We asked our board and staff to tell us what their top three favorite books were this year.
Quinn Simons, President
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (I also love Suttree)
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner
Dennis Romero, Vice President
Making History; The Storytellers Who Shaped the Past by Richard Cohen
Humanly Possible; Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking by Sarah Bakewell
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Also:
Macbeth – you know who!
Carla Chung Mattix
Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark (a novel centered around protecting land)
Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb
In Search of the Old Ones by David Roberts (a classic – reminds me of Bears Ears)
Luke Pierpont
An Immense World by Ed Yong
Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Reining in the Rio Grande by Em Hall
Mark Fisher
The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides (very NM / Kit Carson focused)
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson
Al Reed
Recently—Enough by Cassidy Hutchinson
For Bedtime- Nora Kelly series; Preston & Childs (thrillers set in NM)
For the head- Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa
Ginny Olcott, At Large
The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall
Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford (classic must-read for Santa Feans)
Brant Goodman, Secretary
Endurance by Scott Kelly
Am I being Too Subtle by Sam Zell
The Secret Knowledge of Water by Craig Childs
Marianne Dwight, Treasurer
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones
For light reading: Chief Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny; A World of Curiosities the most recent novel.
Sam Finn
Churchill: The Power of Words by Martin Gilbert
How to Interpret the Constitution by Cass R. Sunstein
How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
Nancy Cook
Wild New World by Dan Flores
Horse by Geraldine Brooks
The End of Eden by Adam Welz
Ariel Patashnik, Land Protection Project Manager
Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon
(featuring a land trust staffer as murder victim and land trust ED as suspect! Dun dun dun)
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
Tim Rogers, Trails Program Manager
Wisdom Sits in Places by Keith Basso (thanks to my son Nick)
Chronicles, Volume One by Bob Dylan
The Woman at Otowi Crossing by Frank Waters
Sarah Noss, Executive Director
Losing Eden, An Environmental History of the West by Sara Dant (a really good read!)
North Woods by Daniel Mason
And my beach book that I loved was Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (thanks, Ariel!)
McAllister Yeomans, Operations Manager
Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
Melissa Houser, Land Program Manager
Eve by Cat Bohannon
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
DEI Deconstructed by Lily Zheng
Melanie Solis Alvarez, Stewardship Associate
Environmental Justice in New Mexico: Counting Coup by Valerie Rangel
As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from
Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker
Joanne Smogor, Events & Development Officer
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Where Many Rivers Meet by David Whyte
Brian Jensen, Organizational Advancement Officer
Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
To learn more about SFCT’s Board and Staff, go to https://sfct.org/about/
Buy locally from Collected Works, which will donate half the proceeds to SFCT:
Collected Works
505-988-4266
202 Galisteo Street
Santa Fe, NM 87501
https://www.collectedworksbookstore.com/
Book orders at Collected Works should be placed by 12/15/2023 to be ready by 12/24/2023 pickup
