Circe is a dream of a book. It’s the perfect example of the Greek myth retold genre that’s been exploding in the last few years – what with The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood among others – but the reason I loved Circe goes deeper.

If I had known how beautiful the descriptions of nature would be, I’d have read Circe (and Madeline Miller’s other novel, The Song of Achilles) much sooner.

After unleashing magic that she never believed she could be capable of, Circe, the daughter of Helios, is banished to the island of Aiaia.

Rather than acting as her prison, Aiaia provides her sanctuary. Her days become focused on honing the art of pharmaka – the magic of herbs – as she forages, picks, blends, brews, and experiments with what she finds.

With the unlimited time available to her as an immortal, her spells and tinctures grow more refined and potent. She transforms men into swine, creates powerful protective chants, and treats her ailments and those of others. Her island makes for the perfect retreat for us as reader, too.

Here are some of the best books to read next if you liked Circe, featuring their own unique blend of magic, nature, myth, and strong women.

Books to read if you loved Circe and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

1. Galatea by Madeline Miller

If you haven’t yet, I’d wholeheartedly recommend reading Madeline Miller’s short story Galatea, which has recently been published as a beautiful (and tiny) hardcover for the first time.

Like Circe, Galatea is a story focused on transformation, or as Miller explains in the afterword, on “finding freedom for yourself in a word that denies it to you.”

Here, Madeline Miller reimagines the myth of Galatea (“she who is milk-white”); the most beautiful woman her town has ever seen, carved from stone by Pygmalion, a skilled marble sculptor, and blessed with the gift of life by a goddess. Here’s my review of Galatea.

2. Uprooted by Naomi Novik

If you loved the nature and magic of Circe, Uprooted is a fantastic choice to read next. We meet Agnieszka, who loves her quiet home, her village, and the nearby forests and glimmering river.

But it’s a fantasy novel after all, and the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power casting a shadow over her life.

To keep safe, Agnieszka and her people have to make a sacrifice to the evil wizard, the Dragon, every ten years. That sacrifice is a young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, and the next choosing is fast approaching.

3. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Published in 2021, A Thousand Ships is one of the most popular books to read if you loved Circe. This gripping novel by Natalie Haynes puts women, girls, and goddesses at the centre of one of the greatest tales ever told: the fall of Troy.

Madeline Miller shared, “With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism, Natalie Haynes gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War.”

4. The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

If there’s a Nordic equivalent to Circe, it’s The Mercies. Set in the winter of 1617, the sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a vicious storm.

A young woman, Maren Magnusdatter, watches as the men of the island, out fishing, perish in an instant.

The island is now a place of strong women, and The Mercies is a tale of what follows in the beautiful, brutal environment.

5. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Less about myth but very much about the beauty of nature, The Signature of All Things is a stunning book about one woman’s life, love, and self-discovery as a botanist.

The novel follows Alma Whittaker, the daughter of a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade. Alma inherits his money and his mind, and as she becomes a botanist of considerable gifts, her story soars across the globe.

For another book by Elizabeth Gilbert with plenty of self-sufficiency, foraging, and living off the land, read The Last American Man.

It’s non-fiction that reads as myth, offering an intriguing portrayal of a man who left his family’s comfortable suburban home to live close to nature in the Appalachian Mountains.

6. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

In The Silence of the Girls, one of the most immersive books like Circe, the ancient city of Troy has been under siege by the powerful Greek army for a decade, waging bloody war over a stolen woman: Helen.

In the Greek camp, another woman – Briseis, former queen of one of Troy’s neighbouring kingdoms, now Achilles’ concubine – watches and waits for the war’s outcome.

This wonderfully nuanced portrait of previously hidden figures is magnificent, brought to life by Pat Barker’s decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives.

Now in 2022, Pat Baker has just published her newest retelling of one of the greatest myths, The Women of Troy.

7. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

A magical book to read after Circe is The Snow Child. It’s Alaska in 1920 – ruthless for most people, but especially for new arrivals Jack and Mabel.

Childless and drifting apart, the season’s first snowfall brings them together for a moment to build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snow child is gone – but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.

The girl seems to be a child of the woods, who hunts with a red fox at her side and somehow survives alone in the wilderness. Jack and Mabel come to love her as their own daughter, but in this beautiful, brutal place nothing is quite as it seems.

8. Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

“I am not the feminine voice you may have expected.” Lavinia is a book entirely written from the perspective of a character that never utters a word: Lavinia in Virgil’s epic, The Aeneid. 

Delicately crafted by the queen of fantasy sci-fi, this is a richly imagined and beautiful novel of passion and war, reimagining a silenced voice just like Madeline Miller achieved with Circe.

9. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Where the Crawdads Sing has been recommended everywhere in the last few years, but if you haven’t read it, it’s got similar strong-woman-in-nature vibes to Circe.

We meet Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl, who’s survived for years alone in the marshland that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and building an encyclopaedic knowledge of the natural world. But when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the local North Carolina coastal community immediately suspects her and her quiet life in the wild is shattered.

If you enjoyed this, here are more books like Where the Crawdads Sing to read next.

10. Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes

Do you wish you knew more about Greek mythology? If so, Pandora’s Jar is a great choice to read next.

Here, Natalie Haynes, broadcaster, passionate classicist, and bestselling author for fans of Madeline Miller, retells the great mythic sagas with women at their centre.

Putting the female characters on equal footing with their menfolk, the result is a vivid and powerful account of the deeds – and misdeeds – of goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, Athene, and Circe.

It’s not just the goddesses that Natalie Haynes reimagines: away from Mount Olympus, it’s Helen, Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Antigone, and Medea who sing from these pages, not Paris, Agamemnon, Orestes, or Jason.

11. The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

The first book in the Wolf Den trilogy (Book 3 is scheduled to be published in 2023), The Wolf Den is the gripping tale of Amara, the beloved daughter of a doctor in Greece until her father’s sudden death plunged her mother into destitution.

Now, Amara is a slave and prostitute in Pompeii’s notorious Wolf Den brothel. But intelligent and resourceful, and buoyed by the sisterhood she forges with the brothel’s other women, Amara’s spirit isn’t broken.

Amara finds solace in the laughter and hopes they all share… and realises that the city is alive with opportunity, even for the lowest-born slave. But everything in Pompeii has a price. How much will Amara’s freedom cost her?

12. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

If you imagine a Russian spin on Spirited Away, The Bear and the Nightingale would come close. At the edge of the wilderness in this fairytale-like book, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses.

Vasilisa doesn’t mind the cold – she spends the Russian winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales.

The family honours the spirits in these stories, knowing them to protect their homes from evil, but when Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father brings home a new wife who forbids this.

More hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows, and as danger circles, Vasilisa must call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed to protect her family.

For even more books like Circe, retreat into these books about wild nature. You can also read more about Madeline Miller’s novel-in-progress, Persephone, and the upcoming HBO adaptation of Circe.

The post 12 magical books like Circe set in nature and rich in mythology appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

Synopsis | Book Review | Similar Books | Critics | Excerpt | Buy It

The Island of Missing Trees

Set between Cyprus and London, The Island of Missing Trees is a gorgeously woven, deeply emotional book about love, loss, heritage, nature, and belonging.

URL: https://amzn.to/3O1VrD7

Author: Elif Shafak

Editor's Rating:
5

Synopsis

“…if it’s love you’re after, or love you have lost, come to the fig, always the fig.”

Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

It’s 1974 on the island of Cyprus, and two teenagers from opposite sides of a divided land meet at a taverna in the city they call home.

Hidden in a back room amongst garlands of garlic, chili peppers, and fragrant fresh herbs, Kostas and Defne fall deeply in love with each other, even though this is completely forbidden by their feuding families, neighbours, and cultures.

In the centre of the taverna, growing towards the light in a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree that witnesses everything. First, the couple’s hushed, happy meetings and eventually, their silent, surreptitious departures.

The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish.

Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. But as she seeks to detangle years of secrets, she does have one connection to the land of her ancestors: a Ficus Carica which is lovingly tended to in the back garden of their home.

Book review

Set between Cyprus and London, The Island of Missing Trees is a gorgeously woven, deeply emotional book about love, loss, heritage, nature, and belonging.

This was my first book by Elif Shafak, and I adored it. Although I found it a little slow to get started (especially the London chapters), once more of the backstory in Cyprus evolved, I wanted to soak in the novel’s beauty and elegance for as long as I could.

Also, this must be the first book I’ve ever read that features the perspective of a fig tree. It’s just so delicately and thoughtfully crafted.

Worth a read?

If you’re looking for a beautifully-written book that offers an emotional love story and an ode to nature while teaching you some history, I’d wholeheartedly recommend The Island of Missing Trees.

If you love books about trees, you should pick it up even faster.

What the critics say

Similar books to The Island of Missing Trees

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières is a similar book about war, separation, forbidden love, and the history and beauty of the Mediterranean.

Also, like The Overstory by Richard Powers, this book makes it difficult to look at the trees around you in the same way.

For more books like The Island of Missing Trees, you might also like my lists of books about trees, beautifully written books, and books to remind you of the beauty of life.

Book excerpt

Read the first pages of The Island of Missing Trees. Or, see the book on Amazon.

The post Summary and Review: The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

“Trees warp time, or rather create a variety of times: here dense and abrupt, there calm and sinuous.”

When my husband sees the books I’ve picked up from the library, he usually makes a comment along the lines of, seriously, more books about trees?

I love trees: the lemon tree on our balcony which will soon come inside for winter, the Sequoiadendron giganteum in our local park that a Danish philanthropist chose for his private collection, the oak trees I grew up surrounded by in my Sussex farm town… they’re sources of such inspiration, strength, and a reminder of the beauty of life for me. So it’s not surprising that I also love books about trees.

Fortunately for me, a lot of great novels about trees have been published in the last few years – and if you look further back, you can find many classic books singing the praises of humankind’s leafy friends.

To add to my favourite fiction books about nature, here are some of the best fiction books about trees to appreciate one of humankind’s longest-standing companions.

The best fiction books about trees

1. The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

I’m reading The Island of Missing Trees at the moment (update: here’s my review) and it’s so gorgeously written. This must be the first book I’ve ever read that features the perspective of a fig tree, and it’s just so delicately and thoughtfully crafted.

It’s 1974 on the island of Cyprus, and two teenagers from opposite sides of a divided land meet at a tavern in the city they call home. In the centre of the tavern, growing towards the light from a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree that witnesses everything.

Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. But as she seeks to detangle years of secrets, she does have one connection to the land of her ancestors: a Ficus Carica growing in the back garden of their home.

Like Richard Powers’ bestselling The Overstory, this stunning book from 2021 by Elif Shafak makes it difficult to look at the trees around you in the same way.

2. The Overstory by Richard Powers

Oh, how I adore this book. A paean to the natural world, Richard Powers weaves together interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. 

The Overstory is a gateway into the vast, interconnected, and magnificently intricate world that we depend on in so many ways: the world of trees. And it’s one of my most-loved books from the last decade.

“You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes…”

Richard Powers, The Overstory

3. Greenwood by Michael Christie

Greenwood is a superb book. You can think of it as The Overstory’s shy cousin – it hasn’t achieved anywhere near the same attention, but it’s fantastic.

This is Michael Christie’s magnificent generational saga that charts a family’s rise and fall alongside its secrets and inherited crimes, accompanied all the while by one steady presence: trees.

I was slow to read Greenwood after The Overstory. I didn’t think it could be as good, but I really should have had more belief in it: it’s a wonderfully complementary book about trees to read after Powers’ novel.

“Maybe trees do have souls. Which makes wood a kind of flesh. And perhaps instruments of wooden construction sound so pleasing to our ears for this reason: the choral shimmer of a guitar; the heartbeat thump of drums; the mournful wail of violins–we love them because they sound like us.”

Michael Christie, Greenwood

4. The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

There was a wonderful interdisciplinary festival celebrating the intersections between science, nature, and humanity in my local park this summer, with the beautiful story Vaster Than Empires and More Slow by Ursula Le Guin as its inspiration.

Here, I’ve chosen another of Le Guin’s books about trees, The Word for World is Forest. Centuries in the future, Terrans have established a logging colony and military base named “New Tahiti” on a tree-covered planet whose small, green-furred, big-eyed inhabitants have a culture centered on lucid dreaming.

We read how the Terrans’ greed overturns the ancient society, until one fatal act sets rebellion in motion and changes the people of both worlds forever.

5. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Tolkien scholar Matthew Dickerson wrote, “It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of trees in the writings of J. R. R. Tolkien”. Caring about trees is a central part of the world of Tolkien, and the author’s own personality, too.

From Treebeard in the Fangorn Forest to the tall Mallorn trees at the heart of Lothlórien, when you dive into Middle Earth you tumble into a world of ancient, wise, and all-knowing trees.

6. Harry’s Trees by Jon Cohen

In this uplifting tale about love, loss, friendship, and redemption, lifelong lover of trees Harry Crane works as an analyst in a treeless US Forest Service office.

When his wife dies suddenly in an accident, devastated, he makes his way to the remote woods of northeastern Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains, intent on losing himself. But fate intervenes, and the course of Harry’s life suddenly turns – in the direction of a fiercely determined young girl named Oriana.

7. Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Uprooted features the most evil trees on this list. This adored fantasy book from 2016 is the story of Agnieszka, a young woman who loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests, and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

8. Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson

“To enter Damnation Spring, the debut novel by Ash Davidson, is to encounter all the wonder and terror of a great forest,” writes Ron Charles for The Washington Post.

When Colleen Gundersen, a mother and amateur midwife in redwood country, notices an increase in local miscarriages, she believes it’s caused by the pesticides used by the Sanderson Timber Company. The trouble is that this is the employer of her neighbours and her family. That includes her tree-topper husband, Rich, who leaves the house each morning to do a job that both his father and grandfather died doing.

Damnation Spring is a compassionate story of a family whose bonds are tested, but also a community clinging to a vanishing way of life in a Pacific Northwest logging town.

For more wildly beautiful books, you might like my collection of the best books set in nature to imagine life in the wild, as well as my review of my favourite modern Walden, Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin in the Middle Taiga by Sylvain Tesson.

The post The most wildly beautiful fiction books about trees appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.”

Over on Live Wildly, I recently shared my selection of the most beautiful books for nature lovers. However, in that post I made myself stick to non-fiction. There were just so many books I wanted to share. This post is my follow-up, offering an excuse to share my favourite fiction set in nature to help you dream of life in the wild.

Living off-the-grid, foraging, self-sufficiency, following the stars, identifying trees… if you love reading about wild nature in novels (yep, I do, a lot), I’m hoping you’ll find a few new five-star books from my recommendations below. Many of these books are about strong and introspective female main characters and explore grounding themes of nature, simple living, and beauty.

If you’re a fan of books like The Overstory, Where the Crawdads Sing, and The Great Alone, read on for some more of the best fiction books set in nature.

The best fiction set in wild nature

1. To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey

I first thought of adding the author’s bestselling novel The Snow Child to this list, but settled on another of Eowyn Ivey’s books, To the Bright Edge of the World.

It’s an immersive tale of adventure, love, and survival that transports us back to Alaska in the winter of 1885. War hero Colonel Allen Forrester leads a small band of men on an expedition that has been deemed impossible: to venture up the Wolverine River into the vast, untamed Alaska Territory.

Left on her own at Vancouver Barracks, Allen’s newly pregnant wife, Sofie, yearns to travel alongside her husband. Unaware of how much strength and courage the winter will require from her, Sophie – like Allen – is about to uncover truths that will change her life forever. These truths will also change the lives of those who hear their stories long after they’re gone.

2. The Bear by Andrew Krivak

The Bear is a magical, peaceful yet painful book about the last two people left on earth: a father and daughter.

The father teaches the girl everything she needs to know to live close to nature – to hunt, finish, build shelter, forage, and find her way by the stars. But when she’s left to find her way back home alone, everything she’s learned is put to the test. Luckily, she’s guided by an unexpected companion: a bear who teaches her there are lessons all around, if only she’d stop to listen.

If you enjoy reading The Bear, you might also like The Wall by Marlen Haushofer, which has a similar plot (scroll down to the end of this list to read my thoughts).

“The forest was a world of silence. Deep snow had buried all that was in it but the trees, and it looked to her like the world outside her father’s house in seasons when the snow fell there, too, for days at a time and they waited for storms to stop, then built up their own fire, put on snowshoes made of wood and skins, and stepped outside.”

The Bear

3. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Even before I’d finished reading it, I knew Prodigal Summer had become one of my all-time favourite books. It’s one of the best novels set in nature – and one of the best books about women with a deep knowledge of the natural world, be it identifying trees or mosses, discussing the importance of apex predators, or explaining what safe forestry looks like.

“Nannie had asked her once in a letter how she could live up here alone with all the quiet, and that was Deanna’s answer: when human conversation stopped, the world was anything but quiet. She lived with wood thrushes for company.”

Prodigal Summer

4. The Overstory by Richard Powers

A paean to the natural world, Richard Powers weaves together interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The Overstory is a gateway into the vast, interconnected, and magnificently intricate world that we depend on in so many ways: the world of trees.

“You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes…”

The Overstory

5. Greenwood by Michael Christie

If you enjoyed reading The Overstory (and are desperate to read more books about trees), try reading Greenwood next. This is Michael Christie’s magnificent generational saga that charts a family’s rise and fall and its secrets and inherited crimes, accompanied all the while by one steady presence: trees.

“Maybe trees do have souls. Which makes wood a kind of flesh. And perhaps instruments of wooden construction sound so pleasing to our ears for this reason: the choral shimmer of a guitar; the heartbeat thump of drums; the mournful wail of violins–we love them because they sound like us.”

Greenwood

6. Circe by Madeline Miller

This is Madeline Miller’s stunning retelling of the Greek myth of Circe, daughter of the sun god Helios. After disobeying the gods, Circe is banished to the island of Aiaia to live alone in the middle of nowhere, close to the woods and surrounded by nature. Here, it turns out, she will develop more strength than anyone could’ve imagined.

“I learned to plait my hair back, so it would not catch on every twig, and how to tie my skirts at the knee to keep the burrs off. I learned to recognise the different blooming vines and gaudy roses, to spot the shining dragonflies and coiling snakes. I climbed the peaks where the cypresses speared black into the sky, then clambered down to the orchards and vineyards where purple grapes grew thick as coral.”

Circe

7. Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson

“To enter Damnation Spring, the debut novel by Ash Davidson, is to encounter all the wonder and terror of a great forest,” writes Ron Charles for The Washington Post.

When Colleen Gundersen, a mother and amateur midwife in redwood country, notices an increase in local miscarriages, she believes it’s caused by the pesticides used by the Sanderson Timber Company. The trouble is that this is the employer of her neighbours and her family. That includes her tree-topper husband, Rich, who leaves the house each morning to do a job that both his father and grandfather died doing.

Damnation Spring is a compassionate story of a family whose bonds are tested, but also a community clinging to a vanishing way of life in a Pacific Northwest logging town.

8. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

One of the most popular books in the girl in wild nature genre from the last few years (especially with the upcoming film adaptation and Delia Owens being wanted for questioning in a murder), Where the Crawdads Sing is the story of quiet and sensitive Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl.

Kya knows more about the marsh she calls home than anyone else in her North Carolina coastal town, having spent her life finding lessons in the sand and watching the gulls. But when Kya becomes the main suspect in an awful crime, it’s hard to believe the town will ever be on her side. If you enjoy it, here are 9 other books like Where the Crawdads Sing.

Reddit user BigFatBlackCat writes about the book: “This isn’t ground breaking writing, but the author does an incredible job of putting you right into the marsh. I recommend this book for any nature lovers that just want to get wrapped up in a story where nature is its own character.”

“Most of what she knew, she’d learned from the wild. Nature had nurtured, tutored, and protected her when no one else would.”

Where the Crawdads Sing

9. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

The Great Alone is the bestselling story of a city girl who’s forced to learn about the land and fend for herself when her abusive father moves the family to Alaska. She’s surprised to find not only a place where she can thrive in the wild, but also a person she’d like to share that home with.

“Winter tightened its grip on Alaska. The vastness of the landscape dwindled down to the confines of their cabin. The sun rose at quarter past ten in the morning and set only fifteen minutes after the end of the school day. Less than six hours of light a day. Snow fell endlessly, blanketed everything. It piled up in drifts and spun its lace across windowpanes, leaving them nothing to see except themselves.”

10. The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

In a Reddit thread about grounding books with a female lead that focus on nature, simple living, and beautiful landscapes, user chookity_pokpok shares: “The Wall by Marlen Haushofer is exactly what you’re looking for. A woman surviving off the land in the Austrian Alps on her own. It’s beautiful.”

First published in 1963, The Wall narrates a moving story of an ordinary middle-aged woman who wakes one morning to find that everyone else has vanished. Believing this to be the result of a military experiment gone wrong, she begins the terrifying work of survival and self-renewal in nature.

The post 10 of the best novels set in nature to escape into the wild appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

Where the Crawdads Sing turned out to belong to a book category I’ve adored in the last few years – novels about introspective women retreating into nature. For this post, I’ve thought about other novels with similar vibes.

Here are some books like Where the Crawdads Sing that are also about nature, wild spaces, and embracing both your uniqueness and solitude.

If you like these books, you might also like my selection of the best books set in nature to escape into the wilderness.

“Slowly, she unraveled each word of the sentence: ‘There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot.’”

Where the Crawdads Sing

Similar books to Where the Crawdads Sing that are set in nature

1. Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah

Like Where the Crawdads Sing, Glendy Vanderah’s Where the Forest Meets the Stars is about a young woman who adores nature and has an encyclopedic knowledge of it. After losing her mother and battling breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, living alone in a cabin in the woods.

Determined to prove that her hardships have not broken her, Joanna throws herself into her work until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises. Even more mysteriously as the novel unfolds, the child shows Joanna how to love again in this gentle story of companionship, trust, and wild beauty.

Glendy Vanderah also published (in April 2021) The Light Through the Leaves – another beautiful novel of love, loss, and self-discovery that similarly shows love for time alone in the wilderness.

2. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

“The dawn chorus was a whistling roar by now, the sound of a thousand males calling out love to a thousand silent females ready to choose and make the world new.”

Prodigal Summer

Prodigal Summer is one of my all-time favourite books. Rather than having any big plot points or revelations, it’s a novel about life – and the slow unwinding of a summer. This sets it apart from the “whodunnit” storyline of Where the Crawdads Sing.

That said, it’s a beautiful story of self-sufficient women living life their way in nature, in this case the Appalachian mountains, which overlaps with the nature-loving protagonist of Delia Owens’ novel, Kya Clark.

3. The Middle of Somewhere by Sonya Yoerg

The Middle of Somewhere was another book I read during burnout. It’s easy to read in a weekend and offers a welcome change of scenery – the John Muir Trail in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Weighed down by emotional baggage as much as her backpack, widowed Liz Kroft heads deep into the wilderness for the solitude she craves. That solitude is interrupted when her boyfriend, Dante, decides to tag along, but as two strange brothers appear on the trail, it’s not long until she’s glad of the protective companionship.

4. The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah

“… home was not just a cabin in a deep woods that overlooked a placid cove. Home was a state of mind, the peace that came from being who you were and living an honest life.”

The Great Alone

The Great Alone is one of the most frequently recommended books for readers who loved Where the Crawdads Sing and has a similarly impressive reputation.

In this bestseller, Kristin Hannah tells the story of a desperate family seeking a new beginning in the isolated Alaskan wilderness, only to find that their unpredictable environment is less threatening than the behavior of people within it.

5. Wild: A Journey From Lost to Found by Cheryl Strayed

“It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.“

Wild: A Journey From Lost to Found

How can I not mention Wild? Cheryl Strayed’s memoir of her time hiking the Pacific Crest Trail to come to terms with life and loss is essential reading if you love spending time in nature alone.

6. All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood

All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is a beautiful and provocative love story between two unlikely people. With time, their relationship elevates them above their lives in the Midwest: as the daughter of a drug dealer and a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold.

Over on Reddit, abcmama89 writes, “one of my all time favorite books, started rereading for at least the 3rd time on Monday and just hit page 300. I will finish this today, had to put it down because I am crying at work.”

7. Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe was another book I ignored the memo on, finally read, and have since recommended to everyone. After unleashing magic that she never believed she could be capable of, Circe, the daughter of Helios, is banished to the island of Aiaia.

Rather than acting as her prison, Aiaia provides her sanctuary. Circe’s days become focused on honing the art of pharmaka – the magic of herbs – as she forages, picks, blends, brews, and experiments with what she finds. Her island makes for the perfect retreat for us as reader, too. If you loved reading Circe, here are 7 similar books about nature and mythology.

8. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

“Don’t settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.”

Into the Wild

Into the Wild is one of the classic tales of leaving the urban world for the wilderness. After giving away his savings and most of his possessions, 22-year-old Chris McCandless disappeared in April 1992 into the Alaskan wilderness in search of a raw, transcendent experience. This is Jon Krakauer’s story of his haunting and mysterious disappearance.

9. The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert

“From coast to coast, Americans of every conceivable background had looked up at Eustace Conway on his horse and said wistfully, ‘I wish I could do what you’re doing.’ And to every last citizen, Eustace had replied, ‘You can.’”

The Last American Man

If you daydream about escaping into the woods to live in a cabin by a stream, you’ll probably love reading The Last American Man. Although it reads like fiction at times, toeing the line between man and myth, it’s Elizabeth Gilbert’s biography of Eustace Conway who in 1977, at the age of seventeen, left his family’s comfortable suburban home to move to the Appalachian Mountains.

For more than two decades he has lived there, making fire with sticks, wearing skins from animals he has trapped, and trying to convince Americans to give up their materialistic lifestyles and return with him back to nature.

10. Educated by Tara Westover

This bestselling memoir is the story of a girl who, despite being kept out of school, finds a way to leave her Mormon anti-government survivalist family and earn a PhD from Cambridge University. Like Where the Crawdads Sing, Educated has similar vibes of introspection, self-discovery, and finding your way as an outsider.

As Alec MacGillis writes for The New York Times, “By the end, Westover has somehow managed not only to capture her unsurpassably exceptional upbringing, but to make her current situation seem not so exceptional at all, and resonant for many others.”

The post 10 books like Where the Crawdads Sing set in nature appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

Cottagecore (thank the internet for the name) has ascended during covid-19 as more of us have turned to sourdough, craft projects, and container vegetable planting during months at home. Many of us have also just yearned for more comfort, simplicity, and wholesome moments.

Here are some of my favourite beautiful books with cottagecore vibes to imagine a slow-paced, romanticised life close to nature with an abundance of simple pleasures. With both fiction and non-fiction recommendations, fill your reading list with books to inspire your cottagecore life and make more of it a reality.

The cottagecore reading list

1. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Included in the beautifully illustrated Puffin in Bloom series, this cherished feel-good classic features everyone’s favourite red-headed orphan, Anne Shirley. It’s a wholesome, comforting read that feels like a warm hug in a book.

2. How to be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery

I read How to Be a Good Creature a few years ago and loved it. It’s a wholesome, beautifully illustrated look at the joy and companionship that animals bring us in all shapes and sizes, told by Sy Montgomery as a memoir of her life with animals.

3. The Way Through the Woods: On Mushrooms and Mourning by Long Litt Woon

There are plenty of memoirs surging up bestseller lists by writers who have found their way through grief by hiking, gardening, or the like. But mushroom foraging? That’s a new one to me.

When Long Litt Woon loses her husband of 32 years to an unexpected death, she is utterly bereft. As an immigrant in her country, she feels lost and disoriented before she wanders off deep into the woods with mushroom hunters and is taught how to see clearly what is all around her, make distinctions, take educated risks, and truly pay attention to nature. The Way Through The Woods shares her story of returning to life and to living through foraging.

For an even deeper exploration of mushrooms, read Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures by Merlin Sheldrake.

4. Embroidered Wild Flowers: Patterns Inspired by Field and Forest by Kazuko Aoki

Before this year, the last time I picked up a needle for anything more than repairing clothes was textiles class at school. But I’ve returned to the quiet joy of making things with needle and thread via a small embroidery project – and now I’m looking for any excuse to embroider rows of wild flowers on pillowcases and any other innocent piece of fabric lying around.

As inspiration, Kazuko Aoki’s books caught my eye – as a textile artist and avid gardener, she shares stunningly delicate patterns of wildflowers in Embroidered Wild Flowers. In another book, The Embroidered Garden, she shares home garden favourites.

5. The Complete Brambly Hedge by Jill Barklem

Like The Wild in the Willows and Beatrix Potter, I grew up reading Brambly Hedge – one of the archetypal English children’s books.

Since the first books were published in 1980, the ethos of Brambly Hedge’s community spirit, seasonal cooking, and sustainability is perhaps more relevant in today’s world than ever before. Here’s the complete edition to peruse Jill Barklem’s wonderful illustrations and stories of life in the hedgerow.

6. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer is one of the most magical nature writers I’ve read in the last few years. Described as “a hymn of love to the world” by Elizabeth Gilbert, Braiding Sweetgrass is her celebration of indigenous wisdom and the beauty of nature.

Robin Wall Kimmerer’s earlier book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, is also stunning.

8. The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs by Tristan Gooley

Heading out into nature and hearing the chatter of birds, noticing the rustle of a deer in the forest, or observing a tree shaped by the wind is a balm for the soul. But what does it all mean? Tristan Gooley is my go-to recommendation for learning how to read the signs and secrets of the natural world.

9. Eat What You Grow: How to Have an Undemanding Edible Garden That Is Both Beautiful and Productive by Alys Fowler

Last summer in quarantine at my Dad’s house in England was my year for growing tomatoes, lettuce, and aubergine. Now in Copenhagen, I’m getting more creative. My pea seedlings are shooting up, my spinach is nearly ready for thinning, and I have carrot seedlings and radishes joyfully cohabiting.

As a guide to nurturing a productive and beautiful garden, Alys Fowler released this helpful guide in Spring 2021. For other vegetable gardening books that are both knowledgeable and a joy to read, turn to James Wong’s Homegrown Revolution or The Urban Vegetable Patch: A Modern Guide to Growing Sustainably, Whatever Your Space by Grace Paul.

10. The Wild Iris by Louise Glück

From Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Louise Glück, The Wild Iris is a stunningly beautiful collection of poems that encompasses the natural, human, and spiritual realms.

11. The Wind in The Willows by Kenneth Grahame

The Wind in the Willows has perfect cottagecore vibes – quaint cottages, talking frogs and badgers, and a summer in bloom. I love Robert Ingpen’s illustrations in the popular Sterling Illustrated Classics series.

12. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

The bestselling novel about a young girl’s journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the author of The Invention of Wings. 

13. Pilu of the Woods by Mai K. Nguyen

I wanted to add a graphic novel to this list, and Pilu of the Woods earned its place. It’s the gentle story of Willow, who loves the woods near her house.

Unlike her turbulent emotions which she tries to keep locked away, the woods are calm and quiet and provide a sanctuary that one day becomes all too tempting to run away into. There, she meets Pilu, a lost tree spirit who can’t find her way back home. What follows is a growing friendship and shared mission through their natural surroundings.

14. Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim

The Enchanted April is one of the books I recommend most on the blog, but Elizabeth and Her German Garden also makes for a great read with relaxing summer garden vibes.

15. Make Thrift Mend: Stitch, Patch, Darn, Plant-Dye & Love Your Wardrobe by Katrina Rodabaugh

Make your clothes last with Make Thrift Mend. Slow fashion guru Katrina Rodabaugh follows her bestselling book, Mending Matters, with a comprehensive guide to building and keeping a sustainable wardrobe you love. 

16. Homestead Kitchen by Eivin Kilcher and Eve Kilcher

Featuring homesteaders and co-stars of Discovery’s Alaska: The Last Frontier, this cookbook and self-reliance guide by Eve and Eivin Kilcher offers appealing recipes for anyone looking to live more sustainably and enjoy a healthy diet, regardless of where and what they call home.

17. The Simple Home by Rhonda Hetzel

I recently included Down to Earth on my list of books for burnout, but The Simple Home is another lovely book by Australian writer and simple living role model Rhonda Hetzel.

18. Botanicum by Katie Scott and Kathy Willis

As soon as I came across the cover of Botanicum from Big Picture Press’s Welcome to the Museum series, I fell in love with the stunning illustrations by Katie Scott. Offering a feast of botanical knowledge, it’s a spellbinding book to browse while learning something new about our beautiful world.

19. Batch by Joel MacCharles and Dana Harrison

To fuel your self-sufficiency dreams, Batch by Joel MacCharles and Dana Harrison offers more than 200 recipes, tips, and techniques for a well-preserved kitchen. From fermenting to canning, dehydration, and smoking, learn how to make your food last.

20. The Modern Herbal Dispensatory: A Medicine-Making Guide by Thomas Easley

If you want to tell your chamomile from your St. John’s Wort, add a copy of The Modern Herbal Dispensatory to your household library. It’s the perfect companion to books about foraging and growing your own garden, whether beside a cottage, on several acres, or in a window box.

The post 20 cottagecore books to imagine a simple, cozy life in nature appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

“Grief is the terrible reminder of the depths of our love and, like love, grief is non-negotiable. There is a vastness to grief that overwhelms our minuscule selves”. – Nick Cave

Things fall apart. We grieve and feel a deep well of hurt inside of us. We feel stuck, wondering if this is just how it will be from now on. But then, ever so slowly, we start to put ourselves back together again. We look at where we are and we take stock. Day by day, we rebuild a life; albeit a very different one from before. We survive.

Poorna Bell knows the lines and contours of the pain of grieving. Her memoir, In Search of Silence, is a powerful story of love, loss, and rebuilding a life on new ground. It starts with the saddest of endings and new beginnings: her husband, Rob, taking his own life after years of addiction and depression.

Poorna knows that she can’t carry on the same life in London. Nor can she continue business as usual in the leadership team of HuffPost UK.

“There comes a point, whether through death, loss, illness or heartbreak, when you are forced to take inventory of your life”, writes Poorna. “I loved my life in London, but there were parts of it I wasn’t happy with, that I needed to question.”

“You look about your life, and you realise that you don’t recognise the things in it. They no longer fit the person you are.”

Instead of continuing as before, Poorna ponders the coordinates where she can think about building a new life. Cutting across remote landscapes in India, New Zealand and Britain, Poorna questions why we seek other people to fix what’s inside of us – and builds her own authentic healing pathway instead.

“It was not as simple as leaving my current life and buggering off around the world. Unless you are good at compartmentalising or medicating your life, your troubles, your sadness, your disappointments do not operate to postcodes, latitudes or longitudes.”

Poorna is conscious of the comparisons to Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller about travelling for self-discovery (a book that I personally think gets a bad rep, Elizabeth Gilbert’s a wonderful author).

Yet Poorna’s trip is less about escape and more about return, including to India, as one place she calls home, and to New Zealand, where her late husband grew up and his family live. She realises that her adventures can’t be a temporary distraction or way to pacify her, even if they could be.

“I didn’t need spiritual awakening. I didn’t need travel to save me or show me how lucky I was. This was about me taking my life in my own hands and willing this new version of myself into existence.”

Along the way, Poorna retreats into nature. She relishes “the frequency that truly peaceful places emit, their sound created in the lapping of waves and the language of birds”. It’s in these places that she feels at home and at peace.

“The reason I love trekking, or rather, being around mountains, is that there is no hiding from my bullshit. I can’t get on my phone to distract me from an uncomfortable thought. There is a lot of thinking to do, and it happens at its own pace and timeline”.

Poorna shares something that all of us who love the outdoors can relate to: “Being here, in this landscape, forces a change. In the spaces of silence we finally hear a voice that is our own. It comes unbidden, softly, willingly, not through trauma or coaxed through the words of a therapist or a friend delivering tough love”.

She continues with one of my favourite quotes from the book:

“Mountains offer a gentler path to understanding yourself, without the need for a catastrophe.”

As she wills the new version of herself into existence, one word strikes loud and clear in the quiet headspace she finds: writer.

“I always knew I was going to become a writer, not because I had a romantic notion of bashing away on a typewriter with pencils twisted in my hair, but because, as early as I can remember, it’s what I did.

In the same way that reading books was a conduit into wonderful new worlds that I could go and live in for a while, where I trod on their soil and breathed their air, writing helped me articulate how I related to the world.”

By escaping the echo chamber of corporate London and following where her past, present and future selves lead her, Poorna finds the frequency of her own voice. She finds where she wants to be.

“I didn’t expect to fix my sadness, but I wanted to create an inner reservoir of calm and quiet that I could draw on whenever I was in need”, writes Poorna, channelling my go-to Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius.

Poorna also finds a new understanding of love, far from narrow definitions restricted to romantic couplings:

“I understand why people think the only thing that can fix a heart broken by love is another love equal or greater in magnitude. But that doesn’t have to come from just one other person. When you think about all of the love you will ever experience in your lifetime, including that which you have for yourself, that is still an immense foundation to build your life on.”

In Search of Silence teaches us to escape the echo chambers that fog up our view of who we are and how we wish to spend our lives. It gives us a more expansive definition of love, one that values self-love no lower than any other form. It reminds us that things end and things begin. And it comes down to asking these questions:

“Are the lives we have the ones we want, or the ones we felt pressured to have? Do we really want those things, or would we have done things differently? What is our own thought, our own hope, and what is the echo of everyone else’s?”

As of May 2019, In Search of Silence is available now to pick up, curl up with, lose yourself in, and – like all great stories – come out slightly different on the other side of.

The post Taking inventory of your life after loss and heartbreak with Poorna Bell’s In Search of Silence appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

“You can buy a man’s hours off him, you can steal his days from him, or you can rob him of his whole life, but no one can take away from any man so much as a single moment. That’s the way it is.”

It was nearly one year ago when I first read A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler. The ski season was about to kick in, snow was falling outside, and it was an ideal day to stay curled up with a book in my Swiss mountain town.

It was one of the most starkly and quietly beautiful books I’ve ever read.

How it fell into my hands added to its meaning. My boyfriend and I had taken a break from our relationship since the summer, and we’d only just decided to meet up with each other. Over lunch, he passed me a copy of A Whole Life.

He’d read it, I hadn’t, and I was caught between reading it slowly and tearing through it. I tried to balance somewhere between the two and read it on that snowy weekend (it’s not a very long book). I knew why he had given it to me. It was my perfect book. 

It’s the story of Andreas Egger, a man who knows every path, contour and secret of his mountains in the Austrian Alps. He grew up with them and is closer to them than to any other being. Without them, he wouldn’t quite be Andreas Egger.

A Whole Life is about a life lived simply, quietly and humbly by the mountains. It’s a story of just one unremarkable existence that is nonetheless extraordinary.

“He couldn’t remember where he had come from, and ultimately he didn’t know where he would go. But he could look back without regret on the time in between, his life, with a full-throated laugh and utter amazement.”

The book design is beautiful – it’s another book with mountains on the cover, like my recent read Silence: In the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge – and everything about the writing delighted me. Heartbreaking, yes, but perfect. A Whole Life brought me to tears (at least once).

If you want to retreat into a cosy reading nook and set your imagination off into the mountains, get a copy of A Whole Life.

It’s a book for finding beauty and meaning in the little things, spending time in nature, experiencing loss, rebuilding a life, and simply living a life. See where the adventure takes you, both in the book and in your own life.

The post A perfect book about life, loss, and the mountains: A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers

Yes, we’ve all looked up at the stars before. And calling it therapy could seem silly. But it’s something that I appreciated being reminded of. It’s so easy to forget about the stars.

I feel very lucky to have my walk home from work. When it gets dark early in winter, I have the privilege of an unspoilt nighttime panorama with Orion above me.

After reading Tools of Titans, I now pay a bit more attention. I try to sit out on my balcony at night more often, or just look out the window after turning the lights off. I sit, admire, and ponder. It’s my nightly free therapy session. Sometimes I need a reminder to do it and pay proper attention, but when I do, it’s absolutely worth it.

As BJ Miller says in Tools of Titans:

When you are struggling with just about anything, look up. Just ponder the night sky for a minute and realize that we’re all on the same planet at the same time. As far as we can tell, we’re the only planet with life like ours on it anywhere nearby. Then you start looking at the stars, and you realize that the light hitting your eye is ancient, [some of the] stars that you’re seeing, they no longer exist by the time that the light gets to you.

He adds,

Ed Cooke, the Memory Champion and Co-founder of Memrise (who I’ve been so impressed by for years), shares something similar in Tools of Titans:

I’d just think, ‘Oh, everything feels terrible and awful. It’s all gone to shit.’ Then I’d [consider], ‘But if you think about it, the stars are really far away,’ then you try to imagine the world from the stars. Then you sort of zoom in and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s this tiny little character there for a fragment of time worrying about X.’

Looking up at the stars and thinking about our place in the cosmos doesn’t come with a price tag. If you can see the sky it’s accessible, and you don’t need to do anything to turn the stars on. You don’t even need to travel. All you need is a clear enough day and the motivation to go or look outside.

Like Tim Ferriss says, “The effects are disproportionate to the effort”. The stars are one of nature’s finest beauties and they’re just out there waiting for us to admire them.

The post Stargazing as therapy: reminders to look up at the night sky from Tim Ferriss, BJ Miller, Ed Cooke appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.

Walden

More than once I’ve googled modern-day walden to see what comes up (not too much, it seems, although “The Terror and Tedium of Living Like Thoreau” is worth a read). So, after Google disappointed slightly, I decided to put my brain to use.

What does my own modern-day Walden look like? Am I already living it? Are there any small choices I can make to bring it closer?

During my pondering, it quickly became clear that a lot of my choices in the last few years have brought me closer to my personal Walden. I had already incorporated my favourite parts of the book into my life.

I wonder, how might my life today be different if I had read different books? How has the life I’ve created today been inspired by those I have read? Or have they just helped me to define what I should prioritise? Whatever the reason, I’m glad of it.

Here’s an exploration of my personal Walden and the building blocks of choices and priorities that it consists of.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. – Walden

1. Being in nature

Friluftsliv is a Norwegian word that often makes its way onto those beautiful words that can’t be translated lists. It means, or so I’m told, living in tune with nature.

I don’t quite live in the woods, and I think that would probably be one step too far, but I do live in a very small Swiss town with plenty of trees around. And lots of hiking routes (albeit ones I should make more consistent use of). Being able to look outside and see the colours of the season change, snow gather on the mountains, and cow bells jingle nearby is a real pleasure.

I want to read more books about people who escape from the hustle and bustle to actually live in the woods – successfully. Alexander Armstrong in his autobiographical Land of the Midnight Sun: My Arctic Adventures describes his brief stay with one couple doing the whole works (building the cabin, hunting for food, making jam) in Canada, but I haven’t come across many similar stories in non-fiction.

We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. ― Walden

2. Having everything I need

I arrived in Switzerland in August 2015 with my everyday backpack and a hand luggage suitcase. I’m trying to keep my belongings to a minimum, but mostly to keep clutter out. It’s easier said than done, but I like everything I own to have some sort of meaning to me.

When I head out on an adventure, be it to the mountains or to the Arctic Circle, it’s usually just the same bag on my back. It’s funny how the same things tend to suffice for a day or so or two weeks.

All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. – Walden

3. Keeping a small library

Rather surprisingly, this is where my own modern Walden falls slightly short. I hardly have any real books here with me in Switzerland – I usually read them on my Kindle instead.

No matter how much I love proper books, I don’t want to end up with hundreds of books over here: it’s just too heavy and not at all portable. Maybe Thoreau would agree with me on this. But I would like to bring some of my real favourite books over here. I do miss those.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. ― Walden

Books I have here in Switzerland:

Penguin Little Black Classics –

• Socrates’ Defence – Plato
• Gooseberries – Anton Chekhov
• How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing – Michel de Montaigne
• Lips too chilled – Matsuo Bashō
• The Meek One – Fyodor Dostoevsky

• A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
• Nada – Carmen Laforet
• By Heart (poetry anthology) – edited by Ted Hughes
• Sounds Good (poetry anthology) – edited by Christopher Reid
• Short and Sweet (poetry anthology) – edited by Simon Armitage
• Aeneid Book VI – Seamus Heaney
• Essential German Grammar – Martin Durrell
• The Rap Year Book – Shea Serrano

4. Oh, peace and quiet

Complete silence is something I long for during my day at work. My office is open plan, packed with people, and full of noise and distractions. Coming home, the only noise I hear is what I create. That and a few cowbells and occasional alphorn practice somewhere in the town.

It’s blissful. And it means that when I sit down to write in the mornings and some evenings, there are hardly any distractions to deal with. Any barrier I come up against is usually in my head. And there’s a good cup of coffee to help with that.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. ― Walden

5. Being able to sit back and look at the sky

I love how my windows show such a wide expanse of sky. It’s beautiful to watch how it changes across a day, a month, and a season.

“People who are exposed to natural scenes aren’t just happier or more comfortable; the very building blocks of their physiological well-being also respond positively.” – Adam Alter, The Atlantic: “How Nature Resets Our Minds and Bodies”

6. And a healthy dose of the sublime

It’s not just the sky that I find myself monitoring day by day, it’s the mountains too. I look at them first thing in the morning and see what the visibility is like, what colour the sky is around them, what clouds are surrounding them. How much snow is there? How bright is the light shining on them?

I wonder if living in a mountain town might guarantee a slowly developing friendship with the local mountains; one with constant check-ins and curious and kind looks out of the window.

The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. – Walden

What’s your Walden?

The post On living like Thoreau (or creating your modern version of Walden) appeared first on Tolstoy Therapy.