Person
Robert Macfarlane's book recommendations
Key facts
- Robert Macfarlane has recommended or discussed 6 books on podcasts, as of June 18, 2025.
- Robert Macfarlane has talked about books on 2 podcasts, as of June 18, 2025.
- Those books came up in 2 episodes, as of June 18, 2025.
- The 3 books Robert Macfarlane has mentioned in the most episodes, not counting Robert Macfarlane's own, as of June 18, 2025: Letters to a Young Poet, Finnegans Wake and Horizon.
- The latest episode with a book mention from Robert Macfarlane aired on June 18, 2025.
Updated
Across 2 podcasts. Every show Robert Macfarlane appears on, in one place — not just one.
Robert Macfarlane’s most recommended books
- Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
- Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
- Horizon by Barry Lopez
- The Overstory by Richard Powers
- Ulysses by James Joyce
Robert Macfarlane is a British non-fiction writer and a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Macfarlane is best known for his books on landscape, nature, place, people and language, which include The Old Ways, Landmarks, The Lost Words, Underland, and Is a River Alive?, and for his many collaborations with musicians, composers and artists. During podcast discussions about his creative process and literary influences, he recommended Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, describing it as an essential text for any reader or writer that frequently sits on the main table in his home for regular browsing. Macfarlane also discussed James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, citing them as examples of deeply rhythmically alert texts when talking about the sonic patterns of language in writing. Furthermore, he reflected on the thematic connections within his own work, specifically examining the mirror relationship and the feeling of claustrophobia that preoccupies Underland in relation to his earlier book Mountains of the Mind, while also positioning it alongside Barry Lopez's Horizon and Richard Powers's The Overstory as part of a broad conceptual triptych addressing the natural world.
Books recommended by Robert Macfarlane
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Underland
Underland by Robert Macfarlane is a sweeping exploration of humanity's relationship with subterranean spaces, deep time, and the hidden environments beneath the Earth's surface.
Discussed“but you're right the first book and the mountains of the mind and the the most recent one underland stand in Mirror relationship with one another”
Where to get it
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Letters to a Young Poet
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke is a collection of intimate correspondence offering profound guidance on art, solitude, patience, and the inner life of a creative individual.
Recommended“So it's in his letters to a young poet which I would say to any reader got to read it. Any writer that's actually at it's on the main table at my house right now. Flipping through it.”
Where to get it
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Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake by James Joyce is an experimental, highly complex work of modern fiction known for its dense, multilingual portmanteau language and cyclical structure.
Discussed“like James Joyce's Ulyses uh or Finnegan's wake deeply rhythmically alert text but in non-fiction I think partly because it has this weird name non-fiction”
Where to get it
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Horizon
Discussed“and I think here of big books like Barry Lopez's Horizon Richard PO is the over story which actually together kind of make a a trip tich here you have the overstory The Horizon and and the underland”
Where to get it
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The Overstory
The Overstory by Richard Powers is a sweeping, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that intertwines the lives of several Americans whose fates are connected to trees and environmental activism.
Discussed“and I think here of big books like Barry Lopez's Horizon Richard PO is the over story which actually together kind of make a a trip tich here you have the overstory The Horizon and and the underland”
Where to get it
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Ulysses
James Joyce's landmark modernist novel Ulysses chronicles an ordinary day in the life of Leopold Bloom in Dublin, mapping human consciousness and daily existence through a revolutionary stream-of-consciousness technique.
Discussed“like James Joyce's Ulyses uh or Finnegan's wake deeply rhythmically alert text but in non-fiction I think partly because it has this weird name non-fiction”
Where to get it
Books by Robert Macfarlane
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Underland
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Mountains of the mind
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The wild places
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The Old Ways
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Landmarks
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The Gifts of Reading
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The Lost Words
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Original Copy
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Ness
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The Lost Spells
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Is a River Alive?
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Holloway
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Best American Travel Writing 2020
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Ghostways
Appearances
| Episode | Podcast | Date | Books |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robert Macfarlane: The Most Beautiful Conversation About Language | How I Write | How I Write | 2025-06-18 | 3 |
| The World's Far Corners and Deepest Depths | The Book Review | 2019-06-14 | 4 |
Other mentions (7: passing, ad reads, own books)
“...at the end of is a river Alive I thought I'd finish that book three times the first time was recognizable to me. We'd paddled to the sea over 12, 11 days.”
“First line of the wild places. The wind was rising so I went to the wood. Or let's take that one.”
“So when I was writing a book called Underland, which took me eight years, um I came to realize that there was a a series of images that recurred across many of the journeys.”
“So I wrote a a spell in this big book of spells, nature spells for children. You wrote this? Yeah, I wrote this called The Lost Words working with this wonderful artist called Jackie Morris.”
“So the the very first book I wrote in my um early to mid20s was a book called mountains of the mind I grew up as a mountaineer and a climber as I mentioned”
“we've had this Resurgence going on for 15 years which I think happened in America in around the time of Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez um a bit earlier Annie dad's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”
“we've had this Resurgence going on for 15 years which I think happened in America in around the time of Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez um a bit earlier Annie dad's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”