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Susannah Felts

NonfictionNatureLifestylesEnvironment

The Language of Trees

Review by Susannah Felts

On her website, Irish artist Katie Holten asks, “What is the language we need to live right now? How can we learn to be better lovers of the world?” One of her answers is an innovative—and downloadable!—tree alphabet font: For each letter, she has drawn a corresponding tree.

This project provides the stunning visual component for The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape, “a love letter to our vanishing world,” in which Holten gathers a diverse range of writing celebrating and reflecting on all things arboreal. There are recipes for acorn flour and gall ink, words from Plato and Radiohead, poems by Ada Limon and Camille Dungy, musings on cacao and catalpa trees, and so much more—all of it printed first in English and then in Holten’s tree alphabet, creating visual forests that represent the book’s words. I’ve never seen anything remotely like this work of art and was nodding along to the introduction by poet Ross Gay: “Can I tell you how batshit beautiful I find this? Can I tell you how each piece . . . each essay or poem or song becoming a forest or orchard, rattles me, flummoxes me really, with how beautiful?”

Artist Katie Holten has gathered a stunning range of writings that celebrate all things arboreal, from recipes for acorn flour to reflections on catalpa trees.
NonfictionLifestylesHealth & Fitness

Work It Out

Review by Susannah Felts

Exercise—the simple act of moving our bodies and giving our cardiovascular systems a bit of a challenge—is fraught territory in American life. This is largely because we have a fitness industry, as we have industries for everything, and industry tends to cause as many problems as it solves.

“The fitness industry is filled with life-hacks for depression, but most of it seems to be coming from a place of ignorance about the cold war going on in the average depressed person’s head,” writes author Sarah Kurchak in Work It Out: A Mood-Boosting Exercise Guide for People Who Just Want to Lie Down. She tailors her workout guidance to people who are depressed, anxious or have generally had it with “perky fitness types,” offering approaches that are both grounded in science and refreshingly dismissive of well-trodden myths, rules and routines. Pillow fight! Goblet squat your pet! (If they’re cool with it, of course.) I knew I liked Kurchak’s style as soon as I read, “I don’t know anyone who has come out of the North American physical education system unscathed,” and the rest of this funny, helpful book does not disappoint.

Sarah Kurchak’s funny, helpful book offers approaches to exercise that are both grounded in science and refreshingly dismissive of well-trodden myths, rules and routines.
NonfictionLifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & HomeArt

Painting Calm

Review by Susannah Felts

Lately I’ve been dabbling in watercolor, which makes Painting Calm feel like a gift from the gods. It’s full of exercises and tips for creating delicate paintings of leaves, flowers and various nature-inspired patterns.

Author Inga Buividavice’s own artwork is aspirational, to say the least, occupying a dreamy space between the detailed and the abstract, with gorgeous variations in value and color that blend seamlessly one into the next. Simple exercises, such as creating color swatches, reassure a beginner like me, and these can be enough on their own if what you’re wanting from watercolor is the meditative process. If you’re ready to create full-scale paintings, her instructions also cover specific brushes, brushstrokes and color palettes. I suspect I’ll be consulting this guide for years to come.

Inga Buividavice’s Painting Calm is full of exercises and tips for creating delicate watercolor paintings of leaves, flowers and various nature-inspired patterns.
NonfictionLifestylesBody, Mind & Spirit

Poetry as Spellcasting

Review by Susannah Felts

At the intersection of books on witchcraft, creative writing guides and poetry anthologies alights Poetry as Spellcasting: Poems, Essays, and Prompts for Manifesting Liberation and Reclaiming Power, which manages to pull off something utterly unique.

Centering the experiences and perspectives of writers of color and queer writers, the contributors’ essays honor the work of Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, Selah Saterstrom and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others. They examine the connections among poetry, prayer and chant, and they explore the liberation that can come with revision. One writing prompt invites readers to compose a letter to an “absent presence” or an ancestor; another provides instructions for writing a collective poem with friends. “In this book,” editors Tamiko Beyer, Destiny Hemphill and Lisbeth White conclude, “we remember how the nexus between ritual and poetry can be a sacred container to manifest change and transformation.”

At the intersection of books on witchcraft, creative writing guides and poetry anthologies alights the utterly unique Poetry as Spellcasting.
NonfictionLifestylesHealth & FitnessBody, Mind & Spirit

The Psilocybin Handbook for Women

Review by Susannah Felts

These days, you probably know someone who uses THC for physical or mental health reasons (or that person is you). You may even know someone who microdoses psychedelics (or that person is you). My point: The psychedelics landscape is shifting rapidly, and thankfully it’s getting easier to find evidence-based information on the therapeutic uses of cannabinoids and psilocybin.

A most valuable addition to this field is Jennifer Chesak’s The Psilocybin Handbook for Women: How Magic Mushrooms, Psychedelic Therapy, and Microdosing Can Benefit Your Mental, Physical, and Spiritual Health. Chesak answers a slew of questions people assigned female at birth may have about using magic mushrooms, covering safety, bad trips, shrooms and parenting, mushrooms’ effects on menstruation and endometriosis and more. She also writes poignantly about her own guided trip and other women’s experiences using mushrooms for conditions such as eating disorders and ADHD, which gives this guide real heart and added richness from people’s stories.

Chesak comes across as a wise B.F.F., making you feel both smarter and better supported. This is an empowering, enlightening read.

Jennifer Chesak’s guide to psilocybin for women is an empowering, enlightening read, full of evidence-based information on the therapeutic uses of psychedelic mushrooms.
NonfictionNatureLifestylesAnimals

Archives of Joy

Review by Susannah Felts

In Archives of Joy: Reflections on Animals and the Nature of Being, French Canadian author Jean-François Beauchemin looks back, around and into the mystic, to great effect. His brief and often breathtaking reflections on creatures he has encountered throughout his life meld into a salve for the troubled, weary or distracted mind and will appeal to fans of Brian Doyle, Ross Gay and Margaret Renkl.

In a one-paragraph essay called “Useful,” Beauchemin writes, “It might be said that I am rummaging around a lot in that great big suitcase of my childhood, but why the devil do we age, if it is not to encounter ourselves once more?” In “A Visitor,” he recounts a spiritual encounter from childhood, when “I had just learned my dog’s life expectancy was only fourteen years.” Immediately after reading this piece, I snapped a picture of it and sent it to a friend who is grieving a beloved pup; that’s the kind of small treasure this book is.

Jean-François Beauchemin’s brief, breathtaking reflections on creatures he has encountered throughout his life will appeal to fans of Brian Doyle, Ross Gay and Margaret Renkl.
NonfictionNatureLifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Capturing Nature

Review by Susannah Felts

Have you ever created a leaf rubbing? Or painted one side of a natural object and then pressed it to paper to make a mirror image? If so, you’ve engaged in nature printing, an ancient practice that marries scientific documentation and art. Fossils are a kind of nature print, and leaf prints were featured on early American currency. Relief printing, intaglio, cyanotype—all are types of nature printing.

Capturing Nature: 150 Years of Nature Printing examines this art form through two centuries and across continents, illustrating no fewer than 45 types, compiled by Matthew Zucker and Pia Ostlund from the Zucker Collection, the largest collection of nature prints in the world. The resulting volume is a “wondrous mix of nature, technology, and the human desire for learning,” and it’s a stunning addition to any nature lover’s library.

The two centuries’ worth of nature prints contained in Capturing Nature would make a stunning addition to any nature lover’s library.
NonfictionLifestylesLGBTQ+Humor

A Very Gay Book

Review by Susannah Felts

A heavy dose of humor is something I’ve been in need of these past few weeks, and what do you know: Like a gift from the publishing gods arrives A Very Gay Book: An Inaccurate Resource for Gay Scholars, a satirical take on history in which everything is really, really gay. 

Authors Jenson Titus and Nick Scheppard are Los Angeles-based comedians who also run a comedy design brand called Very Gay Paint, and I can only imagine they had the time of their lives dreaming up this beautiful absurdity. In their alternate universe, a feud between Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton caused the Great Recession, the Statue of Liberty was painted green by a queer man who lived within its torch and two lesbians invented Andy Warhol. Also gay: “wanting to be a good singer” and cakes that look like other things, such as a hamburger or a telephone.

My Gen Z teen often admiringly points out things that she finds “super gay,” and this hilarious project backs her up in a big, gay way. A big gay ray of sunshine, right here. (Sunshine = definitely gay.)

A Very Gay Book is a beautifully absurd satirical take on history in which everything is really, really gay.
NonfictionSelf-HelpLifestyles

Goblin Mode

Review by Susannah Felts

Goblin Mode is a type of book that piques my curiosity almost as much as the idea of “goblin mode” itself. Have there always been identity books that set out to define both an aesthetic and a way of life, an ethos? i.e., You might be a –––– if, bolstered by advice on how to better achieve said identity, with places to go, crafts to try and shallow dives into various bodies of knowledge? I’m not sure, but there are many such books now, typically with cute covers and petite trim sizes.

This one by writer and editor McKayla Coyle and illustrated by Marian Churchland revealed to me that I am, in fact, a goblin: My home epitomizes “cozy clutter”; I love plants, old things, and collecting and displaying random bits of natural objects; and, above all, I’m a weirdo, which is a nonnegotiable goblin quality.

Might you be a goblin too? Read this book to find out, and if the answer is yes, prepare to both feel seen and up your goblin game.

Might you be a goblin? A weirdo who loves plants and cozy clutter? Read this book to find out, and prepare to both feel seen and up your goblin game.
NonfictionLifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

How to Be a Rule-Breaking Letterer

Review by Susannah Felts

When I was a kid, bubble letters were very on-trend, and I spent hours perfecting my ABCs in bubble form. How I wish I’d had Huyen Dinh’s How to Be a Rule-Breaking Letterer: A Guide to Making Perfectly Imperfect Art back then to goad me into becoming a bona fide word-artist, or at least to nudge me toward further experimentation.

Dinh’s personal story is of the “good girl gets fed up and flees corporate malaise, follows passion” variety (one I’m rather partial to). Now, after years of struggling, she is no longer afraid to make what pleases her. While she neatly breaks down lettering fundamentals—developing your typographic eye, mastering brushstrokes, talking the talk (ascenders and descenders and swashes, oh my!)—her bigger agenda is to encourage free thought, to open up readers to their own preferences and to the wealth of ideas just waiting to be plucked from thin air. She’s quite candid about her own process and clunky first drafts, too, which is always a plus.

Huyen Dinh neatly breaks down hand lettering fundamentals, but her bigger agenda is to encourage free thought and open up readers to their own preferences and ideas.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & Drink

The Book of Cocktail Ratios

Review by Susannah Felts

In a follow-up to his fascinating Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking, multifaceted writer and chef Michael Ruhlman applies that concept to cocktails. Even more so than culinary creations, boozy drinks “are fundamentally defined by their ratios, rather than by a unique combination of ingredients,” he writes in The Book of Cocktail Ratios: The Surprising Simplicity of Classic Cocktails.

Ruhlman explores this thesis through six classic tipples—the Manhattan, the Negroni, the Daiquiri, the Margarita, the Martini and highballs, with a few outliers thrown in for good measure (the Paper Plane, the Hot Toddy, etc.). For example, a Martinez, which likely predated the Manhattan, swaps gin for the Manhattan’s bourbon or rye in a 2:1 ratio of spirit to vermouth. Sub bourbon in for gin in the 1:1:1 ratio of a Negroni, and boom, you’ve got a Boulevardier—or try mezcal, if you dare.

I’m not much of a numbers person, but this simplification of the sometimes-arcane world of mixology goes down easy and pairs well with sweet watercolor illustrations by Marcella Kriebel. Ruhlman suggests that the art of the cocktail is rather forgiving, a place to mess around and find out. Just commit a few basic ratios to memory first.

Even if you’re not much of a numbers person, this guide to the ratios involved in six classic tipples goes down easy.
NonfictionSelf-HelpLifestylesFamily & Relationships

How to Say Goodbye

Review by Susannah Felts

Death is a process—a challenge for both the dying and their loved ones, and a journey of wide-ranging emotional shifts, yet rarely are we encouraged to fully experience it as such. The illustrated approach of Wendy MacNaughton’s How to Say Goodbye is a quietly powerful gesture in the right direction. As an artist-in-residence at a San Francisco hospice, McNaughton closely observed the dying and their caregivers, absorbing wisdom and appreciating small moments—a plate of fruit, flowers, hands held. “Drawing is a way we can look closely at something we might otherwise be afraid to look at,” she reflects. Her gentle pictures are followed by a deep well of resources for the dying and those who love and care for them. In his foreword, palliative care physician BJ Miller, MD, sets the tone: “​​Presence, after all, is not an intellectual exercise. It’s a corporeal surrender. Attuning, if you like. What does your body tell you about what the body before you is doing? What does your soul know about the one playing at the edge of existence right in front of you? Can you stop trying to figure it out and just be it?”

Wendy MacNaughton’s gentle drawings are followed by a deep well of resources for the dying and those who love and care for them.
NonfictionNatureLifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Land Art

Review by Susannah Felts

U.K. artist James Brunt “works with what nature gives”: only what is found on the ground, in natural settings like beaches and woodlands. Imagine great spirals, mandalas, grids and other patterns composed of rocks, twigs, seeds, fern fronds, petals or leaves upon sand or forest floor. In Land Art, Brunt familiarizes us with his creative terrain—also famously explored by land artists such as Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson (“Spiral Jetty”)—and invites us, too, to “get outside and play.” He provides exercises that first coax us into engagement with our natural surroundings and then into the act of art-making. For starters, find 10 of anything, such as pine cones or other seeds; then arrange them in a pattern of your liking. Brunt’s work, presented with infectious enthusiasm through full-color photographs, is gorgeous and mesmerizing.

Made from found natural objects like rocks, twigs and seeds, James Brunt’s gorgeous and mesmerizing art is presented with infectious enthusiasm through full-color photographs.

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