You don’t have to know the name Craig Kelly to enjoy The Darkest White: A Mountain Legend and the Avalanche that Took Him (HarperCollins Publishers, 2024).

It was the author who drew me to the book. I have enjoyed the books I’ve read of Eric Blehm’s—The Last Season: Randy Morgenson was legendary for finding people missing in the High Sierra. … Then one day he went missing himself (HarperCollins, 2006)  and Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown (WaterBrook Press, 2012)

After listening to a talk Blehm gave in Truckee in spring 2024 about his latest book I knew I wanted to read it.

The Darkest White is bound to be a page turner for anyone who ever skied or snowboarded—be it recreationally, professionally, at a resort or in the back country.

Kelly died in 2003 in an avalanche in British Columbia at the age of 36. Six others died that day, including Kathleen Kessler of Truckee. Others from Truckee survived the avalanche.

I didn’t know Kelly, not even sure I had ever heard of him until this book came out. He was someone living life on his own terms. That seems like such a rare things these days.

Blehm does an excellent job of weaving together Kelly’s past, his family, his competitiveness, his progression through the snowboarding world, how his engineering mind helped him design Burton boards, his plans post-competition, and his final days.

I felt Kelly’s loss through Blehm’s words. I was left wondering what more he would have contributed to this world had he lived. Craig Kelly is a name worth knowing.

Plants and animals have plenty to teach, if only we would listen.

This is one of the overriding messages of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants (Milkweed Editions, 2013) by Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Kimmerer is a botanist and college professor. She is also a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. As an indigenous scientist her being, her training, her life is about melding what at times can be contradicting elements.

I listened to this book. It was long. At times the book was in need of an editor to shorten segments, move things a long faster, and curtail some of the tangents.

However, with so many nuggets of wisdom, stories of how native people understand the land and the plants and animals that call it home, and the hope for the future I kept listening. At times I was thoroughly captivated by Kimmerer’s knowledge.

What’s most frustrating is how we seem to keep destroying Mother Earth instead of collectively trying to make her healthier. We seem to forget or not understand that her health and wellbeing directly affects us individually and collectively.

The book is not wonky. It’s real. It tells us how we can do better without being preachy. The stories show what works and what doesn’t.

What would I have to stop eating if I only ate food in season and grown locally—or even within a couple hundred miles of my home?

A lot. Gone are the bananas and avocados. Same for Diet Coke.

I’d have to rethink where my bread, tortillas and pasta come from and so many other items.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (HarperCollins, 2007) is the story of a family who spent a year consuming nearly only local ingredients. The book is mostly written by Barbara Kingsolver, who is better known for her works of fiction. Contributing to this true story are husband Steven Hopp and eldest daughter Camille Kingsolver. While the youngest daughter didn’t write anything, she is integral to the book.

I was captured by this concept—to really pay attention to where your food comes from. This includes plants and animals. It includes beverages, condiments and everything we put in our mouths.

I understand the concept of eating what’s in season even though I don’t always abide by it. I understand real food vs. processed. However, I pay less attention to how far something had to travel to get to the grocery store.

For this family it was easier because they had enough land to grow much of what they wanted and needed. They then canned and froze their harvest to have in the winter. Not everyone can do that even though once upon a time that was the norm.

The stories of their yearlong journey are captivating. Listening to the book was great because all three contributors spoke their parts.

While most of us aren’t going to live on a farm, we all can probably do better when it comes to eating locally. This book offers ideas how to make changes—even small ones. Part of it is just saying no—which I realize can actually be a big change.

I’m not ready to give up bananas. However, if I had one every other day, that cuts my impact in half. It’s a start.

Vivian Morris led a life that challenged conventional norms for a young woman coming of age in the 1940s.

As a 19-year-old she failed out of Vasser College, which led her to New York City where her aunt lived. Life gets interesting and a bit out of control.

Author Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel City of Girls (Riverhead Books, 2019) will take you back to a time that wasn’t as innocent as some would like us to believe.

It’s the story of Morris’ life as she is retelling it in a letter when she is 89-years-old. So, clearly, there is a lot to tell.

I loved listening to the book. It was a great escape from the world of today. It was believable in many ways. After all, not everyone lived the Leave it to Beaver life. Not every woman (then or now) wants to be a trad wife with 2.4 kids.

I’m not sure men would enjoy this book.

It really spoke to me as a woman, though.

There are layers to the book, to the characters, to the world they live in. It’s easy to believe the fictional people could just as easily be real.

It’s fast and easy to get through. It made me smile, laugh, cry and shake my head.

You may have heard of Marlene Dietrich, but what about Betty MacDonald, Zuzka Lauwers and Jane Smith-Hutton?

The four are bonded by World War II where they worked for the Office of Strategic Services. The OSS was the precursor to the CIA, which was created in 1947.

Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS (St. Martin’s Press, 2025) by Lisa Rogak is the story of their contributions to break the morale of enemies in the Pacific and European fronts.

Propaganda is the key word. It’s exactly what they were creating. It was a blend of enough reality with the falsehoods for soldiers on the ground to believe what was being distributed. The women worked in the department of Morale Operations.

The book is about their work as well as their personal lives. This was a time when women were a rarity in the work world; where their contributions were not always welcome.

It’s another book about people I knew nothing about. About people who made a significant contribution to the United States. The book also delves into their lives post-war.

The book is easy to read, and not very long. However, I was left wanting a little more. I’m not exactly sure what. Maybe how this tactic had been used before and by other governments. I wondered how U.S. soldiers might have been swayed by propaganda generated by other countries.

While I recommend the book, it is not a deep dive into the subject matter—which I would have preferred.

Mary McLeod Bethune is not a name I was familiar with until listening to The First Ladies (Berkley, 2023) by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.

Hers is a name we all ought to know. She was a civil rights activist born to parents who had once been enslaved. She was also an educator, having started Bethune-Cookman University in Florida.

The book is mostly about the friendship of Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt. For a Black and white woman to be friends was unheard of; especially one that was so public and out in the open. They both received death threats.

Neither refused to back down from their beliefs. Together they made significant strides in the realm of equality and race relations.

While this is a work of fiction, with the authors taking some liberty with dates and actual occurrences, including conversations, that doesn’t matter. At the end of the book the authors explain all of this.

The book is long. I had to borrow it twice from Libby to finish listening to it.

The title comes from Roosevelt being the first lady of the United States and Bethune being the First Lady of the Struggle—as in the struggle for equal rights for Blacks.

The book makes me want to know more about both of them.

When Bianca Bosker started her journey into the world of wine she was an amateur drinker and a journalist focusing on tech.

Her foray into wine upended her world and led to her book Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste (Penguin Books, 2017).

Ultimately she learned taste matters and people can improve their tasting abilities.

What I loved about this book is it feels so authentic. It’s an inside look from an outsider’s perspective, who in some ways becomes an insider. That will make sense after you read or listen to the book.

I listened to Cork Dork, which was all the more entertaining because Bosker reads it. She isn’t afraid to make fun of herself, peel back the truths and misconceptions about the world of sommeliers, and the wine industry as a whole.

The book seemed long; it’s 352 pages. I needed to listen in small doses at times. Sometimes it’s a bit scientific. That part, too, was interesting. I was learning so much along the way.

The rabbit holes she went down to find the answers she wanted were impressive.

I vaguely remember someone at a winery a few years ago recommending this book. He was talking about how what really matters is what the individual thinks of a wine, not what the tasting notes say, or a reviewer, or judge, or even the winemaker.

This is in some ways what Bosker says as well. But she also proves people can elevate their tasting abilities. She also talks about how a wine can evoke a memory, and that who you drink it with and where you are at the time play a role in the flavor as much as the actual contents in the glass. That’s why sometimes when you have that same bottle another time it doesn’t carry the same weight as it did the first go-round.

Anyone who has an interest in wine is bound to enjoy this book. Others who are curious about taste-olfactory senses will, too. 

The inner workings of any business can be fascinating. When it’s a national park, well, you are definitely going to have my attention.

I’ve ready plenty of adventure, outdoor and travel books. But this was different.

Across Yosemite’s Wilderness: A Trailblazing Woman’s Career Protecting the Park’s Backcountry (Falcon, 2025) by Laurel Munson Boyers is all of those things, plus an insider’s view of Yosemite National Park and then some.

Boyers was the first woman to do full-time mounted backcountry patrol and was the park’s first female wilderness manager. Those firsts make her story worth knowing.

The book is part memoir and travelogue. Boyers was born in the park and then spent more than 30 years working there. She takes us to parts of the park most of us will never see.

Her love of the park is undeniable. So is her worry about the balance of having people enjoy public lands while at the same time preserving them. It’s a dilemma most land managers wrestle with.

Artwork by her brother, Lex Munson, brings an added depth to the book.

I hate to admit that until listening to The Fire Next Time (Vintage Books, 1962) I had neither read nor listened to any of Jame Baldwin’s writings.

I have no good reason for this reality. Clearly, it’s never too late to read or listen to works that are now historical.

This is really a long essay as opposed to a more complete book. It’s all of 128 pages and about 2.5 hours recording.

The writing is more like a snap in time, a quick memoir, a prelude of things to come. It’s an introduction of sorts to the man.

What was depressing about the book is how relevant Baldwin’s words are today—more than 60 years later. How racial strife is still with us. How the plight of Black people isn’t more evolved. How white people still believe they are superior. How we are still talking about inequities in real time and not something relegated to the past.

The book is worth reading even if you think you’ve heard it all before.

The civil rights activist and writer died in 1987 at age 63.