Roger Housden is the author of Ten Poems to Change Your Life. His latest book, How Rembrandt Reveals Your Beautiful, Imperfect Self, has just been published by Harmony Books.
Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It by Geoff Dyer (Vintage, $13). A searingly funny and astute collection of essays charting Dyer’s wanderings around the planet in search of himself. It’s all there on the page—the self-deprecating Englishness, the all-too-recognizable petty neuroses, the stoned bewilderment, the romantic confusions, all laced with the most acute observations of life on earth, from Cambodia to Leptis Magna in Libya to the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada.
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New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver (Beacon, $16). A luminous collection from the most lyrical and direct American poet writing today. Nature is Oliver’s church. Her style is wonderfully accessible, not just in terms of language but also in her capacity to articulate layers of feeling that we all know but rarely find words for. She is all softness and rigor, and never less than challenging of the ways we live less fully than we are capable of.
D.H. Lawrence and Italy (Penguin, $17). A collection of Lawrence’s three essays on his Italian journeys. Lawrence is looking for what he cannot find in the conventional bourgeois society of England—the primal life of a pre-industrial culture, raw feeling, a bodily, rather than an intellectual intelligence. Does he find it? Lawrence was not, by nature, a finder; and thereby hangs a tale.
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (Penguin, $8). A heart-rending story of fate, love, class, and the voluptuous English countryside. The timeless ways of the Dorset countryside are not only a backdrop here—they are a character in their own right, and a deeply seductive one.
The Passion of the Western Mind by Rick Tarnas (Ballantine, $17). A sweeping and brilliant overview. This is a history, not of events, but of the ideas that shape the way we understand the world.
The Birth of Venus
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Nepal chooses toddler as its new ‘living goddess’Under the Radar Girls between two and four are typically chosen to live inside the temple as the Kumari – until puberty strikes
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October 5 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday's political cartoons include half-truth hucksters, Capitol lockdown, and more
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Jaguar Land Rover’s cyber bailoutTalking Point Should the government do more to protect business from the ‘cyber shockwave’?
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Lou Berney’s 6 favorite books with powerful storytellingFeature The award-winning author recommends works by Dorothy B. Hughes, James McBride, and more
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Elizabeth Gilbert’s favorite books about women overcoming difficultiesFeature The author recommends works by Tove Jansson, Lauren Groff, and more
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Fannie Flagg’s 6 favorite books that sparked her imaginationFeature The author recommends works by Johanna Spyri, John Steinbeck, and more
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Jessica Francis Kane's 6 favorite books that prove less is moreFeature The author recommends works by Penelope Fitzgerald, Marie-Helene Bertino, and more
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Keith McNally's 6 favorite books that have ambitious charactersFeature The London-born restaurateur recommends works by Leo Tolstoy, John le Carré, and more
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Garrett Graff's 6 favorite books that shine new light on World War IIFeature The author recommends works by James D. Hornfischer, Craig L. Symonds, and more
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Helen Schulman's 6 favorite collections of short storiesFeature The award-winning author recommends works by Raymond Carver, James Baldwin, and more
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Beatriz Williams' 6 timeless books about history and human relationshipsFeature The best-selling author recommends works by Jane Austen, Zora Neale Hurston, and more
