The Illustrated West with the Night (Beryl Markham)

This amalgam of recollections from her youth is written with a unique voice, confident and tainted with the knowledge that the events being described are in the irrevocable past. Opened randomly, on page 20 I find a photograph of a lion chewing on a carcass, with the caption: "...in Africa there is never any waste. Death particularly is never wasted. What the lion leaves, the hyena feasts upon and what scraps remain are morsels for the jackal, the vulture or even the consuming sun."

One of my very favorites is "He Was a Good Lion", a remembrance of how, as a small child, she almost became prey to a lion kept as a pet by a neighbor. It happened because, slipping out of the supervision of the adults, she ran for joy, and the wiring of a lion says that a running small thing must be prey. This ten-page story is about more than it seems, like most of the other 23 wide-ranging reminiscences of a woman whose life was, by most standards, remarkable. Each story is a small gem, worth reading and rereading several times over.

Cold Mountain (Charles Frazier)

This novel, published in 1997, is a civil war era story. Unlike most wars, this one left no person on American soil unscathed. The story revolves around the idea of a love attachment. Mired in the petty cruelties of a small, rural society, a woman and man find themselves suddenly and sharply attracted, but before the courtship even gets off the ground, the war lets loose, the men are all sent unavoidably out to fight, and the women are left alone at home to fend for themselves. Given only a secret moment to affirm their feelings for each other, each yet clings to the memory of the other during years of ensuing difficulties, with no real reassurance of ever seeing each other again. This is a deeply morose novel, full of moving and powerful scenes. One protagonist remains in place in the North Carolina mountain for which the novel is named, fighting the local effects of the war; the other travels far and is caught up in the larger conflict willy-nilly. The story's ending is neither trite nor unexpected. Don't read it if you're feeling weak, but do read it if you want to be transported outside your own world for awhile. You'll never be quite the same.

Snow Falling on Cedars (David Guterson)

Published to acclaim in 1994, this David Guterson novel evokes the image of its title, a hidden world of complexities blanketed by the simplistic covering of white snow. It is at once a crime mystery, an anti-war testimonial, an exploration of lingering racial stereotypes, and a love story.

The reporter's memories interweave seamlessly with the public events surrounding the trial. As the trial progresses unflinchingly towards a conviction, the reporter's emotional life roils, as if straining to break out of prison.

Since I no longer own this book, I cannot precisely quote the passage which remains most vividly in my mind. It concerned the realization by the reporter that he actually felt little emotion about the case because of his unforgettable wartime memory that a human body could at any moment explode into a mass of bloody carnage. A decent description of the cause of PTSD.

The 1999 film derived from the book, while not adhering in all details to the story, was (I felt) reasonably true to the merit of the work and admirable in its own right.

Leaves of Grass (Walt Whitman)

The war-torn state in which Walt Whitman lived, more than a century and a half ago, echoes familiarly on our predicament today.

Leaves of Grass is a book-sized spewing forth of emotional ruminations and archetypal imaginings, rendered no-longer-shocking by modern standards. Some call it poetry, although a large portion of it borders on the incoherent. It has long remained on my bookshelf for two reasons: 1) it challenges common perceptions of reality, and 2) buried within it lie at least a few relatively coherent passages of unsurpassed poetical beauty.

One passage, entitled "Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night", illustrates particularly well Whitman's cultivated stance of embracing all experience equally without judgement, not shrinking to include human experience popularly seen as deviant or horrible as the best part of our shared humanity.

Another favorite of mine is from Book III "Song of Myself", chapter 6. I am unable to express why I find it so piercing, aside from its startling association of grass textures with the unavoidable, stern experiences of life and death:

 A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
  How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.

  I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
      stuff woven.

  Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
  A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
  Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see
      and remark, and say Whose?

  Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.

  Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
  And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
  Growing among black folks as among white,
  Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
      receive them the same.

  And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

If you are interested, there is no need to buy anything. Leaves of Grass is available on Project Gutenberg.