Hi all, I typically read non fiction but am not that picky. I like to read books relevant to the area I am traveling when I can. For example, in Key West I read Hemingway, and in NorCal/Bay area I am reading John Muir. Any suggestions for the PNW? I will be in Tacoma/Seattle and hitting Mt Rainier National Park. Thanks!
by loganj_2018
15 Comments
It’s fiction, but I read Sometimes a Great Notion the first time I visited the PNW. Amazing, epic novel.
*The Morning the Sun Went Down*
It’s set a little further N in the PNW but The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant is great
Fiction: Ash Davidson’s Damnation Spring. Tracks the era when lumber was declining, national park pressure was coming, and families were caught in the middle. It takes a little bit to get into it, but I promise it is well-written and will teach you a lot.
Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998) by Octavia E. Butler
Maybe a little to scary though.
I would recommend Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. It explains fungi and their relationship to our forests. It’s not PNW specific but would resonate wonderfully as you enjoy the PNW forests. You can’t help but change the way you view forests after reading it.
Into Thin Air by Krakauer if you haven’t read it. He’s from that area, and if you’re going to be around mountains and hiking, the subject matter of climbing and surviving Everest will be relevant. And it’s just an insanely gripping book.
Snow Falling on Cedars (and you should visit Bainbridge Island, which inspired it)
Anything by Sherman Alexie, including his Substack
Theodore Roethke’s poetry collection, The Far Field (and while on Bainbridge, you should visit the Bloedel Reserve, where he accidentally drowned)
The Stranger in the Woods
If you’re going to Washington State, The Good Rain by Tim Egan. Nonfiction, chapter-length accounts of events and environment in different parts of the state. If you’re going to Oregon or BC, less than useless. 😀
(fiction) Naomi M Stokes duology, The Tree People and The Listening Ones, set in the Cascades/Olympics area, MC is a tribal sheriff.
On Island Time: A Traveler’s Atlas: Illustrated Adventures on and Around the Islands of Washington and British Columbia By Chandler O’Leary
WTF is the PNW
Deep River is a fiction book by Karl Marlantes about logging communities on the Oregon/Washington border in the early 20th C. I found it not just totally engrossing but also really illuminating in how and why the PNW grew the ways that it did over the last century and what set that in motion.
Undaunted courage by Stephen Ambrose about the Lewis &. Clark expedition