Saghar Setareh was 22 when she moved from Iran to Italy. After almost a decade in her new home, she writes, “I found my lantern, my mirror, and my passion in food, lighting up not only my path to understanding Italy but also illuminating the reflection of my own Iranian culinary heritage. Like many immigrants before me, I came to know—and cherish—my homeland, by comparison with the new country.” In a stunning new cookbook, Pomegranates and Artichokes, she invites us on a “culinary road trip” from the Middle East to the Mediterranean, from porridge with rosewater and a saffron omelet, to Turkish eggplant in tomato sauce and creamy eggplant and tahini dip, to aperitivo cocktails and pork roast with pears and chestnuts, and so much in between. This winding road is a food lover’s fantasy.
Saghar Setareh invites us on a “culinary road trip” from the Middle East to the Mediterranean in a food lover’s fantasy.
The Earth’s island inhabitants live on the front lines of climate change. What might amount to distressing media coverage for inland and continental dwellers is, for these populations, a frightening everyday reality—despite the fact that they are, on balance, among the least responsible for increasingly harrowing conditions. In Sea Change, Christina Gerhardt does the important work of chronicling the metamorphosis and loss of island landmass as sea levels rise and severe weather patterns become more frequent and erratic. Combining scientific exploration with essays, poetry and other works by Indigenous artists, this book is a profound, unflinching document of places vanishing before our eyes. But Sea Change also keeps hope alive as it “activates imaginings of possible futures.” It’s sobering enough to make readers consider the increasing obsolescence of any atlas we may have on our shelves, but it also calls us to listen to the voices of the peoples whose lives, languages and histories hang in the balance.
Combining scientific exploration with essays, poetry and other works by indigenous artists, Sea Change is a profound, unflinching document of places vanishing before our eyes.
What do you get when you cross a yogi, a writer and a wildlife conservationist? You get Alison Zak and her thought-provoking Wild Asana. Asana is the physical practice of yoga, and many yoga poses are nicknamed for creatures, such as Downward Dog and Eagle Pose. Zak’s exploration takes this informal nomenclature as a starting point and soars forth into a spirited exploration of the connection between humans and our fellow animals, with yoga as a sort of natural meeting place. “It suddenly becomes very strange that we practice something called ‘cobra pose’ hundreds of times without thinking at all about the animal called a cobra as we do it,” she writes. Questioning old limits of scientific thinking and encouraging a deeper relationship with nature are essential to her mission, as she invites readers to “anthropomorphize with abandon.” This book offers a fascinating journey through which to more deeply understand your animal self, as well as practical guidance in yoga basics.
This book offers a fascinating journey through which to better understand the connection between yoga and nature, as well as practical guidance in yoga basics.
I began reading Company a few months ago, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Upon return, my impressions hold up: This buzzy cookbook simmers cozily with very fine food writing and a particular Midwestern nonchalance that has my heart. Amy Thielen—a two-time James Beard Award winner and author of a memoir, Give a Girl a Knife—focuses here on comfort-food-forward menus for gatherings of six to 20 people, from “Saturday Night” to “Casual Walkabouts.” Nota bene: I am not, and probably never will be, a person who enjoys throwing dinner parties. But when Thielen says, “I probably shouldn’t say this . . . but when you’re having people over, the food doesn’t really matter,” I’m listening. (I’m still not ready to have even six people over, but I’m listening.) When she details “anti-hero appetizers,” such as warm bean dip or pickles, I’m leaning in. When she gets into “two weeks of Christmas, starting with the sweets,” I’m hungry but wary, until she describes herself as a “cackling enabler,” and I’m fully in again. When, in “a lazy summer’s day lunch,” she includes Black Currant Finger Jell-O and says, “You can just cut off a hunk of the Jell-O with a knife and walk around the house with it as you pick up clutter,” I’m utterly smitten.
Chef and author Amy Thielen’s buzzy cookbook simmers cozily with very fine food writing and a particular Midwestern nonchalance.
For a couple of years, I’ve been observing the crows that call my neighborhood home, and I’ve learned that when they’re making a ruckus, there’s bound to be a hawk nearby. So much of watching birds is about being a) still and quiet, and b) familiar with bird behaviors, as one learns in Find More Birds, a book that makes you slap your head and think, “Why has no one done this before?!” Birding books typically center on the what (kinds of birds one hopes to see) rather than the how. As Heather Wolf points out, “the bulk of bird-finding is wrapped up in a multitude of tidbits of experience, knowledge, and intuition gleaned from years of observing birds,” and that’s just what she passes along here in morsels that make birding feel accessible, even fail proof. Wolf shows us how to home in on birds in almost any situation—at a superstore, in the car, on a college campus, by a body of water—and offers sound advice for finding birding buddies, too.
Heather Wolf shows us how to home in on birds in almost any situation—at a superstore, in the car—and offers sound advice for building a birding community.
One of my neighborhood’s charming features is a “Little Free Art Library” where passersby are encouraged to both take and drop diminutive works of art. I have gleaned several such works from the library and now, I will be able to return the gift with the help of Sarah J. Gardner’s projects in Share Your Joy. Mixed-media is this artist’s sweet spot; for her, it’s about gathering your materials, “surrendering to the process” and shifting focus away from the outcome. In the end, you’ll end up with a greeting card or small journal to mail to a friend. Gardner’s projects are an art-supply lover’s dream (I’m convinced I must add both a brayer and stencils to my stash), allowing for wide exploration of color and pattern and effects, such as introducing salt to wet watercolor pigment. Collage and layering are employed frequently, and while there is abundant room within these projects to assert personal style, they provide ample direction to finish something and see the results of your playful process.
With both abundant room to assert personal style and ample direction to finish a piece of art, Sarah J. Gardner’s projects are an art-supply lover’s dream.
Sharon Salzberg is a well-respected teacher of Buddhist meditation and mindfulness with many books to her name. Her newest, Finding Your Way, gathers bite-size insights derived from her decades of work in the field. As such, for readers who seek ballast in the midst of busy schedules, it’s a godsend, a garden ripe for the picking. Passages touch on gratitude, the connection between joy and resilience, lovingkindness, self-talk, attention and more. “Comparison is disempowering. It disassociates us from our own potential,” she writes, offering a mental image to encourage slow, steady progress—a bucket filling drop by drop. (Don’t get distracted by peering into others’ buckets!) Salzberg foregrounds other voices, too, sharing conversations and experiences she’s had with other thinkers and in spiritual places, making this book equal parts retrospective and informative, a beautiful gift.
For readers who seek ballast in the midst of busy schedules, Sharon Salzberg’s bite-sized Buddhist insights are a garden ripe for the picking.
Foraging may be hot right now, but let’s be honest: It’s also intimidating, even in one’s own backyard. Ellen Zachos’ How to Forage for Wild Foods Without Dying keeps things simple, focusing on 35 common plants that grow everywhere and won’t send you to the emergency room, pinky swear. Take dandelions—yes, those yellow flowers you’ve known since you were a kid. The leaves, flower buds and roots are all edible. Oxeye daisies? The leaves are your best bet. I had no idea milkweed pods were edible until now (they must be immature, and they must be cooked), and the same goes for magnolia buds and young cattail shoots, which apparently taste like cucumber. Foraging feels like one of those hobbies that could easily take over your whole life and you wouldn’t be mad about it; Zachos’ guide is a wonderful enabler.
In this guide, Ellen Zachos focuses on 35 common plants that grow everywhere and won’t send you to the ER if you eat them, pinky swear!
I find it impossible not to feel a mite sad while scanning 50 Years of Ms., which comes along at a time when print magazines, and the newsstands that used to stock them like boxes of bonbons, are a vanishing breed. But really, this is no time for tears: Ms., which has advanced and amplified feminist perspectives on society from diverse angles like no other publication, thrives on in both print and digital form with the tagline, “More than a magazine, a movement.” And as founding editor Gloria Steinem writes in a foreword, “A movement is a contagion of truth telling: at last, we know we are not alone.” Back in 1972, the first issue sold out in eight days; in it, 53 prominent American women “shouted” their abortions. Clearly, we desperately need the work of this media group more than ever. The book, including pieces by Steinem, Barbara Ehrenreich, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde and other heavyweights, provides an essential look back while making an impassioned case for the critical role of feminist writing going forward.
This collection from the iconic magazine provides a look back while making an impassioned case for the critical role of feminist writing going forward.
At a pivotal time in her life—the COVID-19 skies are clearing, her writing career is taking off and her longtime partner is making noise about moving back to his beloved Pacific Northwest—Diana Helmuth embarks on a year spent learning to craft spells, perform rituals, celebrate neo-pagan sabbats and commune with ancestors and goddesses. “I’m a skeptic at heart,” she confesses in The Witching Year: A Memoir of Earnest Fumbling Through Modern Witchcraft. “I’m sure I’d be a great atheist, if I didn’t find atheism about as comforting as a blanket of upturned tacks.” But the thing is, she writes, “I am also really tired of God being dead.”
In that, Helmuth is likely in good company with other millennials who have watched the rug get pulled out from under them too many times and would like to feel safe, secure and empowered, thank you very much. Her account is funny, sympathetic and seemingly right on time. As she points out, many of us are seeking spiritual guidance in a time of climate change, social unrest and general uncertainty. A sturdy belief system might seem like a very liberating thing.
Her story is buttressed by rigorous inquiry; she consults all the literature she can find on Wicca, brujeria and pretty much anything that will give her a handle on the fascinating, if tangled, history behind modern witchcraft. While it doesn’t take long at all for Helmuth to have intense spiritual experiences and find herself on a path to greater self-knowledge, she remains ready with questions, always interrogating what she’s told and observed alongside what she thinks and feels. Along the way, she never stops making us laugh. If you’re witchcraft-curious in the least, do not miss this delightful, thoughtful book.
Diana Helmuth brings both skepticism and curiosity to her 12-month exploration of witchcraft in this rigorous, deeply entertaining book.
Recently, I wore a silk midi skirt from the Gap that I’ve kept buried in my closet for more than 20 years. I racked up a surprising number of compliments, which felt good. (I just knew that skirt was worth saving.) But much of the time, my clothes are more a source of consternation than contentment. Enter Allison Bornstein, whose approach to personal styling connects the dots between self-knowledge and getting dressed. She notes that many of her clients are going through periods of personal transformation, and a thoughtful wardrobe revision just makes sense as part of the process. In Wear It Well, she explains a process to make culling one’s closet less overwhelming, as well as her “Three-Word Method” to pinpoint a unique sense of style. There are celebrity examples, like Harry Styles—’70s, textured, tailored—and tried-and-true tidbits surface throughout: “Wherever possible, optimize for accessibility and visibility,” she says of organizing one’s closet, adding, “There are ways to do this no matter what kind of space you are working with.” And psst: Turn all your hangers the same direction. Tiny change, big satisfaction.
Allison Bornstein’s approach to personal styling in Wear It Well connects the dots between self-knowledge and getting dressed.
In her earliest days of practicing witchcraft, Diana Helmuth gathered a number of recommended supplies—a special dagger called an athame, many candles, a pentacle. She also carried with her a number of expectations. For starters, she would trace the historical origins of modern witchcraft; this would ground her practice in a knowledge of its roots. She expected to find it structured like many organized religions: a set of rules and doctrines, a built-in community and moral framework—and the security of knowing what happens when you die.
But the practice had its own plans for Helmuth. “Witchcraft was quickly revealed to me to not be that kind of path,” she tells BookPage.
In The Witching Year: A Memoir of Earnest Fumbling Through Modern Witchcraft, Helmuth tells the story of dedicating 12 months to learning everything she could about what one fellow witch calls “the crooked path.” Living with her partner and two cats in an apartment in Oakland, California, Helmuth performs solo spellwork at a cardboard-box altar in her office nook (naturally, the cats are intrigued) and participates in Wheel of the Year rituals in the company of fellow witches. She journeys to Stonehenge in search of a connection with her ancestors, and spends a week at a camp for witches in the woods. Her research takes her deep into the tangled beginnings of Wicca, which emerged around the 1940s and was more or less an attempt to package witchcraft into something resembling that familiar box of midcentury Western religion. (Scott Cunningham’s Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner remains a widely respected text for aspiring witches.)
“Experiencing the sensation (while sober!) that we are all made from the same star stuff . . . is perhaps the greatest way this year changed me.”
Throughout the year, Helmuth consults a number of witches who also happen to be some of her closest and oldest friends. (Her friend Lauren, a key mentor in the book, nudged Helmuth toward this project in the first place.) Now living on the Washington coast, Helmuth acknowledges that at one point she counted among her friends and acquaintances more witches than people of any other belief system aside from atheism. She attributes this to her northern California upbringing. “That’s where all the hippie buses broke down. And that’s where we came out of the yurt and said, ‘We’re bringing goddess culture back.’ ”
Helmuth has an easy wit—her first book, a beginner’s guide to backpacking, is cheekily titled How to Suffer Outside and is full of both practical advice and hilarious commentary. In a way, the same can be said of The Witching Year. Her wry perspective keeps the narrative deeply entertaining. But it’s also an endeavor with ample heart, rigorous inquiry and an extensive bibliography. Comedic tendencies never eclipse Helmuth’s genuine curiosity about, and respect for, her subject matter.
“I didn’t want to punch down,” she says, “despite the fact that I knew I had massive internal skepticism.” When she forced herself to look closely at the impulse to crack jokes, her personal journey really took off: “Deeply interrogating this urgent need to make fun of something is, occasionally, where the book deviated from a comedy into something far more serious, and I think richer,” she reflects.
Helmuth ultimately found that modern witchcraft in America is largely self-directed and not confined to any set of top-down, codified methods. This could, she admits, feel challenging at times. She found that the practice was “more about the discovery and healing and nourishment of the sacred self. So effectively, it’s therapy. And that work is hard and never done.” She adds, “I don’t actually think it’s particularly enjoyable work.”
The Witching Year contains candid chronicling of the challenging emotional endeavors her practice requires. “There are several parts in the book [when] I was like, ‘I want to get off the ride,’ and I couldn’t,” she says. Ultimately, the year included “really profound moments that absolutely changed my life in good ways and bad ways.” In the book she discusses the delight of feeling deeply interconnected with others: “Experiencing the sensation (while sober!) that we are all made from the same star stuff . . . is perhaps the greatest way this year changed me,” she writes. About communing with the goddess Isis, she reflects, “I had no idea this level of joy was this accessible to me on my own. In Witchcraft, people talk about shadow work, justice, self-help. . . . Rarely do I hear anyone talk about bliss.”
And as a defender of wild spaces and a staunch environmentalist (which many, but not all, witches are), Helmuth gains perspective—but again, maybe not what she expected. To her surprise, the spirituality she’d always sought in the backcountry could be accessed closer to home. “I realized I didn’t have to hike 20 miles into the wilderness to have a deep connection with nature,” she says. “I can go down to the oleander under the freeway overpass and stare at it for 60 seconds and meditate on its perfection.”
Now for the big question: After a year’s journey, does she call herself a witch? Not exactly, she concedes, partly because the term is so loaded. How one answers largely depends on who’s asking. She would like to see modern witchcraft cast as less rebellious and more friendly to the mainstream. The enormous number of books about magic and witchcraft in the marketplace, I point out, suggest that this might be happening. “I do ultimately think it’s a good thing,” she says, “because it’s about self-empowerment. And the more people who are self-empowered, the less miserable they’ll be. And isn’t that just a nicer planet to live on?”
Photo of Diana Helmuth by Rob King
The Witching Year is funny, sympathetic and right on time.
Despite filling feeders and growing native plants, I continue to be disappointed by the birds that frequent our yard. So much of the same old, same old: cardinals, sparrows, chickadees. I do especially love chickadees—but where are the goldfinches, if not the bluebirds?
Joan E. Strassmann’s Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard challenges me to remember that there’s much to observe and learn about even our most quotidian avian neighbors. In a corrective to bird-watching as tally-driven competitive hunt, here’s an invitation to appreciate the magic of the ordinary creatures with whom you cohabitate, rather than rush all over tarnation chasing glimpses of rare or elusive ones. Strassmann’s exploration is personal and hyperlocal: In lively, conversational prose, she explores birds that populate a close radius around her own home in St. Louis, Missouri, such as robins, mockingbirds and blue jays. Even the oft-maligned European starling gets a chapter, and I love how Strassmann nudges us to rethink our prejudice against this invasive species. “If I wanted you to love European Starlings,” she writes, “I would start with murmurations, those mesmerizing movements of thousands of birds soaring, turning, turning again, then weaving around a forest, only to soar as if one again. . . . It is wonderful to be close to a murmuration of starlings, those pre-roosting evening rivers of life.”
Joan E. Strassmann’s Slow Birding challenges readers to remember that there’s much to observe and learn about even our most quotidian avian neighbors.
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