10 Books I Have To Read Before I Can Read More Books
I have a problem. I can't stop buying books. Just this past weekend I went to three separate bookshops and purchased seven books. SEVEN!
The other morning I set my coffee cup down, picked up my copy of The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, and exclaimed, "I need to read. I need to read this book because I have to read all the other books I bought before I buy more books."
As if I have no control over it. As if some outside force takes over anytime I'm even in the vicinity of a bookshop. As if I stand idly by while piles of books somehow find their way into my shopping bag.
And don't even get me started on all the books I bought before the books I just bought. I told you. I have a problem.
But maybe, just maybe, if I tell you about the books I've recently acquired, it will motivate me to read them all before magically ending up with more.
If nothing else, it will bring me joy to share with you some things that have recently brought me joy. So let's get to it, shall we?
10 Books I Have To Read Before I Can Read More Books
Small Fires by Rebecca May Johnson
Why I Bought This Book
- It was on the 50% off rack at my favorite local bookshop, Golden Hour Books.
- The author's name is Rebecca and I'm obviously obsessed with myself.
- The first sentence of the first chapter reads, I begin on the sofa unable to find a reason to get up; I am rescued by a pumpkin and by apron strings.
- If that sentence alone isn't enough of a reason, I was also moved by the poem by Sophie Collins in the epigraph:
The village is always on fire.
Men stay away from the kitchens,
take up in outhouses with concrete floors,
while the women – soot in their hair –
initiate the flames into their small routines. - Best of all, when Angie, the bookshop owner, was ringing me up, she told me that the book is one of her favorites and how she loves the way the author weaves food writing with literature.
SOLD!
Synopsis
This joyful, revelatory work of memory and meditation both complicates and electrifies life in the kitchen.
Why do we cook? Is it just to feed ourselves and others? Or is there something more revolutionary going on?
In Small Fires, Rebecca May Johnson reinvents cooking -- that simple act of rolling up our sleeves, wielding a knife, spattering red hot sauce on our books -- as a way of experiencing ourselves and the world. Cooking is thinking: about the liberating constraint of tying apron strings; the transformative dynamics of shared meals; the meaning of appetite and bodily pleasure; the wild subversiveness of the recipe, beyond words or control.
Small Fires shows us the radical potential of the thing we do every day: the power of small fires burning everywhere.
No Less Strange or Wonderful by A. Kendra Greene
Why I Bought This Book
- The cover art is great (I always judge a book by its cover). As are the illustrations incorporated throughout the book.
- When deciding whether I'm interested in a book, I do a few things:
- I judge the cover.
- I read the synopsis.
- I flip through and read the writing. If I like it, I buy it.
- The first chapter I flipped to while investigating this book is titled, "People Lie To Giraffe."
- The second chapter I stumbled upon is titled, "Ted Cruz Is a Sentient Bag of Wasps."
SOLD!
Synopsis
Celebrated author and artist A. Kendra Greene's No Less Strange or Wonderful is a brilliant and generous meditation--on the complex wonder of being alive, on how to pay attention to even the tiniest (sometimes strangest) details that glitter with insight, whimsy, and deep humanity, if only we'd really look.
In twenty-six sparkling essays, illuminated through both text and image, Greene is trying to make sense--of anything, really--but especially the things that matter most in life: love, connection, death, grief, the universe, meaning, nothingness, and everythingness. Through a series of encounters with strangers, children, and animals, the wild merges with the domestic; the everyday meets the sublime. Each essay returns readers to our smallest moments and our largest ones in a book that makes us realize--through its exuberant language, its playful curation, and its delightful associative leapfrogging--that they are, in fact, one in the same.
Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, PhD
Unmasking Autism
Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price, PhD
Why I Bought This Book
- I'm autistic and like to read about my brain.
- I've heard good things about this book.
- I'm currently reading Dr. Price's book Laziness Does Not Exist and like his writing style.
SOLD!
Synopsis
For every visibly Autistic person you meet, there are countless “masked” Autistic people who pass as neurotypical. Masking is a common coping mechanism in which Autistic people hide their identifiably Autistic traits in order to fit in with societal norms, adopting a superficial personality at the expense of their mental health. This can include suppressing harmless stims, papering over communication challenges by presenting as unassuming and mild-mannered, and forcing themselves into situations that cause severe anxiety, all so they aren’t seen as needy or “odd.”
In Unmasking Autism, Dr. Devon Price shares his personal experience with masking and blends history, social science research, prescriptions, and personal profiles to tell a story of neurodivergence that has thus far been dominated by those on the outside looking in. For Dr. Price and many others, Autism is a deep source of uniqueness and beauty. Unfortunately, living in a neurotypical world means it can also be a source of incredible alienation and pain. Most masked Autistic individuals struggle for decades before discovering who they truly are. They are also more likely to be marginalized in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and other factors, which contributes to their suffering and invisibility. Dr. Price lays the groundwork for unmasking and offers exercises that encourage self-expression, including:
• Celebrating special interests
• Cultivating Autistic relationships
• Reframing Autistic stereotypes
• And rediscovering your values
It’s time to honor the needs, diversity, and unique strengths of Autistic people so that they no longer have to mask—and it’s time for greater public acceptance and accommodation of difference. In embracing neurodiversity, we can all reap the rewards of nonconformity and learn to live authentically, Autistic and neurotypical people alike.
Pasta for Nightingales by Giovanni Pietro Olina and Cassiano Dal Pozzo
Pasta for Nightingales
A 17th-Century Handbook of Bird-Care and Folklore by Giovanni Pietro Olina and Cassiano Dal Pozzo
Why I Bought This Book
- It seems really cool.
- The forward is by an author I have not read but have heard good things about.
- To be honest, I probably won't read this book cover to cover, all at once. I'll most likely pull it out when I have guests over and read passages at random. I included it on this list so you too can learn all about 17th century bird-care and folklore. You’re welcome.
SOLD!
Synopsis
The first-ever English translation of a seventeenth-century ornithology text, complete with historic watercolor illustrations
This beautifully illustrated book brings together the newly commissioned, first-ever English translation of one of the earliest studies in ornithology with the original watercolors, now part of the British Royal Collection, that provided the inspiration for its engraved illustrations. The watercolors, created for the "Paper Museum" of the seventeenth-century scholar and art collector Cassiano dal Pozzo, are here combined with the translated text of amateur naturalist Pietro Olina's original Uccelliera of 1622 to create a new work that provides a fascinating glimpse of ornithology's earliest days--a period when folklore informed natural history studies as much as science did.
With meditations on the "epileptic" robin redbreast and a recipe for chickpea pasta meant to satisfy a nightingale and keep it in song, this work is an enchanting re-presentation of natural history literature. Retaining the character of Olina's original design, this unique book describes over forty much-loved species, and is sure to please bird watchers, naturalists, and antiquarian book lovers alike.
Barnheart by Jenna Woginrich
Barnheart
The Incurable Longing For a Farm of One's Own: a memoir by Jenna Woginrich
Why I Bought This Book
- It’s a $5 used book.
- The author is from upstate New York. She was a 20-something blogger when the book was published in 2011. I was a 20-something blogger living in upstate New York in 2011. Is she me? Am I her? Did I black out and write a memoir about starting a farm? 2011 was a crazy year. You never know.
- There's a chapter called "Sheep 101."
SOLD!
Synopsis
With humor and poise, Jenna Woginrich describes her adventurous self-education in homesteading. Poignant offbeat observations on learning to farm by trial and error punctuate the story of her quest to find a permanent home for herself and her livestock: chickens, geese, sheep, ducks, rabbits, a goat, and a turkey. Alone and on a shoestring budget, Woginrich takes on cranky neighbors and small-town politics without ever losing her trademark humility or comedic style.
And You May Find Yourself by Sari Botton
And You May Find Yourself...
Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo by Sari Botton
Why I Bought This Book
- I enjoy the Talking Heads reference in the title.
- I'm not a Gen-Xer but relate to finding myself later in life: I was diagnosed with autism, ADHD and OCD in my early 30s.
- The title of the introduction is "Greetings from Weirdville."
- The author's reason for becoming a writer – she "felt like a weirdo" – is similar to my own reason for becoming a writer.
- The author lives in the town where I purchased the book (Rough Draft Books in Kingston, NY).
- The poem "Why Bother" by Sean Thomas Dougherty is included in the epigraph:
Because right now there is someone
out there with
a wound in the exact shape
of your words.
SOLD!
Synopsis
And You May Find Yourself... by Gen-X author Sari Botton, is about "finding" yourself later in life-after first getting lost in all the wrong places. As Botton discovers, the wrong places famously include her own self-suppression and misguided efforts to please others (mostly men). In a series of candid, reflective, sometimes humorous essays, Botton describes coming to feminism and self-actualization as an older person, second (and third and fourth) chances-and how maybe it's never too late to find your way...assuming you're lucky enough to live long.
The Penelopiad
Why I Bought This Book
- I'm on a quest to read all of Margaret Atwood's books because
- I'm seeing her at an event soon.
- She could write about paint and I'd read it.
- So far I've read The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments, Alias Grace, and Bodily Harm. I'm halfway through The Blind Assassin.
- I love that this is a retelling of a classic from the woman's perspective.
- The first sentence of the first chapter reads, "Now that I'm dead I know everything."
SOLD!
Synopsis
A fresh take on what follows Homer's The Odyssey by the international best-selling author of The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood.
Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband's return.
Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story - a tale of lust, greed and murder.
All The Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth
Why I Bought This Book
- "To The Lighthouse" by Virgina Woolf has been on my to-read list for a while.
- Apparently this book by Katharine Smyth has been on my to-read list for a while as well. When I went to add it to my Goodreads "Want to Read" list, it showed that I had already added it in January, 2023.
- The author writes about grieving her father, something I can relate to.
SOLD!
Synopsis
Katharine Smyth was a student at Oxford when she first read Virginia Woolf's modernist masterpiece To the Lighthouse in the comfort of an English sitting room, and in the companionable silence she shared with her father. After his death--a calamity that claimed her favorite person--she returned to that beloved novel as a way of wrestling with his memory and understanding her own grief.
Smyth's story moves between the New England of her childhood and Woolf's Cornish shores and Bloomsbury squares, exploring universal questions about family, loss, and homecoming. Through her inventive, highly personal reading of To the Lighthouse, and her artful adaptation of its groundbreaking structure, Smyth guides us toward a new vision of Woolf's most demanding and rewarding novel--and crafts an elegant reminder of literature's ability to clarify and console.
Braiding memoir, literary criticism, and biography, All the Lives We Ever Lived is a wholly original debut: a love letter from a daughter to her father, and from a reader to her most cherished author.
The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Why I Bought This Book
- Another inexpensive, used book.
- It's a writer writing about words. Enough said.
SOLD!
Synopsis
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.
As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.
Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.
On Trails by Robert Moor
Why I Bought This Book
- I was in a new-to-me independent bookshop (Good Books in Cornwall, NY) and I had to purchase at least one book. It's the law.
- The synopsis reminded me of another book I read and loved: "Leave Only Footprints" by Conor Knighton
- I knew Jeff would enjoy this book as well.
SOLD!
Synopsis
While thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor began to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our feet: How do they form? Why do some improve over time while others fade? What makes us follow or strike off on our own? Over the course of seven years, Moor traveled the globe, exploring trails of all kinds, from the miniscule to the massive. He learned the tricks of master trail-builders, hunted down long-lost Cherokee trails, and traced the origins of our road networks and the Internet. In each chapter, Moor interweaves his adventures with findings from science, history, philosophy, and nature writing.
Throughout, Moor reveals how this single topic—the oft-overlooked trail—sheds new light on a wealth of age-old questions: How does order emerge out of chaos? How did animals first crawl forth from the seas and spread across continents? How has humanity’s relationship with nature and technology shaped world around us? And, ultimately, how does each of us pick a path through life?
Moor has the essayist’s gift for making new connections, the adventurer’s love for paths untaken, and the philosopher’s knack for asking big questions. With a breathtaking arc that spans from the dawn of animal life to the digital era, On Trails is a book that makes us see our world, our history, our species, and our ways of life anew.
Find More Books on Bookshop.org
So, that’s my reading list for the rest of 2025! I hope you'll join me in reading one or all of them. Feel free to check out the rest of the books on my Bookshop and use the search bar below to search for your own interests. Let’s stop ordering books from Amazon and support independent bookstores!
As always, thank you for reading!
♥︎♥︎♥︎
