Top 10 books about California | Fiction

youThe frustrating thing if you’re writing a book set in California it’s that you have to leave out a lot: the landscape is so variable and the cultures are so numerous that it’s easy to get lost while exploring the subject.

I believe that each of the authors I have chosen here is more or less an explorer: John Muir, of course, is the most famous portrayer of our natural world, but each of them was drawn to a changing world. every time you turn a corner – felt like writing a dangerous businessset in Monterey in 1851, and also Private lifeset in Vallejo, north of San Francisco, in the late 19th century.

In each of the books on this list, there’s a vivid sense of the author’s love for California, along with a willingness to tell the truth and offer criticism. And the ways in which the books differ from one another reflect our many landscapes and climates.

one. My first summer in the John Muir range
In the summer of 1869, at the age of 31, John Muir worked for a man who owned thousands of sheep and raised them in the Sierras near Yosemite. Muir went as an assistant and artist. His verbal representations of what he saw—mountains, clouds, plants, animals, insects, and sights—are accurate, engaging, and informative, as is the backstory of how the sheep (and also the keepers, running out of food) survive. at a point). His sketches are beautiful and very well done. He loves how he gives to animals and trees…