiles when you're reading...
Meet Shelley Pasco, one of the most attuned and astute observers of the natural world that I know, and whose farm stand at our local farmer's market and then, CSA have provided Mary and me more delicious meals than I can count. She has a gift for seeing and a gift for telling. I'm tellin' ya.
There is a profound calm, hard won and probably far more complicated than it feels, about Chloe. You feel it in the way she kneads her carefully chosen words together into a dough that is then baked to perfection in her reading of them. Sometimes, though rarely there are waves crashing against those shores she's describing but more often, her stories seem to arise, like rainbows, calming and reassuring, and distilled from the most recent storm she's danced with ...survived.
She's smart and brave in ways look hard at difficulties without ever oversimplifying, whining or wallowing in 'poor me.' Generous to a fault in lifting up the stories of others rather than trying the grease them up so they'll squeeze into some feel-good self help hellscape. She lets you look difficult things in the eye and learn to breathe through the paralysis with her.
The man has magic in him. Not showy and full of ego, quieter and more aware. I learn something with nearly every adventure he invites me into, see creatures through the most generous and enthusiastic of eyes. He's one of those guys you wouldn't mind sitting in a blind with for hours while the winds howl and rains slant down, almost sideways. He has stories and knows how to tell them.
Bryan is that science teacher who makes learning profoundly fun, who finds ways to light a fire under student after student by sharing his own, wildly infectious enthusiasms and making sense of things that go together in ways you sometimes cannot believe. He's also a helluva photographer, capable of making pictures of nature and all manner of critters in ways that leave you smiling and grateful, less cynical and more like the kid you once were.
I know of no one who can do with words quite what Mr. Nathan can. His storytelling spins me around nearly every time, tearing open the sky above my imagination.
Why this one? Why Jillian Hess? Because I am filled with wonder and laughter, and 'Are you f'ing kidding me!' moments of delight again and again by this unique storyteller who opens up worlds of understanding and insight though her showing and telling, and sometimes explaining what lives in the notebooks of some of the most elegant creators of story magic we humans have had the opportunity to read. It is absolutely worth the subscription.
Sherman's writing feels true and approachable. His voice, unique. I don't keep bumping into his ego when I read, then need to find a way to forgive him for stepping in front of the story that had offered itself up for his telling. He allows glimpses of himself, threads that run backward into the complex web of the Indian boy and the painfully complicated family while absent the laments of self-pity and paralysis of regret. And then there's his work ethic, and love of a good tale well told.