100 books like Pet Projects

This is one of my favorite books ever. Horwitz’s project was to follow famous travelers, and Blue Latitudes follows Captain Cook on a voyage that Cook himself characterized as having gone “farther than any other man has been before.” (Trekkies take note: Cook/Kirk, “farther than any other man has been  before”/”boldly go where no man has been before.” Who knew?) 

Star Trek aside, Horwitz, accompanied by his hard-drinking sidekick Roger, boldly goes where Cook went, exploring history, culture, and the legacies of European colonialism on their way. In between bouts of laughter, we learn a lot about the South Pacific, then and now, and about Cook and his men themselves—not to speak of Horwitz and Roger. It’s a rollicking voyage through time and space that holds your attention throughout.

This is a first book, covering Aiyar’s years in China as a political correspondent for the Indian Express and The Hindu. Because she is Indian, Aiyar’s perspective differs from Americans’ viewpoints, which drew me, as I’ve been to both India and China. Aiyar tracks the impact of rapid growth on her informants’ sense of self and place—and then compares China’s growth to India’s. It’s a fast-paced, lively book featuring lots of interaction between Aiyar and her students, their families, and other informants—a thoughtful portrait of a culture shifting from tradition into an unknowable future, written by a journalist constantly aware of the radical differences between Indian and “new Chinese” values and sensibilities.  

I love nothing more than a book that unsettles me, that I grasp almost bodily in the reading but have to return to again and again to truly understand. Lose Your Mother is that kind of book. In Chapter Seven, Hartman tells us that, while working in the archive of the Atlantic slave trade, she came across a scandal: on board the slave ship Recovery, two African girls—one named Venus—are murdered by the captain, John Kimber.

A trial ensues. A mate is put on the stand, who admits there was a book on the ship, a list of all its horrors, The Dead Book, but it’s lost now. Lose Your Mother is Hartman’s attempt to write her version of The Dead Book without committing the same violence against the girls that they endured in their short lives. How she wonders, can we reimagine life for Venus when all we know… show more.

In An End to Suffering, Mishra records his efforts to understand the Buddha’s relevance to today’s world. Like Aiyar, he is conscious of the differences between India and the West and the liminal world of individuals who, like him, live between them. Unlike her, he delves deeply into history, crisscrossing centuries, countries, and eastern and western literatures and philosophies, through which—over several decades—he moves and matures. Mishra confronts the writers and philosophers he studies, asking how their precepts affect him and the world in which he lives, and he doesn’t mind letting us know that his responses changed over time. I resonate with this book because it is a spiritual journey, written out of Mishra’s thoughtful, learned, search for stability in a world of unceasing change.

I Was Born a Baby is my favorite Meg Fleming book – and that’s saying a lot! The rhyme and meter are wonderful! “I was born a baby. I was born a colt. / I was born a piglet. I’m a billy goat.”

The illustrations are so adorable and add to the humor! Not only will kids love listening to the rollicking rhyme, but they’ll also learn the names of animal babies! It’s the kind of book you love reading again and again and again! 

So simple and yet so poetic (both visually and lyrically), We All Play is a catalog of human and more-than-human animals delighting in movement and sound in the outdoors.

This book is great for a younger (baby and toddler) readership, and highlights our connection with all living beings. It also peppers in some Cree language words, which are fun to explore. I love the adorable drawings of animals and children that Flett created with the ochres and umbers of her earthy palette. 

There are lots of animal encyclopedias out there, but none compares to this Dorling Kindersly book. Each double-page spread focuses on a particular biome. The illustration takes up most of the page and depicts the inhabitants assembled in naturalistic poses. Along the borders of the page are labels and short paragraphs about each of the animals. Topics related to a particular biome are included: Surviving the Cold, The Burrowers, etc. The Life in the Mountains and The Ocean Depths sections show the different levels in which animals live. This is a book to be gazed at long and luxuriously, preferably on a lap.

When it comes to animal photography, National Geographic set the standard for excellence – and when one pairs 200 of their best photographs with poetry from some of the country's finest poets, you end up with a beautiful, coffee table book that deserves to be in every house.

From classic poets like Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, and Rudyard Kipling to contemporary writers including Naomi Shihab Nye, Jack Prelutsky, and Jane Yolen (and even a few from anthologist and former U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate J. Patrick Lewis) this is a book you will want to take time to peruse read, and ponder.

After writing 14 children’s books about art appreciation, I decided to try my hand at children’s poetry. When I read this collection of haiku by Jack Prelutsky, it was a revelation. Each poem is a first-person description of an animal, full of rich, unexpected language. By writing in first-person, Prelutsky broke one of haiku’s cardinal rules. But it worked—and inspired me to write my own collection in the first person as well. Here’s one of my favorites poems in his book:

Raucously we caw.
Your straw men do not fool us.
We burgle your corn.

Most of the books I read with my kids have animals as the main characters, but few books aimed at adults do, so I was thrilled to find these stories where wolves, vultures, and tigers provide nuanced, complex perspectives on a threatened world. I learned about love and deep ocean noise from a young whale and felt the loneliness of a polar bear who is parted from his mother, his twin, and others of his kind.

Through these mythic stories, I realized the deep strangeness that comes from losing my connection to other animals and the true pleasure of returning to my place as a creature of the world—something I felt when I became a mother and again as I read these stories.