Recent reads:

High Tide in Tucson, by Barbara Kingsolver. I started to read this 1995 collection of Ms. Kingsolver's essays years ago, but for some reason got distracted after reading the first few essays. I remembered only her desciption of the hermit crab who stowed away in her vacation luggage and subsequently took up residence in a terrarium in her Arizona home, regulating his days according to the tidal rhythms of a nonexistent ocean, and her account of the high school librarian who gave her access to the world of books that changed her life. (That, and the reference to Edward Abbey "taking the TV out to the backyard and shooting it again." It's the *again* in that sentence that makes it funny, I think. Just one example of Ms. Kingsolver's faultless skill at her craft.)

Recently I had occasion to pick up the book again, and I'm glad I did. It's a captivating collections of thoughts and observations from a smart woman who possesses a degree of what we in these degenerate modern days hesitate to call wisdom. Hers is not the facile wit of the Dave Barrys and PJ O'Rourkes of the world, who gleefully toss of cynical confections of mockery that refuse to recognize any actual emotion, any actual consequences or permanent significance to the words or ideas with which they play and profit. Kingsolver lives in a closely-observed world where the events of one day are connected to the next day, and the next, as well as to the day before, a world in which ideas determine not only how we view the world, but how we shape the world, as well as the way the world shapes us.

Humor is definitely present in these pages, as when Kingsolver ruefully describes her attempt, at the behest of her publicist, to impersonate a rock musician as part of the Rock Bottom Remainders, an amateur band made up of authors which for several years in the early 1990s toured the circuit of library and booksellers' conventions. But there's also thoughtful consideration of the world she lives in -- the world we all live in -- and passion ranging from outrage at the cynical shortsightedness of warmongering politicians, to veiled accounts of despair recollected in tranquility, to clearsighted hopefulness in the final essay.

The times and places that these essays were first published also give a glimpse of just how far a writer, even a successful writer, must cast the net in order to make a living at her craft. They range from local newspapers to Smithsonian to Parenting to the New York Times Magazine, with occasional speeches to library and booksellers conventions and introductions to other people's books thrown in for good measure. As one might expect, this means that the subjects addressed range all over the map. But Ms. Kingsolvers' vivid gift for observation and her clear-eyed view of significance in the things she observes provide a connecting thread, and those essays which are informed by events in her own life are arranged chronologically so that the connections from one to the next are readily apparent.

Highly recommended. I'm going to have to make more of an effort to track down her other writings.