Autumn Leaves
The Nature of Reading Newsletter | Fall | Week 3
Dear readers,
Hello once again!
It’s been two weeks since I last wrote to you because last Saturday was Bottle Hill Day and, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t organize a newsletter in advance to send out the morning of the festival. But it was such a great day! I saw so very many of you at our booth on Central Ave. Thanks for stopping by to see me and thank you as always for supporting my business and shopping local.
Only a week has passed since Bottle Hill, but it feels much longer. This week I had to close for two days due to building maintenance taking place in the shop, and it took two more days after I reopened to get everything back in order here. But now the space is once again filled with fall magic! You should definitely stop by tomorrow (Sunday!) when we’re open 11am-4pm. What better way is there to spend an autumnal Sunday than at a bookstore?
After somewhat of a rough week, I’m going to try and practice the principles from one (of the many) books I’ve been reading, Real Self-Care by Pooja Lakshmin, and move into the weekend with self-compassion and make time to reflect and refocus on my values. If you want a self-care book that focuses on inner work and systemic change rather than the latest product/bulletproof method of achieving enlightenment, I highly recommend this book.
With that, I hope you have a most lovely autumnal weekend, and I’ll see you back here next week!
All best wishes,
Hailey
I’m so excited to add a new gift item to the store: these beautiful mini terrariums! I can’t stop looking at them, from the moss to the mushrooms to the mini flowers. They’re perfect! Stop by the store to admire these little landscapes and bring one home.
Our October crafting event is all sold out! Thank you to everyone who’s coming to the event for the first time and especially to the lovely returning crafters. If you missed out on this one, fear not—I’ll be hosting another avian cross stitch event later this year, and there will be a special Halloween crafting event announced next week! Stay tuned for this magical evening set for Tuesday, October 29th. Think pumpkins and whimsy…
It’s time for another event at the beautiful Reeves-Reed Arboretum! It’s always such a pleasure to spend the day there. That Sunday the store will be closed, but you’ll find me popping up at the arboretum with a wide selection of books, fall crafts, and more.
Only those who love trees should cut them, writes forester Ethan Tapper. In How to Love a Forest, he asks what it means to live in a time in which ecosystems are in retreat and extinctions rattle the bones of the earth. Tapper walks us through the fragile and resilient community that is a forest. He introduces us to wolf trees and spring ephemerals, and to the mysterious creatures of the rhizosphere and the necrosphere. He helps us reimagine what forests are and what it means to care for them. Tapper argues that the actions we must take to protect ecosystems are often counterintuitive, uncomfortable, even heartbreaking. With striking prose, he shows how bittersweet acts can be expressions of compassion. Tapper weaves a new land ethic for the modern world, reminding us that what is simple is rarely true, and what is necessary is rarely easy.
In this glorious celebration of the night, New York Times bestselling nature writer Leigh Ann Henion invites us to leave our well-lit homes, step outside, and embrace the dark as a profoundly beautiful part of the world we inhabit. Because no matter where we live, we are surrounded by animals that rise with the moon, and blooms that reveal themselves as light fades. Every page of this lyrical book feels like an opportunity to ask: How did I not know about this before? In an age of increasing artificial light, Night Magic focuses on the amazing biodiversity that still surrounds us after sunset. We do not need to stargaze into the distant cosmos or dive into the depths of oceans to find awe in the dark. There are dazzling wonders in our own backyards.
In September 1913, Mieczysław, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz’s Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort in what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day. Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. A century after the publication of The Magic Mountain, Tokarczuk revisits Thomas Mann territory and lays claim to it, blending horror story, comedy, folklore, and feminist parable with brilliant storytelling.
Our three book clubs are now one: The Nature of Reading Book Club! Here, we’ll still be exploring all the latest and greatest environmental reads, and we’ll be rotating each month between fiction & non-fiction.
This October we’ll be reading the beautiful Language of Trees by Katie Holten, which is a collection of 67 excerpts from famous ecocritical works and manifestos, with each replicated into the artist/author Katie Holten’s tree alphabet, meant to help us rewild literature and ourselves. This is a visually stunning book that you really want to have in a physical copy. We’d love for you to join us to read this lovely book—you can sign up here.
For our November episode of Attending Together, we’ll be reading The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan. In case you missed our first episode discussing Mary Oliver’s Upstream, here’s the link to listen whenever you’d like.
We hope you’ll read the beautiful Backyard Bird Chronicles along with us. You can get your copy here if you’d like to pick it up at the shop, or you can order a copy for delivery through Bookshop.org.
Each week I’m going to be recommending three books each week to help us better connect with the fall season and tune into the cozy, slightly spooky vibes that begin this month.
This week we’re looking at classics! And of course we have the most beautiful editions from the Penguin Clothbound Classics collection. Whether you’re reading or re-reading, this is the perfect time to enjoy these literary masterpieces.
As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim house Wuthering Heights. It is a place he will never forget. There he will come to learn the story of Cathy: how she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since she was young. How her choice led to betrayal and terrible revenge - and continues to torment those in the present. How love can transgress authority, convention, even death.
When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an apparently unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the 'Master' and his imminent arrival. In Dracula, Bram Stoker created one of the great masterpieces of the horror genre, brilliantly evoking a nightmare world of vampires and vampire hunters and also illuminating the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire.
Obsessed by creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life by electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. This chilling gothic tale, begun when Mary Shelley was just nineteen years old, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.
This week’s moment in nature comes from Wightman Farms, where we spent a wonderful morning celebrating a lovely friend’s birthday. Despite the gray skies and the subsequent drizzle, it was a day of fall magic filled with apples, pumpkins, corn mazes and all the fall whimsy one could ask for.
Every time I read your newsletter, I come out with at least four new books for my TBR. Love hearing updates from your bookstore and the section you dedicate to a moment in nature!