Sam Pickering has spent decades writing about things that go bump in the night and in the day: forgotten books and corn fields, rescue dogs, islands in and out of the stream, flat moments and thoughts gravelly with worry--the miscellaneous common things that compose the well-lived life. His essays are curiosity shops, their pages stocked with observations and anecdotes that startle and awaken. "Look out. Here comes Mayhem," a young mother warns friends when her little boy races into her dining room. "When you were young," a Chinese student tells a doddery teacher, "you must have been very handsome." A phoebe darts from a dead limb and swoops through an oval and snaps insects from the air. Ospreys sail from cliffs above a bay and glide billowing until suddenly like arrows they fall into the water. "I promised my sister that I'd scatter her ashes in the several places she designated," a man recounts. "But good God, I'm not young and able to drive hundreds of miles. After her funeral, and as soon as I was out of sight of the church, I lowered my window and got rid of the ashes." Pickering's essays are for adults, people who have slipped the leash of ambition and have the leisure and inclination to ponder, to be curious about their lives and the world, people who want to listen and observe the bright and the beautiful, and yes, the melancholy and the shadowy. Years ago, a critic called Pickering the "free spirit of literature." His books are not self-help manuals, but they are freeing. They entertain and encourage readers to wonder and appreciate--indeed to imagine and enjoy.