If that sounds like the role of reading in your life, here's Weinberger's "An Elemental Thing" (commission earned). The description of the book at Amazon says: "he leads us through histories, fables, and meditations about the ten thousand things in the universe: the wind and the rhinoceros, Catholic saints and people named Chang, the Mandaeans on the Iran-Iraq border and the Kaluli in the mountains of New Guinea."
From the interview: "it’s a book that I hope people will open at random, rather than read sequentially."
