Terry Tempest Williams

When Williams' mother died, she gave Williams all of her journals and told her to read them. Williams was honored to be trusted with her mother's record of her life. She went to the shelf full of journals, and found that every single one of them was empty. Her mother had a journal for every year of her life, but had not written a word in them.

This is the beginning of Williams' poetic reflection on women's voices, on what it means for women to have something to say and to say it. Along the way, she also reflects a lot on nature and relationships - romantic relationships and relationships between daughters and mothers and generations of women. She reflects on all of the pressures that silence women, particularly their imperative to sacrifice themselves to care for their children and spouses.

This is one of those books I could read over and over, and find something new in it every time. I first read it at a time in my life when I am newly free of obligations to care for other people and I have the freedom to exist solely for myself, and I am trying to find my voice. The next time I read it, I am sure different parts of it will speak to me in entirely different ways.… (more)

Subtitle: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks

This is a book I would not have picked up were it not for being a book-club selection. I share the author’s love of this country’s National Parks, and of nature in general. I recently visited Theodore Roosevelt National Park for the first time, and was particularly interested in reading the chapter on that park. And, looking at the index, I noticed several other parks I was eager to read about: Big Bend, Arcadia, Gettysburg, Alcatraz Island and Cesar Chavez National Monument.

Williams is a good writer, and there are times when her descriptions take the reader straight to the park she is visiting. Some of these passages are downright poetic. However …

Williams spent less time on the park itself and its natural and/or historic wonders than she did on a political agenda, whether that be the mistreatment of Native Americans or the disturbing fervor of Civil War re-enactors (especially those portraying the Rebel forces) or, most often, the shameful policies of the then-current administration (G W Bush) with respect to mineral and drilling rights for big oil. I don’t even disagree with her point of view, but it wasn’t what I expected or wanted from this book. So I give it a middle-of-the-road 3-star rating.… (more)