 Ty grew up reading Louis Lamour on a ranch in Montana, graduated to King Arthur and the nonfiction of Isaac Asimov while living in Denver as a teenager, drank too much wine due to an over-exuberance for Kerouac in his twenties, explored the desert southwest with Edward Abbey and Lao Tzu in his backpack, and all the while was accompanied by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ben Okri, and Italo Calvino, who lent his wanderings strangeness. John Alcock, Jean Henri Fabre, Niko Tinbergen and Lorus and Marjery Milne caused him to become obsessed with the wild creatures who are gracious enough to share their planet with us, while Paul Hawken, Theo Colborn, E.O. Wilson and Lester Brown helped him to understand the problems we pose as their neighbors.Ty studied natural history and bees at Hampshire College, and teaches entomology and natural history itinerantly around the Prescott region to curious folk of all ages. He has worked as a field biologist, rodeo lackey, busker, and fire lookout. In addition to running the Peregrine Book Company, Ty oversees the Raven Café, is proprietor of Gray Dog Guitars, and Raven Sound Studios, and is the curator of insects at the Natural History Institute. It is a real possibility that his house may one day collapse from a critical mass of books. He is concerned about it. |
"Further Out Than You Thought" is a story of searching for that tenuous place where dreams and reality intermingle to create wonder and poetry. It is a joy to read, often funny and sometimes heartwrenching, but always beautiful, even when looking unflinchingly at difficult and dark things. –Ty
Read Ty's complete review of the book in Kudos.
A window into one of the most important and least talked-about scientific fields, this book is an antidote for environmental despair. It reminds us that the natural world is wondrous and ever-present. —Ty
Wilson is one of the true giants of our time, who somehow manages to always find a path forward. This is one of the only books in print to suggest a real, ecologically-based solution to the global environmental crisis! —Ty
An extraordinary exploration of slavery both in US and Africa. Gyasi somehow makes this difficult subject entrancing with wonderful characters and a feeling of hope and even beauty. A unique take on an important subject.
This novel, Hallberg’s first, is stellar. I marveled in the beauty of his sentences, fell in love with his characters, and didn’t want it to end. Well worth the commitment! —Ty
An engaging historic epic with a dual storyline- a young man uncovering his past, and his reconstruction of a love affair set in the mountaineering community of the 1920s. A great, diverting, explorational read. —Ty
This is the scariest book I've read in a very long time. In the southwest US in the very near future water has been finally and completely commodified and is the most valuable resource on Earth. Bacigalupi portrays this world in enough detail to change the way you look at water in the west (and maybe everywhere) forever. —Ty
This is the book that won Garcia Marquez the Nobel Prize in Literature, and single-handedly created the genre of magical realism. And it's one of the best books that there is. Dammit. —Ty
Brian Doyle is without question my favorite new author, and this is the best of his books. Lyrical, exuberant, transcendant writing that makes the plot almost unnecessary, though the story itself, of four explorers in a small craft on the Pacific Ocean, is wonderful. I can't say enough good about this book. —Ty
A postmodern fairy tale retelling of Snow White, written brilliantly as an exploration of the meaning of race and identity. Perilous and quietly magical. —Ty
(This book cannot be returned)
The Snow Queen is a quiet, beautiful, and somewhat neurotic work about four friends living in Brooklyn, piecing together small moments of transcendence into a mosaic of meaning in light of the death of friends and the loss and discovery of love. —Ty
Read Ty's complete review of this book in Kudos
The best nature writing on insects ever, as well as some of the best all-around nature writing. Fabre is the naturalist whose observations most impressed Darwin. Exceptional. –Ty
On first read this book is extraordinary, layered with real magic, transformative. By the third read, it just might be one of the best books written. –Ty
A thoroughly diverting imaginal novel, and one of the more intriguing combinations of the magical and the profane to be published in the last few years. Chava, a golem created by dark Kabbalistic magic, is awakened on a voyage to America in 1899. In the same moment Ahmad, a Syrian fire-jinn, is accidentally freed by a blacksmith in NYC's Little Syria. They both struggle, separately, for acceptance in the strange, vibrantly painted city, and eventually meet, just as the golem's creator, their mutual enemy, finds them. –Ty
A truly extraordinary work of hallucinatory magic in the style of Gabriel García Márquez. –Ty
Weisman's remarkable new book discusses population, consumption and the human place on Earth while preserving a real sense of hope. –Ty
When tragedy repeatedly strikes brilliant and hitherto fortunate Will Bellman, he is drawn into a complex reckoning born of a thoughtless childhood act-- the casual slaying of a rook. An alchemical combination of down-to-earth storytelling and compelling magical realism. In brilliantly crafted prose, Setterfield lays out a story not quite mystery, not quite fantasy, but a literary combination of both. –Ty
I love nearly all of Doyle's books, but this is my absolute favorite! Luminous, ecstatic vignettes on the natural world, community, love, joy and wild creatures!
