Books for Adults

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  Wildful (2024) by Kengo Kurimoto

  Maughn Gregory

  Kengo Kurimoto’s graphic novel Wildful explores the transformative power of nature and deep attention. Poppy is struggling with her mother’s depression after her grandmother’s passing. Initially absorbed in digital distractions, Poppy is drawn into the wilderness when her dog, Pepper, chases a fox. She meets Rob, a boy who teaches her to observe nature with curiosity and respect—tracking animals, noticing patterns, and sitting in silence. Poppy learns that being in nature can assuage generational grief through a renewed sense of wonder and connection.

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  My Octopus Teacher (2020) directed by Pippa Ehrlich and James Reed

  Peter Shea

  My Octopus Teacher combines a carefully structured love story with astonishing information about undersea life, documenting a year of encounters between a photographer and an octopus. It is important as a non-standard love story and as a reflection on the possibility of deep connection with non-human creatures.

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  Rivers and Tides

  Peter Shea

  The documentary Rivers and Tides presents an unfamiliar take on the work of the artist, the role of a work of art in human life, and, ultimately, on the relationship between human beings and natural objects and forces. In following artist Andy Goldsworthy as he talks through the work he is doing, one has an opportunity to ask basic questions about some deeply held beliefs – to which there are, as he shows, plausible alternatives.

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  Hour of Letdown (1954) by E.B. White

  Gareth B. Matthews

  A man came into a New York bar with a big, ugly-looking machine and ordered two drinks. The man downed his own drink, then he poured the second whiskey into a small vent in the machine. The bartender ordered the man to remove the machine from his bar, but the man refused, explaining that the machine needed to be able to “let down,” having just won a chess tournament. Nowadays, many of us spend important parts of our lives “interacting” with computer programs. E.B. White’s whimsical story from his 1954 collection The Second Tree from the Corner suggests is that there will always be a categorical difference between human beings and the cleverest robots, unless someday there is a robot who needs to let down in something more than a metaphorical sense.