Love Desert Notes? Readers share 74 books like Desert Notes...

By Barry Holstun Lopez,

Here are 74 books that Desert Notes fans have personally recommended if you like Desert Notes. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback

Jackie Jarvis Author Of Transform Your Life by Walking: Powerful Messages Walking Camino Pilgrimages

From my list on hiking trails that inspire you to do it yourself.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a passionate long-distance hiker and regularly enjoy local walks close to where I live in Oxfordshire. Over the years, I have walked many long-distance trails, including Camino Pilgrimages. The books I am sharing are those that have inspired my own walking adventures and self-reflection. I am a big believer in the benefits of walking for mind, body, and spirit, and I personally enjoy those benefits daily. My passion for walking and the depth of thinking it can help you attain has found its way into both my personal and business life. Walking to me is life!

Jackie's book list on hiking trails that inspire you to do it yourself

Jackie Jarvis Why did Jackie love this book?

I loved this book because it was as much about the author's inner journey as it was the outer one. I loved both aspects of this book.

I love books that give you almost a window into the soul of the writer. Robyn shares her thoughts and experience so well as she makes her way solo 2,000 miles in the Australian Outback. I loved her bravery. This was an epic trip. As one of the first adventure books I had read, it got me hooked. This was a book that made an impact. 

By Robyn Davidson,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Tracks as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A revised, reissued fortieth anniversary edition of this prize-winning, bestselling account of one woman's solo journey across 1,700 miles of Australian Outback 'I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there's no going back.' So begins Robyn Davidson's perilous journey across 1,700 miles of hostile Australian desert to the sea with only four camels and a dog for company. Enduring sweltering heat, fending off poisonous snakes and lecherous men, chasing her camels when they get skittish and nursing them when they are injured, Davidson emerges as an extraordinarily courageousā€¦


Book cover of All the Pretty Horses

Stan Parish Author Of Love and Theft

From my list on thrillers with beautiful, unforgettable violence.

Why am I passionate about this?

I write thrillers full-time these days, but for many years, I was a writer and editor at publications that take reporting and fact-checking seriously. I still strive for accuracy in my novelsā€”which always involve violence. As a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt, the mechanics and psychology of close-quarters combat are things I think about daily. This is not to say that you need to rob banks to write a heist scene. And while technical knowledge is helpful, thereā€™s no substitute for close noticing of what happens to our bodies and minds in extreme situations. Here are some books (and one screenplay) which do that incredibly well. 

Stan's book list on thrillers with beautiful, unforgettable violence

Stan Parish Why did Stan love this book?

Iā€™ll never forget my first Jiu-Jitsu competition in front of a screaming crowd. I barely remember the actual fight, but what sticks in my head is the buildup to itā€”the warm-ups, the waiting, the bizarre cocktail of fear and boredom. It all felt weirdly familiar, thanks to the famous knife fight scene from this book, which Iā€™ve read at least a dozen times.

The protagonist, John Grady Cole, is stuck in a Mexican prison when he learns that another prisoner is planning an attempt on his life. What follows is an excruciating waiting game. McCarthy nails the detailsā€”the sharpening of the senses, the undercurrent of dread, the way your perception of time slows and accelerates in unpredictable ways when the moment finally arrives. 

By Cormac McCarthy,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked All the Pretty Horses as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

The first volume in McCarthy's legendary Border Trilogy, All The Pretty Horses is an acknowledged masterpiece and a grand love story: a novel about the passing of childhood, of innocence and a vanished Americanā€¦


Book cover of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Beatrice Searle Author Of Stone Will Answer: A Journey Guided by Craft, Myth and Geology

From my list on journeys of transformation, truthfully told.

Why am I passionate about this?

My own experiences have made me a strong believer in the potential of journeys, big and small, to change our lives and the way we navigate the world. I made a journey in highly unusual circumstances, a journey that became a pilgrimage, and I think I know now that devotion is the key to transformation on the road. It may be the key to everything, in fact. Thatā€™s what I want to read about. Devotion is what every one of these books has in abundance, as well as care for the task, total honesty, and no fear of feeling. 

Beatrice's book list on journeys of transformation, truthfully told

Beatrice Searle Why did Beatrice love this book?

This book produces a feeling of longing in me that I might someday handle the world with the voracity and veracity of Annie Dillard. Assuming that the enormity of wonder she provokes in me as a reader is just a fraction of what she, the originator of her experiences and descriptions, feels, then oh, the enviable richness of her life! Is anyone as astute and lucid as Annie Dillard?

Astounding language, never, ever straying into clichƩ, every word wondrous and holy and fresh. For me, she blows everyone else out of the water, not with an epic Odyssey or a feat of physicality but with these reverential and beautiful accounts of her frequent journeys to her local creek.

By Annie Dillard,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Pilgrim at Tinker Creek as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek has continued to change people's lives for over thirty years. A passionate and poetic reflection on the mystery of creation with its beauty on the one hand and cruelty on the other, it has become a modern American literary classic in the tradition of Thoreau. Living in solitude in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia, and observing the changing seasons, the flora and fauna, the author reflects on the nature of creation and of the God who set it in motion. Whether the images are cruel or lovely, the language is memorably beautiful and poetic,ā€¦


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctorā€”and only womanā€”on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route upā€¦

Book cover of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

James Ellson Author Of The Trail

From my list on to take on a walking holiday.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been a keen walker/hiker/backpacker since I was five when my parents named a local footpath Jamesā€™s Path. Almost fifty years later, I have walked all over the UK and further afield in the Pyrenees and the Alps, Nepal, and the Antipodes. Walking for me is both a means to an endā€”to reach mountaineering routes and as exerciseā€”and as an end in itself. Days spent walking can be reflective, social, demanding, and memorable. I always take a book, even if it's a day walk, and two or three if itā€™s a multiday trip. I hope youā€™re as energized and stimulated by my suggestions as Iā€™ve been.

James' book list on to take on a walking holiday

James Ellson Why did James love this book?

I love this book because it feels deepā€”it is deepā€”but itā€™s also engaging. Thereā€™s a story and characters to follow, but at its core, itā€™s a fascinating introduction to philosophy.

The meaning of life, the big questions, how to understand and negotiate the world. I first read it as a teenager during my gap year in Southeast Asia, and it was the perfect mental companion to the bombardment of my physical senses. Zen turned my perception of the world upside down, and I reread it occasionally.

It has one of the most memorable titles of all time, and I still quote its core message, which involves motorcycle maintenance.

By Robert M. Pirsig,

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.


Book cover of Woman of Ill Fame

Mary Volmer Author Of Reliance, Illinois

From my list on badass 19th century American women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I donā€™t write about well-behaved women. I prefer rebels and outcasts, women who, by choice or circumstance, live outside of social norms. 19th-century American history is full of such womenā€”if you know where to look. Hint: not in most public-school textbooks. Theyā€™re found, instead, in archives and libraries, in old newspapers and journals, in family letters and autobiographies. The characters in my most recent novel, Reliance, Illinois, were inspired by badass 19th-century women, such as Victoria Woodhull, Mary Livermore, and Olympia Brown. Each of the novels in the list below were inspired by or based on audacious women. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!  

Mary's book list on badass 19th century American women

Mary Volmer Why did Mary love this book?

The forthright honesty and the audacity of Nora Simms, narrator of Erika Mailmanā€™s Woman of Ill Fame, is stunning and nearly as compelling as the murder mystery at the center of the novel. Set in San Francisco during the Gold Rush, the novel takes us into the cityā€™s bordellos, which, like the rest of the state, have been infected by a get rich quick at any cost ethos. The cost for many of Noraā€™s colleagues is high. Women of ill-fame are being killed, one by one, and only Nora is capable and willing to wade through layers of deception to discover the identity of the killer and to save her own life. 

Nora is not your typical damsel in distress and that might be why I love this book so much. Sheā€™s not a ā€œgoodā€ woman, by society's standards, but she is one of the most surprisingā€¦

By Erika Mailman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Woman of Ill Fame as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Looking for a better life, prostitute Nora Simms arrives in Gold Rush San Francisco with a plan for success: to strike it rich by trading on her good looks. But when a string of murders claims several of her fellow women of ill fame, Nora grows uneasy with how closely linked all of the victims are to her. She must distinguish friend from foe in a race to discover the identity of the killer.

"I LOVED Woman of Ill Fame! Nora Simms is hilarious, heartbreaking, tough, perceptive...and one of the most engaging characters I've ever met between the pages ofā€¦


Book cover of The Bohemians

Catherine A. Hamilton Author Of Victoria's War

From my list on inspired by heroic women from around the world.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a native Oregonian of Polish descent, I was born in the small town of Sweet Home, Oregon. After finishing high school, I moved to Portland where I graduated from Lewis and Clark College with a Masterā€™s degree in psychology. I spent twelve years as a psychotherapist, publishing over a dozen articles. After joining a writing group and trying my hand at fiction, my stories, articles, and poems have been published in magazines and newspapersā€”including Sarasota Herald-Tribune, The Oregonian, Catholic Sentinel, Dziennik Związkowy, and The Polish American Journal. My debut novel, Victoriaā€™s War, won CIBAā€™s Hemingway Award for 20th Century Wartime Fiction and was #1 Best Seller on Amazon Kindle Unlimited in German Historical Fiction.

Catherine's book list on inspired by heroic women from around the world

Catherine A. Hamilton Why did Catherine love this book?

An interesting thing about reading this book is that I had read a novel about Dorothea Lange only months earlier. But when Darznikā€™s publicist reached out and asked me to read it, I couldnā€™t resist! Why? Because I love Dorothea and canā€™t get enough of her.

Dorothea is exactly the kind of woman I want to be BFFs with. But whose story would give me the intimate connection I was looking for? Jasmin Darznik, in her enchanting new novel, The Bohemians, thatā€™s who.

On page one, I stepped into the relationship of two daring and talented women who seem different as night and day. Dorothea, a blond from New York and Caroline Lee, a black-haired Chinese American, raised in an orphanage.

By Jasmin Darznik,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Bohemians as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A dazzling novel of one of Americaā€™s most celebrated photographers, Dorothea Lange, exploring the wild years in San Francisco that awakened her career-defining grit, compassion, and daring.

ā€œJasmin Darznik expertly delivers an intriguing glimpse into the woman behind those unforgettable photographs of the Great Depression, and their impact on humanity.ā€ā€”Susan Meissner, bestselling author of The Nature of Fragile Things

In this novel of the glittering and gritty Jazz Age, a young aspiring photographer named Dorothea Lange arrives in San Francisco in 1918. As a newcomerā€”and naĆÆve one at thatā€”Dorothea is grateful for the fast friendship of Caroline Lee, a vivacious,ā€¦


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Book cover of The Ballad of Falling Rock

The Ballad of Falling Rock by Jordan Dotson,

Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: ā€œAre his love songs closer to heaven than dying?ā€ Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard itā€¦

Book cover of Sourdough

Amy Watson Author Of Closer to Okay

From my list on using food as a catalyst to a better life.

Why am I passionate about this?

I used to write a food blog because I love stories about food, be they fiction or non-fiction. Food has the power to bring joy, healing, love, anger, sadness, etc.ā€”you name the emotion and food can evoke it or remedy it. Iā€™ve suffered from depression most of my life and the kitchen makes me feel better. Hearing that my chocolate cookies are amazing heals my heart a little at a time. Food and emotion go together like peanut butter and jelly, and Iā€™m the first to pick up a book that skillfully employs both.

Amy's book list on using food as a catalyst to a better life

Amy Watson Why did Amy love this book?

For years, I couldnā€™t get yeast to cooperate. I just wasnā€™t patient enough and it was too darn temperamental. One day, the yeast worked. I made a lovely brioche dough and turned that into the stickiest, sweetest, yummiest cinnamon rolls known to man. 

I might not have stuck with my fussy yeast if it were of the variety in Sourdough. The starter thatā€™s given to the main character sings, hums, and sometimes glows. Itā€™s alive. I know that all yeast is alive, but this yeast is sentient. 

All that being said, the thing I love most about the book is that it is weird. I love weird people and things. I love weird books. What I donā€™t love about a lot of weird books is that they arenā€™t as immensely readable as Sourdough. Especially the ones that dance through genres as vastly different as science fiction and romance. Butā€¦

By Robin Sloan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sourdough as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From Robin Sloan, the New York Times bestselling author of Mr. Penumbraā€™s 24-Hour Bookstore, comes Sourdough, "a perfect parable for our times" (San Francisco Magazine): a delicious and funny novel about an overworked and under-socialized software engineer discovering a calling and a community as a baker.

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run theā€¦


Book cover of Dear Darkness: Poems

Ashby Kinch Author Of A Cultural History of Death

From my list on re-imagining death, dying, and grief.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a literary and cultural historian who has been studying death for three decades. But I am, first and foremost, a human who has suffered the loss of loved ones and grief and found my immediate culture an inhospitable place to experience, transform, and share those emotions. We have an urgent need to ā€œre-imagineā€ the way we prepare for our own deaths, as well as experience the deaths of others. I hope my work, both as a scholar and a public citizen, will inspire people to form communities of conversation and action that will reshape the way we think about death, dying, and grief.

Ashby's book list on re-imagining death, dying, and grief

Ashby Kinch Why did Ashby love this book?

I am in absolute awe of this essential American writer. This book made me cry, laugh, and shout in pleasure at the same time. I could hear, taste, and feel myself present in this book of poems, which explore loss and grief, but also tradition and legacy, our connection to the beloved dead through traditions.

Black food, music, and religious traditions are strongly present, but so is Wilco and Gram Parsonsā€™ ā€œGrievous Angel,ā€ and we are immersed in one humanā€™s attempt to sort out his place. Along with Heather Cahoonā€™s Horsefly Dress, which explores grief in the context of a Montana tribe, this book taught me how to think both beyond and more deeply within my own sense of ā€œlegacy.ā€ 

By Kevin Young,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dear Darkness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Delivered in Youngā€™s classic bluesy tone, this powerful collection of poems about the American family, smoky Southern food, and the losses that time inevitably brings ā€œbristles with life, nerve and, best of all, witā€ (San Francisco Chronicle).


Book cover of The Language of Flowers

Heather Hepler Author Of We Were Beautiful

From my list on when youā€™re feeling your worst.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have bad days. At times there have been a lot of bad days. Iā€™m alone, caring for someone, working, scooping the cat box, and mopping the floors. Sometimes it can all feel a little sad and hopeless, like I am alone in the world. Stories are where I go when Iā€™m happy. When I want adventure, mystery, or romance. But they are mostly where I go when I want to feel like Iā€™m not the only one who feels this way sometimes. I can see that itā€™s not just me. Iā€™m not alone.

Heather's book list on when youā€™re feeling your worst

Heather Hepler Why did Heather love this book?

I love the idea that there is someone out there who perfectly understands you. Even when Iā€™m cranky, or when Iā€™m making references to obscure bands, or when Iā€™m not making a lot of sense, but I am clearly emotional.

This book introduced me to two people who love each other but canā€™t communicate well except through flowers. 

By Vanessa Diffenbaugh,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Language of Flowers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A flower is not a flower alone; A thousand thoughts invest it'

All over the world, flowers are an integral part of human culture whether it is the perfect table centre for a wedding, a beautiful bouquet for a birthday, a message of thanks, or to pay one's respect at a funeral. But, while everyone knows that red roses signify love, few may realise that an entire language of flowers exists with every bloom, folliage and plant having a particular emotion attached, be it hazel for reconcilliation, wisteria for welcome or ivy for fidelity. This unique language was created byā€¦


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Book cover of Changing Woman: A Novel of the Camp Grant Massacre

Changing Woman by Venetia Hobson Lewis,

Arizona Territory, 1871. Valeria ObregĆ³n and her ambitious husband, RaĆŗl, arrive in the raw frontier town of Tucson hoping to find prosperity. Changing Woman, an Apache spirit who represents the natural order of the world and its cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, welcomes Nest Feather, a twelve-year-old Apache girl,ā€¦

Book cover of Our Way

Devin Sloane Author Of Live Again

From my list on to take your heart on an emotional rollercoaster.

Why am I passionate about this?

At age five, I was reading under the blankets with a flashlight far past my bedtime. Itā€™s an often told story of how I believed I was getting away with something while my makeshift tent, held up by my head, was lit up like a snowglobe. By age eleven, when I picked up my auntā€™s book, I discovered romance novels. I was hooked. Iā€™ve read thousands of romance novels in the almost four decades that have since passed, and Iā€™ve learned that each person who reads a book takes something different from it, and I hope these five books that gave so much to me, might do the same for you.

Devin's book list on to take your heart on an emotional rollercoaster

Devin Sloane Why did Devin love this book?

This story elicited every emotion: joy, excitement, yearning, jealousy, rage, hope, betrayal, relief, shock, bewildermentā€¦ it took my poor heart on a wild ride. However, there were two pieces that stand out in stark relief in my mind. First, the betrayal of the friendship in hopes of saving it. What a position to be in. Second, Nathanā€™s pain and confusion as he worked his way past his own assumptions. Itā€™s never an easy journey to know oneself. Witnessing Nathanā€™s journey, because of the collateral damage to his most treasured relationship, stung. Compassion for both of them broke my heart. And isnā€™t that the whole point of a good story? To walk in someone elseā€™s shoes and come away with more compassion, more wisdom, and a deeper capacity to love?

By T L Swan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Our Way as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nathan Mercer, the only man in my life.
Loving him was never an option.

We met ten years ago, when we started at the same company on the same day.
Both new in town and with nobody else to rely on, we quickly became friends.
And while Nathan went on to rule San Francisco, Iā€™m still doing the same job with the same people.
We finish each otherā€™s sentences, we spend Christmas together and he sleeps at my house more than his.
Heā€™s beautiful.... beyond belief.
In another life, heā€™s probably my soul mate.

However, lately things have changed.
Heā€™sā€¦


Book cover of Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback
Book cover of All the Pretty Horses
Book cover of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

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