Strange things happen when a book becomes a film. Readers sometimes think they know a work after seeing someone else's interpretation of it. In the case of The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, this would be a mistake. While there's nothing wrong with the film version, which starred Kevin Spacey and Julianne Moore, it doesn't convey the dark humor or the magic of the original. Proulx's version, about the awakening of an unhappy newspaperman, won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The novel includes unforgettable characters in a savage landscape and a slow-blooming romance that seems more real than anything Hollywood could conjure up.

The plot is loosely about the attempts of the middle-aged Quoyle to discover what it means to live a meaningful life. Quoyle has neither confidence nor many marketable skills, an unfortunate side effect of living with an unfaithful wife and loveless parents. After their deaths, he moves with his two daughters, along with a maiden aunt, to Newfoundland, a lonely and frigid island in the North Atlantic. There, he gets a job covering car wrecks and shipping news for a small local paper. Though Quoyle knows nothing about boats, Newfoundland is his ancestral home, and he and the aunt set about to restore the old family abode out on Quoyle Point.

As Quoyle settles in, a whole world opens up to us: the crusty old men who work at the paper; the sailors and boat makers and fishermen who call the island home; the superstitions that come from living in a place that is so dependent upon natural forces; and even the knots that tie things and people together. In this place, where alcoholism and sexual abuse and drowning are all too common, we also watch Quoyle gradually come to terms with his long-buried family history.

This all sounds somber, and to some extent, it is. But Proulx clearly finds the place and its accents and its people fascinating, funny, and very human. It doesn't give much away to say that Quoyle begins to connect with Wavey, a woman who has her own baggage and a quiet dignity that helps her to transcend it.

Some places, some people, and even some novels are easy to love. Others require time to appreciate their subtleties and their wisdom. The Shipping News reminds us about resilience and grace with a clarity of language that is as bracing as any blast of arctic air in November. Quoyle gradually becomes a heroic character, but not because he leaps tall buildings in a single bound. Rather, he learns to open his heart to love and pain. This, and Proulx's writing, is worthy of our applause.

Editor's Note: Jim Sterba has been a foreign correspondent and national affairs reporter for more than four decades for the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. In his eye-opening new book, Nature Wars, Sterba explores how Americans have lost touch with our natural landscape. From plundering our forests in the 1800s to conservation efforts and sprawl in the twentieth century, this and more has contributed to our current degraded ecosystems and out-of-control wildlife populations. Sterba's well-researched essays certainly spark our interest in the road back to balance. Now, as Thanksgiving approaches, Sterba gets back to the land and shares his tips on wild turkey hunting.

Wild turkeys have made a miraculous comeback in recent decades from near extinction. From less than thirty thousand in 1920, they are approaching ten million, and counting, and have been transplanted to several states where they didn't exist before -- at least not since before the last Ice Age.

So is this is a great time to hunt your own turkey for Thanksgiving?

Let me count the reasons why not. First, it's hard -- almost impossible in the fall. Second, you have to get up very early. Third, you have to kill a big bird.

If you haven't dropped out yet, I will now reveal the secret fun parts: Do it next spring for the following Thanksgiving dinner. Spring turkey hunting is a fascinating game of deceit. About sex! (Aren't you glad you stayed with me?) When spring mating season begins, hens hear a male gobble and come running. That's right (I'm not saying politically correct), the hens practically line up to be serviced by the gobbler. But once impregnated, the hens go off satisfied. So as the season goes on there are fewer and fewer of them left to … you know. But the gobbler's hormones are still raging! He's willing to travel. This is where you come in.

You get to dress up in all the latest fashionable camouflage, head to toe, your face covered like a stagecoach bandit. Unfortunately, you have to do this an hour or so before dawn so you can get out to a spot not far from where you believe (or have scouted and know) gobblers are roosting -- usually high up in tall pine trees. You put out a plastic hen decoy, plop yourself down up against a tree, and proceed to do your best Julia Roberts (or some other sexy chick of your choice) imitation with a piece of slate, a wooden box, or a reed caller in your mouth.

You purr like a sex kitten, the gobbler gobbles. He's interested and on the way. Now, you can't move. You can't check your smart phone. You can't scratch your nose. If you're good, you'll see him approach. If you're not still, he'll flee in an instant. If it all works, he'll come close, fluff up his feathers in one of the great courting displays in nature. If you can aim your shotgun (No. 2-4 shot, please) without him seeing you move, the magic moment will have arrived. Head and neck shots are preferable for instant dispatch -- you don't want a wounded bird to run away.

If successful, you then have to eviscerate and pluck feathers off your prey. But that's a different story. However, if everybody had to partake of this adventure and turn a dead bird into dinner, just think about how much less animal protein we'd be eating. And think of how much more we'd treasure the protein we hunted and killed for ourselves than the protein in the supermarket diaper packs.

Well, not exactly hilarity. You will never see a film adaptation of Dr. Oliver Sacks' Oaxaca Journal in your Netflix queue*. But this quirky little book is a romance -- about nature, knowledge, and camaraderie. It offers a glimpse into the disappearing society of amateur scientists, where botanists climb out on ledges to look at rare ferns out of love and curiosity.

Dr. Sacks, of course, is the neurologist, psychologist, amateur chemist, and author behind such books as Uncle Tungsten and Musicophilia. He is best known for writing case studies that describe patients with interesting illnesses. He is also an amateur pteridologist, which means he studies ferns. In a way, he is a professional observer -- and, as with John McPhee's books, we read along to see what he sees that we would have missed.

Oaxaca Journal presents Sacks' notes from a weeklong visit to Mexico with other members of the American Fern Society. It shares some geekiness with Susan Orleans' brilliant The Orchid Thief, which chronicled an unlikely criminal among the South Florida orchid collectors. These characters also love plants, and they love to share what they have found, like a filmy fern that is only one cell thick. Of course, Sacks says it better, without trying for art: "There are at least ten species of these lovely, diaphanous, infinitely delicate Hymenophyllum growing in the Oaxaca rain forest."

Sacks' incidental observations, though, make this a keeper -- such as when he muses about humans' apparent need to categorize things, or whether there is a neurological basis for art that includes recurring geometric patterns, or what is the physiology behind the "ready, resting state" of a dog, just 'chilling' (my term, not his) but ready to respond instantly to a stimulus.

This is because Oaxaca Journal lets us peer into a brilliant mind, to see how it thinks and what connections it makes. Yes, it is interesting to learn about latex and the importance of the agave plant, cochineal dyes, and the role of the Zapotecs in MesoAmerican history. But the real message is one of the power of observation, where seeing and sharing and comparing and describing matters more than finding an answer via Google.

Sacks implies that the natural world is full of amazing things all around us, visible everywhere, every day, if we'd only take the time to look. Hilarity ensues.

*Actually, Sacks' book Awakenings was adapted for an acclaimed 1990 film starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro.