A number of people have asked me what I’m reading for my PhD that is getting me so excited. I’ve discovered so much, and I think a selection of favourites would differ according to mood. Some of these books I’ve been reading for years, but they are revealing new layers of meaning with the questions that I am bringing to them. Today, I highly recommend the following:
- Abram, David. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. New York: Pantheon, 2010.
- Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. New York: Vintage Books, 1997
- Armstrong, Karen. The Case for God: What Religion Really Means. New York: Knopf, 2009
- Berry, Wendell. What are People For? New York: North Point Press, 1990
- Bly, Robert. News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness. Covelo: The Yolly Bolly Press, 1980
- Bortoft, Henri. The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of Science. Edinburgh: Lindisfarne Press, 1996
- Bringhurst, Robert. The Tree of Meaning: Language, Mind and Ecology. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009
- Buhner, Stephen Harrod. Ensouling Language: On the Art of Nonfiction and the Writer’s Life. Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2010
- Buhner, Stephen Harrod. Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Into the Dreaming of the Earth. Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2014
- Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches Of Outer Space: metaphor as myth and as religion. New York : Harper & Row, 1986.
- Davis, Wade. The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World. House of Anansi Press, 2009
- Dillard, Annie. For the Time Being. New York: Vintage books, 2000
- Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: Harper Perennial, 2007
- Dillard, Annie. The Writing Life. New York: Harper Perennial, 1990
- Eisenstein, Charles. The More Beautiful World Our Heart Know is Possible. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2013
- Garner, Alan. The Voice That Thunders. Harvill Press, 1998
- Hillman, James. A Blue Fire, New York: Harper & Row, 1989
- Kane, Sean. Wisdom of the Mythtellers. Broadview Press, 1994.
- Kelly, Junpo Denis. Mondo Zen Training Manual. Hollow Bones Zen/Friends of Zen, www.mondozen.org 2011
- Le Guin, Ursula. Always Coming Home. New York: Harper and Row 1985
- Lorca, Federico Garcia. In Search of Duende. New Directions Publishing, 1998
- Macy, Joanna and Seed, John. Thinking Like a Mountain: Towards A Council of All Beings. New Catalyst Books 2007
- Macy, Joanna. World as Lover, World as Self. New York: Rider, 1993
- Macy, Joanna. Center for Ecoliteracy http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/great-turning accessed 23/9/2013
- McLaren, Karla. The Language of Emotions: What your Feelings are Trying to Tell You. Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2010
- Michaels, Anne. Fugitive Pieces. New York: A.A. Knopf. 1997
- Michaels, Anne. The Winter Vault. London: Bloomsbury, 2009
- Plotkin, Bill. Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche. Novato: New World Library, 2013
- Prechtel, Martin. Long Life, Honey in the Heart. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2004
- Rilke, Rainer Maria. Letters to a Young Poet. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. New york: Vintage Books, 1986
- Rose, Deborah Bird. Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness. Australian Heritage Commission, 1996
- Senge, Peter (et al). Presence: Exploring Profound Change in People, Organisations and Society. London: Nicholas Brealey, 2005
- Shepard, Paul. Nature and Madness. University of Georgia Press, 1998.
- Snyder, Gary. The Practice of the Wild. North Point Press, 1990
- Some, Malidoma. Of Water and the Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman. Penguin, 1995
- Tarnas, Richard. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that have Shaped our World View. London: Random House 1991