Together, We Grow
The Nature of Reading Newsletter | Fall | Week 5
Dear readers,
Greetings from an exceptionally autumnal Sunday morning!
Yesterday was the Halloween Parade in Madison—it’s always very sweet to see all the kids and families dressed up in their costumes, parading down Main Street and then making their way through the downtown businesses trick-or-treating afterwards. It definitely helps get me into the Halloween spirit, as it’s been a challenge this year to comprehend that it is somehow already the end of October!
To further help get myself and others into the Halloween spirit, I’ll be hosting a special Halloween crafting event on Tuesday: we’ll be making pumpkin fairy houses! It’s something I’ve always wanted to try, and I love how the example fairy house turned out so I can’t wait to see how everyone decorates in their own unique ways. You can see more details on the event below, as well as a picture of our many spooky blind date with a book bundles—there’s no better time than now in the last few days leading up to Halloween to pick up a most spooky or cozy read! We’ll be open today from 11am to 4pm, and I do hope we’ll see you in the autumnal wonderland at the shop.
One last thing to note—the past week held a big milestone for this newsletter, we surpassed 1,000 subscribers! It’s wild to think that I started this newsletter with family and friends just over 2 years ago, and now it gets sent out to over a thousand people each week. More than the numbers, what makes me happiest is all the people who mention to me in the shop or at events that they love reading the newsletter or that they enjoy my writing. As a lifelong writer who has been through years-long spans of immense self-doubt, it’s been so affirming to know that this little newsletter brings joy to its readers and that my writing is able to share some of the feeling, whimsy and wonder that I strive to bring to The Nature of Reading.
Thank you all so very much for being here with me, and I hope to see you soon.
Wishing you all the very best,
Hailey
Join us for a spooky and whimsical night of crafting your very own pumpkin fairy house! The sturdy foam pumpkin will be prepared with the door and windows cut out and will additionally be equipped a half-moon porch, plus you'll have a wide selection of sticks, pinecones, moss, and stones to decorate with—with this combination of materials you can keep using the pumpkin as a decoration for many years to come. Sip pumpkin herbal tea with us as we lean into childlike wonder and create these beautiful little homes! I hope to see you there.
It’s the perfect weekend for a spooky or cozy blind date with a book bundle! Each book was hand selected, wrapped, and decorated by me—I even carved all the pumpkin stamps! All the books are also adorned with a handmade pumpkin bookmark, which looks so sweet sticking out of the top of a book. These bundles make great gifts for others or for yourself!
A beautifully illustrated journal to guide your observations of nature wherever you find it—in gardens and yards, city parks and vacant lots, or the sky—enhanced by inspiring prompts and the wisdom of author Margaret Renkl and based on her book The Comfort of Crows. The perfect contemplative companion and gift for any gardener, outdoors enthusiast, birder, or budding naturalist, Leaf, Cloud, Crow will help readers and writers alike grow more attuned to all the “radiant things bursting forth in the darkest places, in the smallest nooks and deepest cracks of the hidden world.”
The open ocean, far from the shore and miles above the seafloor, is a vast and formidable habitat that is home to the most abundant life on our planet, from giant squid and jellyfish to anglerfish with bioluminescent lures that draw prey into their toothy mouths. Into the Great Wide Ocean takes readers inside the peculiar world of the seagoing scientists who are providing tantalizing new insights into how the animals of the open ocean solve the problems of their existence.
The graphic novel adaptation of Peter Wohlleben’s international bestseller, with breathtaking illustrations and easy-to-follow text that will delight readers young and old. Featuring 240 pages of full-color illustrations and text covering the entirety of The Hidden Life of Trees, this adaptation honors the spirit of the original book by seeking to change the way the world looks at trees, and will inspire generations of readers to celebrate the natural world and protect our last remaining forests before it’s too late.
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 month I wanted to choose a book that was particularly grounding given all that is happening politically, and what could be more grounding than the earth itself! So in November we’ll be discussing Marcia Bjornerud’s Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks. Weaving stories of her life as a geologist with extraordinary geological histories and unexpected facts about the ground beneath our feet, Marcia Bjornerud brings us on a journey of deep time and newfound understanding.
We’d love for you to join us to read this stunning 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. Thanks to the wonderful generosity of one of our readers, all copies ordered through the shop will come with a special Backyard Bird Chronicles bookplate signed by Amy Tan! 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 spooky nature books!
This richly illustrated book provides an in-depth natural history of the most poisonous plants on earth, covering everything from the lethal effects of hemlock and deadly nightshade to the uses of such plants in medicine, ritual, and chemical warfare. Featuring hundreds of color photos and diagrams throughout, Plants That Kill explains how certain plants evolved toxicity to deter herbivores and other threats and sheds light on their physiology and the biochemistry involved in the production of their toxins. A must for experts and armchair botanists alike, Plants That Kill is the essential illustrated compendium to these deadly and intriguing plants.
With humor and empathy, Susana Monsó tells the stories of ants who attend their own funerals, chimpanzees who clean the teeth of their dead, dogs who snack on their caregivers, crows who avoid the places where they saw a carcass, elephants obsessed with collecting ivory, and whales who carry their dead for weeks. Blending philosophical insight with new evidence from behavioral science and comparative psychology, Playing Possum dispels the anthropocentric biases that cloud our understanding of the natural world, and reveals that, when it comes to death and dying, we are just another animal.
From the cozy to the hardboiled, the literary to the pulp, and the classic to the contemporary, Gardening Can Be Murder is the first book to explore the mystery genre’s many surprising horticultural connections. Meet plant-obsessed detectives and spooky groundskeeper suspects, witness toxic teas served in foul play, and tour the gardens—both real and imagined—that have been the settings for fiction’s ghastliest misdeeds. A New York Times bestselling author herself, McDowell also introduces us to some of today’s top writers who consider gardening integral to their craft, assuring that horticultural themes will remain a staple of the genre for countless twisting plots to come.
It’s been an incredibly busy past two weeks, but this week’s moment in nature comes from last Sunday when I did an event at the Reeves-Reed Arboretum. I love doing events at this magical place—it was my fifth event there! While I didn’t get to walk the grounds this time, I did manage to spend a bit of time sketching through the big bay window in the room where my table was set up. The window overlooks a little open field area with a few massive trees that I decided to draw. While I spend a lot of my creative efforts these days focusing on developing my digital illustration style, it’s always nice to return to sketching and just concentrate on capturing something’s form. I always find that paying attention to the natural world through art is one of the best ways to reconnect with nature.
Congratulations on the newsletter milestone!
And thank you, for being here for us Hailey. The community and emotional support you’re building mean so much to me as I learn and grow with you, writing a new professional script, and so importantly: listening.
FABULOUS sketches! Appreciate you sharing them. <3