1. Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life, by Thich Nhat Hanh (1992)
Lovely and wise. I felt so grounded during my reading of it. One of my favorites of his.
2. The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan (1996)
Took me a while to get into. I forgot how dark Amy Tan's work is at times. It is her classic mix of Chinese-American mother/daughter/wife/husband conflict in the present, and almost mythical Chinese tragedy in the past. Haunting at times. What happened right before the end made me so sad and a little mad.
3. Jamaica Inn, by Daphne du Maurier (1936)
Yes! I remembered liking the author's most famous work, Rebecca, and this was another treat of the similarly atmospheric, neo-Gothic variety. Delicious spookiness and suspense without being a scary novel. I didn't think much of the romance but otherwise thought the protagonist was excellent, a true heroine. Brave, sturdy, and stubborn - and well-written enough that she didn't feel annoyingly so.
4. The Book of Waves: Form and Beauty on the Ocean, by Drew Kampion (1998)
Mesmerizing photos (and all from film cameras, of course) - oddly mannish quasi-rhapsodic writing. I learned a bit from the "science explanation" sections, which was what I really bought the book for, but not all of that was readily clear to me. The cross-section illustrations in those sections, of wave patterns at various beaches, were very pleasing though.
5. Car Pool, by Karin Kallmaker (1993)
Fun, fast, fluffy lesbian romance. Bonus fun points for the detailed Bay Area references from a local author.
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