Out with the (c)OLD! and in with 30% off spring styles 🌷🌷 SHOP SPRING CLEANING
I don’t know about you, but the chill in the air has me curling up under the covers with a book in my hands earlier and earlier each evening. Fall is such a wonderful season for reacquainting yourself with immersive reading after a summer of mostly fashion mags and easy beach books. Below is my list of literature to accompany you through this season, including wild tales of moms turning into canines, memoirs that’ll leave you sobbings (in the best way), beautiful explorations of nature, a whole book of cults, and many tales of women up against incredible odds.
For more of my favorite reads, check out my list from earlier this year.
I cannot stop thinking about this book. And I also struggle to describe it in a way that makes it sound appealing and not bonkers. But here we go. A stay-at-home mom to a two-year-old boy finds herself turning into a dog in response to her rage at how her personal and professional life dramatically changed after becoming a mother, though her husband’s had not. Still with me? This book is a commentary not only on the difficulty of contemporary motherhood but also on how the patriarchy forces women to almost literally claw their way to their potential. There’s also a multi-level marketing scheme. It’s weird. It’s brilliant. And it’s perfect for Halloween season.
There is no poet who captures the feeling of being in nature quite like Mary Oliver. Devotions is a compilation of her life’s work, containing some of her most profound and moving poems. It’s a wonderful piece to have on hand and pick a poem out at random. Here is my favorite:
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
—‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver
When I read this book, it had been a while since I had ugly cried in a good way. Bess Kalb, a (hilarious) writer for the Jimmy Kimmel show, offers up this incredibly touching story about her relationship with her grandmother, Bobby. Writing in Bobby’s voice, she recounts a lifetime of love, adventure, and loss; family secrets and tales passed down through four generations of remarkable women. Her advice is priceless, including gems like: “Everyone needs the dress that makes her feel like she’s able to do anything she wants.” My advice? Don’t read this in public without tissues and sunglasses handy. By the end, you’ll want a Bobby all of your own.
I love a good cult story. I bingsed watched Wild Wild Country, The Vow, and, most recently, The Way Down (if you haven’t seen this, start now). There’s something both incredibly intriguing and dangerously frightening about cults and their leaders. Amanda Montell thinks so, too. In this book, she breaks down how cults and cult-ish organizations use language to indoctrinate people and maintain power. Whether that’s how Jim Jones convinced his followers to move to South America and create the horror story we know as Jonestown, or how multi-level marketing businesses pull in all those girls you know from high school. Influencers, QAnon, SoulCycle, and more.
Robin Wail Kimmerer is both a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and as such, she has a unique perspective on the natural world. Blending Indigenous knowledge with modern science, she describes our reciprocal relationship with the earth and how we can better learn to give and not just take from the world’s bounty. You’ll learn to see magic in every blade of grass and to humble yourself as a part of nature and not a conqueror of it. “Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”
Something about fall just makes me want to dive into ominous tales about murders and mystery and intrigue. A friend recently recommended Mexican Gothic, and it certainly fits the bill. In the story, Noemí Taboada receives a letter from her cousin in which she frantically requests Noemí’s help because she believes her new husband is out to kill her. Noemí ventures to their grand, secluded estate (i.e. the setting for every haunted house story you’ve ever heard) to investigate, falling into its terrifying grasp as she exposes dark family secrets. It’s decadent. It’s spooky. It’s everything you could ask to read while sipping cider and covered in blankets.
There’s book been a trend in the last few years that I am very into: mythological stories that focus on women. (Think: Circe by Madeline Miller, A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes, Ariadne by Jennifer Saint.) The Mercies fits into this genre, to a degree. In 17th-century Norway, a storm has killed off all of the men in a small coastal town, forcing the women to fend for themselves and band together against a visitor who comes with accusations of witchcraft. The fictional work is Inspired by the real events of the Vardø storm and the 1620 witch trials, another great read for this particular time of year.
I have not yet read Of Women and Salt, but it is the next on my list. Perhaps we can read it together? The novel traces a family’s history from a 19th-century cigar factory in Cuba to present-day ICE detention centers through the experiences and betrayals that have shaped their lives. The book cracks into the reality of immigration in our country through the eyes of the book’s powerful female cast. On top of everything, Garcia explores the complexity of mother-daughter relationships within all the layers of hardship. I’m fully prepared for this to be a tough, but important read.
By far my favorite book I’ve read in the last five years, The Overstory is a stunning work whose foundational “characters” are trees. The novel follows nine Americans, who each have a unique relationship with a tree, weaving a story about the interconnectedness of nature and the weight of protecting it. If you loved The Lorax as a child, The Overstory is your adult equivalent in which you will mourn the destruction of our forests while championing the activists in the pages. Don’t be intimidated by how long it is (503 pages)—by the end, you’ll wish you had more.
I’m currently in Spain and a friend here reminded me of this book I read (and loved) several years ago. The story is set in post-war Barcelona in 1945 and follows the son of an antique book dealer as he winds down a mysterious path to discover more about the author of a book entitled The Shadow of the Wind. There is madness and murder, doomed lovers, and spooky streets. It also describes the city so beautifully that you can picture yourself there. It’s the perfect book for a fall escape, and it’s part of a series so you can dive further into this weird and wonderful world.
