Full disclosure: I'm reading Teaching a Stone to Talk for something like the tenth time. It is simultaneously one of the shortest and most complex books I've ever read, which is why I dust it off at least once a year. It started in high school with one of the most frustratingly amusing and difficult reading assignments of all time, which ended with our entire class yelling over each other about weasels and ghosts and Annie Dillard's incomprehensible imagery. Needless to say, this is not, in my opinion, an ideal title for inspiring interest in non-fiction among 17-year-olds.

But that isn't to say I didn't learn to love it eventually, and I enjoy and anticipate the experience of revisiting it every year.