Susannah Felts

NonfictionLifestylesCookbooksBody, Mind & Spirit

Lifestyles: March 2022

Feature by Susannah Felts

★ The Second Half

One of my favorite finds of 2021 was a newsletter called Oldster, which features interviews with people from all walks of life musing on the aging process and what age means and feels like to them. A new work from portrait and travel photographer Ellen Warner, The Second Half: Forty Women Reveal Life After Fifty, beautifully mines similar territory. Warner crisscrossed the globe photographing and interviewing women over the age of 50, gathering reflections on change, pleasure, legacy, hope and more. She then edited these encounters into a trove of fascinating, brief narratives of life lived in a woman’s body. One woman buys a pub in her 60s; another meets her new life partner, a woman, after a 35-year marriage to a man. “Everything is a bit blurred when one is young, and then comes the second half—the time when you have to make clarity out of the blur,” one reflects. As these women and others divulge their most difficult and joyous moments, the result is a book bristling with energy and wisdom.

The Complete Cookbook for Teen Chefs

In terms of trusted authorities on cooking technique, you can’t get much more legit or consistently helpful than America’s Test Kitchen. (Lately, I’ve been saving nearly all of their Instagram posts.) So a new title from ATK, The Complete Cookbook for Teen Chefs, feels like cause for celebration. It remains to be seen whether a book designed for my 13-year-old will inspire her to prep dinner more often, but its format, with close attention paid to mise en place and the correct tools, should help her dodge frustration while widening both her comfort zone and palate. The recipes, labeled beginner, intermediate and advanced, range from the familiar (waffles, BLTs) to foodie faves like blistered shishito peppers, shiitake beef ramen and a fruit galette. My hunch, which I shall soon put to the test, is that parents, too, will absorb several valuable tips from this text as they play sous-chef to their kids. 

52 Ways to Walk

I’m not sure there’s a person on Earth who doesn’t know that walking is good for them. But how many of us know just how good, or in just how many ways? Annabel Streets presents loads of convincing evidence in 52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time, a book equally geared toward dedicated perambulators and anyone who wishes to build a new healthy habit. She gives us research-backed ways of thinking about our daily (or occasional) stroll while presenting a fun challenge: From just how many angles might we go about the act of taking a walk this year? I can walk with attunement to what I hear in the world around me, or I can walk with a focus on posture and gait. I can think about ley lines, ions or fractals as I walk; I can walk alone or with a friend or a dog or by water or at night. Apparently I can even hop up from the couch, take a brisk 12-minute walk and wring a surprising level of health benefits from it—and so, my friend, can you.

The mundane stuff of life—such as cooking, walking and even aging—gets an exciting refresh in this month’s lifestyles column.
NonfictionTravelDesignCookbooks

Lifestyles: February 2022

Feature by Susannah Felts

★ Grist

James Beard Award-winning chef Abra Berens and her collaborators have created a most magical combination of aesthetics, soul and practical guidance in Grist, a cookbook focused on humble stuff: beans, legumes, grains and seeds. Let it be said that I love beans, and I really love the way Berens provides, along with specific recipes, a number of templates to follow for any combination of ingredients you crave or happen to have on hand. For example, a bean + vegetable + flavor + texture chart starts with beans (any kind), then lists four suggested ingredients for each step: add veg, add flavor, add extra texture and serve. Elsewhere, she walks us through a week’s worth of lentils without boredom, and her recipes regularly include three or more variations. Topping it all off are Lucy Engelman’s beautiful illustrations, which make this a true work of cookbook art. 

Where They Purr

A bedroom decked out in lush linens and pillows—and a cat, luxuriating on the bespoke duvet. A kitchen with floor-to-ceiling windows—and a cat, nonchalantly surveying the room from atop the dining table. This is the fabulous world of Where They Purr: Inspirational Interiors and the Cats Who Call Them Home, in which images of sleek interiors foreground the homes’ feline overlords. Photographer Paul Barbera got the idea for a cat-centric home design book while working on a previous project, Where They Create, and the result takes those “how they styled it” shots we’ve all seen while shopping online—a sofa, say, captured with the owner’s pet proudly lounging—to the next-next level. The homes featured here are mostly high-end and very modern, full of sharp angles and long lines. You might be inclined to call some of them cold, except how could you when fluffy Pud or Pippi or Gustov is lurking or perched or sprawled in their midst? As a cat lover, my only quibble with this purrfectly delightful book is that there are too few orange tabbies in the mix. I suppose we all, like our cats, have our own prefurences.

Wanderess

As I prepare for a solo journey to the Southwest, I’m happy to have in my pocket Wanderess: The Unearth Women Guide to Traveling Smart, Safe, and Solo, a guide for women, by women, and geared toward solo travelers. Whether you’re going it alone for the first time or planning a girls’ trip, the editors from Unearth Women have assembled in this colorful book all the resources, hacks and advice you could ask for, including tips for traveling while pregnant and specific recommendations for women of color and travelers who are trans, lesbian or queer. The writers also offer an outline for creating your own Feminist City Guide, which centers women-owned businesses; if you like, you can pitch your guide(s) to Unearth Women for possible publication.

From the humble bean to the high and mighty feline, the books in this month’s lifestyles column colorfully celebrate the joys of food, art and travel.
NonfictionLifestylesDesign

Lifestyles: January 2022

Feature by Susannah Felts

★ The V&A Sourcebook of Pattern and Ornament

I like to imagine the process of assembling the exquisite compendium that is The V&A Sourcebook of Pattern and Ornament. What a dizzying and delightful task! London’s Victoria & Albert Museum is home to one of the world’s largest collections of decorative and designed objects in the world, and in this tome, one can peruse thousands upon thousands of images adapted from the museum’s holdings. Spanning pottery, textiles, paintings, wallpaper, sculpture and pretty much any other patterned thing you can imagine, the contents are arranged into four categories—plants; animals; earth and the universe; and abstract patterns—with most pages featuring a grid of three or more images and a succinct set of captions identifying the source objects and their makers. As you page through swiftly or slowly, the effect is kaleidoscopic. It’s a veritable feast of patterns for the eyes and mind, full of color, intricate details and beautiful repetition. You’ll wish for two copies: one to keep and savor; one to cut up for collage art. Frankly, I’m besotted.

Sketch by Sketch

I recently purchased my first iPad and began exploring Procreate, a digital tool that, when paired with the Apple Pencil, opens one up to a new realm of two-dimensional artmaking. I’m finding a daily drawing practice to be a profoundly joyful and meditative pursuit. Sheila Darcey, founder of the SketchPoetic community on Instagram (@sketchpoetic), knows all about the therapeutic potential of low-stakes sketching, and in Sketch by Sketch, she encourages readers to try 21 exercises designed to help them dig deep internally and work through difficult emotions. Darcey doesn’t care how well you draw, and her exercises are not meant to build artistic skill. If you create something that makes you smile, all the better, but self-discovery, not technical mastery, is the goal. “This is not art,” she writes. “It is a visual learner’s version of freewriting.” Testimonials throughout from SketchPoetic acolytes demonstrate how the process has worked for others.

Snails & Monkey Tails

Speaking of details . . . it’s an interesting time for punctuation, isn’t it? Texting has completely upended the rules, such that a period now suggests a hostile vibe to some (my teenager confirms this), and even the meaning of certain emoticons seems to be shifting with the generations. But these symbols persist in print matter, and they are lovingly and fetchingly celebrated in Snails & Monkey Tails, graphic designer Michael Arndt’s spiffy salute to the “tiny designs that run interference among the letterforms.” If you don’t know what a grawlix is, you sure as $@%!* will if you read this book. Afterward, you may never call @ an “at” symbol again. Rather, try “little duck” as they do in Finland, or “cinnamon bun” like the Swedes. From silcrows to pilcrows to guillemets and the dinkus, Arndt’s book will up your word-nerd quotient, and it will do so with impeccable style.

Design takes center stage in this month’s lifestyles column, from intricate filigrees found in museums to the elegant curve of a silcrow.
NonfictionLifestylesFood & DrinkCookbooks

The 5 best cookbooks to help you eat, drink and be merry

Feature by Susannah Felts

New Native Kitchen

Perfect gift for: Your foodie spouse who loves gardening and open-fire grilling

In New Native Kitchen, Navajo chef Freddie Bitsoie, previously of the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, celebrates the cuisines of Indigenous cultures while respecting and revering “hyperlocal” regional distinctions in these foodways and traditions. Bitsoie, who came to cooking via cultural anthropology and art history, aims to tell “edible stories that allow people to appreciate the living artifact of food.” Here, with the help of James Beard Award-winning author James O. Fraioli, Bitsoie introduces readers to key elements of the Native pantry, such as nopales (cactus paddles), Navajo steam corn, sumac powder and tepary beans, many of which can be ordered online or found at specialty spice shops. From a sumac Navajo leg of lamb with onion sauce, to a Makah crab boil, to Choctaw bison chili, Bitsoie covers the vast North American continent and its islands in this important book.

★ Wild Sweetness

Perfect gift for: Your boho friend with a shortbread obsession

With full-page photographs of winter branches, gently wilting roses and foggy ponds, Thalia Ho’s Wild Sweetness is as much a moody evocation of nature’s evanescence as it is a sumptuous celebration of dessert. Grouped by season, the recipes range from comfy American standards like cinnamon buns and gingersnaps to frangipane tart and a fig clove fregolotta. All possess a delicate quality and some flower, spice or other ingredient redolent of the natural world. Cream seems a visual motif, showing up, for example, in a juniper ice cream, a frosted chamomile tea cake, a lemon curd streusel cake and amaretti. But deep, dark chocolate is at play too—in ganache thumbprints, drunken fig brownies and a beetroot mud cake, among others sheer delights.

À Table

Perfect gift for: The hip newlyweds next door with the adorable dog

Is anything sexier than a good French cookbook? Rebekah Peppler’s À Table reveals and revels in the charms of long, casual French dinners with friends, and Peppler leads with blithe wit as she shares a modern take on entertaining. (She won me over instantly with the words “Hemingway was a supreme ass” in a recipe for Chambéry cassis, an aperitif.) Women are at the center of Peppler’s vision, one in which we dispense with yesteryear’s formalities in favor of long, carefree nights of smart conversation, mismatched plates and zero pretension. Ouais, cherie. On to olives with saucisson and roast chicken with prunes! On to daube de boeuf and (vegan!) French onion soup with cognac! You’ll love the mellow-but-decadent vibe, even if you feel un petit peu jalouse of Peppler’s Parisian coterie.

★ Black Food

Perfect gift for: Cultural mavens, globetrotters and aesthetes

Chef and Vegetable Kingdom author Bryant Terry assembles a large all-star team for his glorious new Black Food, “a communal shrine to the shared culinary histories of the African diaspora.” I love this trend of cookbooks that are so openly ambitious, with essays and poetry, visual art and historical context, all of it standing strong alongside the food. Structured by themes such as motherland; Black women, food and power; and Black, queer, food—each with a corresponding playlist—this vibrant, immersive book pulls from many foodways and regions of the globe, with Black chefs, intellectuals and tastemakers leading the way. We encounter dishes as diverse as Somali lamb stew, Bajan fish cakes, Ghanaian crepe cake, vegan black-eyed pea beignets and, at last, for the perfect finish, Edna Lewis’ fresh peach cobbler. Terry also shares a recipe for Pili Pili oil, which adds an herbaceous, spicy kick to anything you drizzle it over.

Tables & Spreads

Perfect gift for: Your sister-in-law who loves to host and is always leveling up

I am not a big entertainer, but I love a good snack-meal. And there’s something delightful about artfully arranging a table full of nibbles for guests: curious cheeses, spiced nuts, tangy jams, decadent dips and a handful of rosemary sprigs plucked from the garden. Whether this sounds fun, anxiety-producing or a bit of both, Tables & Spreads is here to help you party. Shelly Westerhausen, master of Instagram-worthy tablescapes, shares themes for every occasion, from dips for dinner, to a savory focaccia party, to a Christmas morning Dutch baby party. Special attention is given to what Westerhausen dubs the “wow factor”: decorative and mood-setting details such as color themes, decanters and candles of varying heights, along with floral arrangements. Informational charts abound with practical assists; my favorite may be “Portioning a Spread,” right down to tablespoons of dip or pieces of crudites, so you don’t over- or under-buy.

This holiday season, whether you’re hosting or showing up with a single covered dish, let one of these outstanding cookbooks be your guide.
NonfictionLifestyles

Lifestyles: November 2021

Feature by Susannah Felts

★ Tarot for Change

Times being what they are, an uptick in conversation around self-care and coping with grief feels appropriate. We’re all, it seems, looking for ways to make sense of, or at least soften, our experience of the everyday, and in this climate, interest in the ancient practice of tarot is resurgent. I’m among the curious dabblers who are digging deeper, and I’m glad to learn from Jessica Dore’s Tarot for Change: Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance, and Growth. Dore, a licensed social worker, roots her study of tarot in psychology, but she also pulls from folk traditions, personal anecdotes, mythology, literature and much more for a depth-charged exploration of the major and minor arcana. Tarot, her book suggests, deserves to be seen as a therapeutic modality like any other. “Efforts to boil the study of the soul down to a science have led to great strides in the treatment of mental illness,” she writes, “but have relegated mystery and magic to the edges.”

Edible Flowers

I knew one could make jelly from violets and sprinkle nasturtiums into salad, but I had no idea just how many flowers were safe to consume until I cracked open Edible Flowers: How, Why, and When We Eat Flowers, which showcases more than 100 nourishing blossoms—and that’s counting only specimens from North America and Europe. But let’s not get hung up on stats. The key word for this gorgeous book is, as author Monica Nelson puts it, immersive. Color photographs by Adrianna Glaviano capture the striking presence and ephemerality of each bloom, and along with enticing recipes and historical and cultural context (“In Ancient Egypt, [calendula] was considered the ‘poor man’s saffron,’” for example), there are short essays by contemporary writers, summoning the reader deeper into the flower-eating experience. Even the petite trim size is by design, “allowing the book itself to also be lived with.” This one is a true sensual experience between two covers.

The Cocktail Workshop

Many boozy-beverage books have come this column’s way in recent years, but the clarity and spiffy organization of The Cocktail Workshop caught my attention and didn’t let it go. I’m an amateur when it comes to mixology, so the “first, the basics” approach holds appeal. Yes, please do give me the how-to (and nerdy details!) of classics like the Manhattan, margarita and Negroni. Not that connoisseurs won’t also find much to love here: The recipes grow far more complex with spirit-swapping, homemade tinctures and flaming garnishes. For each of 20 stable “banger” drinks, you’ll learn three spinoffs, plus a “workshop” recipe for the extra-ambitious. Mix a perfect martini, say, then try a vesper or a bijou before graduating to brewing your own vermouth. Or just, you know, splash some bubbly, seltzer and Aperol in a glass and call it a spritz.

Tarot cards, check. Flower-garnished salad, check. Negronis, check. This month’s lifestyles column has all the ingredients for a lavish night in.
Crafts, Hobbies & HomeArts & Culture

Lifestyles: DIY downsizing

Feature by Susannah Felts

I tell people all the time that it’s a dream of mine to build a tiny house in our backyard to use as a combo writing studio and guesthouse. Will it ever be a reality? Who knows, but Derek “Deek” Diedricksen’s new book, Micro Living: 40 Innovative Tiny Houses Equipped for Full-Time Living, in 400 Square Feet or Less, might help me get there. Building on the success of his first book, Microshelters, Diedricksen profiles 40 tiny homes in this volume, from houses under 150 square feet to “big tinies” that max out at 400 square feet. In addition to floor plans and color photos for each house, readers also get a little bit of each owner’s story along with reflections from Diedricksen. My favorite part: a quote from each homeowner about what they wish they had (or hadn’t) done now that their vision is complete.

CUT AND PASTE
Every so often, a lifestyle book comes along that makes me feel less alone. In the introduction to Lotta Jansdotter Paper, Pattern, Play, author and designer Jansdotter mentions that for her, the process of looking at patterns and working with paper triggers an Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR): a soothing, pleasurable feeling. I never thought of paper and patterns as one of my own ASMR triggers—but yes! Most of the book’s pages are meant to be removed and used in the projects included, and each features one of Jansdotter’s own patterns, ranging from geometric to floral. How wonderful to have your main materials provided. Projects run from simple, such as paper leaves that can be affixed to bare branches, to more complex, including party favors. I love the way Jansdotter livens up something as simple as a binder clip with a small rectangle of red-and-white paper. “Paper is such a great medium for experimentation,” she writes. “It is low risk . . . and not too precious.” Pass the scissors.

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES
“Natural ink is a whole landscape condensed into a little bottle,” writes Jason Logan, author of Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking, a visually rich guide to making ink from foraged materials. We first encounter Logan, founder of the Toronto Ink Company, as he combs the wilds of Red Hook, Brooklyn, for source materials both plant-based and man-made: wild grapes, acorn caps, paint chips, rusted nails. Turning these things into ink is little more complicated than “waiting and stirring and waiting some more,” and his basic recipe for natural ink is indeed quite simple. Logan includes recipe variations for attaining specific colors such as Vine Charcoal, Pokeberry and Silvery Acorn Cap. The final third of the book relaxes into art with examples of Logan’s own ink tests as well as work from others who have experimented with his inks, such as Dave Eggers and Margaret Atwood. (“At least one bottle of wild grape ink almost exploded on its way to Stephen King,” he writes.) A conversation with author Michael Ondaatje rounds out this exquisite volume.

 

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

I tell people all the time that it’s a dream of mine to build a tiny house in our backyard to use as a combo writing studio and guesthouse. Will it ever be a reality? Who knows, but Derek “Deek” Diedricksen’s new book, Micro Living: 40 Innovative Tiny Houses Equipped for Full-Time Living, in 400 Square Feet or Less (Storey, $18.95, 256 pages, ISBN 9781612128764), might help me get there.

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: Fort nights

Feature by Susannah Felts

Over here at Lifestyles central, I see my fair share of whimsical books, and many of them I unabashedly love. This month’s whimsy award goes to Blanket Fort: Growing Up Is Optional by a husband-and-wife creative team who are mysteriously (and whimsically) only known to readers as Grackle + Pigeon. Everyone knows kids love to build blanket forts, but why should they have all the fun? “Let’s face it—adulting is hard,” the book’s intro reads. “Can’t we just not deal for a while and take refuge in a pile of pillows and blankets and maybe, just maybe, redefine what adulting actually means?” In Blanket Fort, it means getting your craft on with aluminum tent poles, clamps and all the fabrics you can find. Use them to drape and clip your way to a reading nook, office space, movie-viewing nest, campsite chill-out zone and other enchanting, tentlike spaces. Textile lovers will bask in the ideas presented here, many of which seem like a cool way to level up your next party’s decor.

LOVE LETTERING
I’ve always loved pretty paper and stationery, and I enjoyed dabbling in hand lettering in my youth. But calligraphy made me think, it’s lovely, but I’ll never possess the patience to build that skill. So I’m pleased to find these words from calligrapher Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls in the opening of her gorgeous new book: “I found that once I let go of the idea that my letterforms had to be ‘perfect,’ I felt a weight was lifted and everything started to flow.” With that encouraging tone, The Gift of Calligraphy: A Modern Approach to Hand Lettering with 25 Projects to Give and to Keep welcomes you to slow down, relax and dip a metal nib in ink and use it to make your mark. Imasa-Stukuls first covers basics like tools, guide sheets, warm-up strokes and forming and connecting letters. She then outlines projects like a message in a bottle, gift wrap, labels, tags and place cards, and in a nice touch, the visual how-tos are hand-drawn.

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES
If you’ve watched “Queer Eye,” then you don’t need me to explain why a book based on the show is squeal-worthy. (If you haven’t watched, then put down this magazine right now, honey, and get over to Netflix.) In Queer Eye: Love Yourself. Love Your Life., each member of the Fab Five supplies their own backstory and offers life tips in their respective categories: self-care and grooming guidance from Jonathan, style advice from Tan, life coaching from Karamo, home design and furnishing smarts from Bobby and cooking expertise from Antoni. Also, each of the five shares fave recipes, and yes, Jonathan’s is Hamburger Casserole. (“I got the idea for this casserole by watching Rachel Ray make a layered ice cream cake about twenty years ago. Yumm-o!”) Last come tips on how to throw a most excellent party. Vibrant and packed with photos of the team, this book is every bit as delightful as the show, and both are required survival gear for the world we live in.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Build the best blanket fort of your life, and get advice from "Queer Eye"'s Fab Five in this month's Lifestyles column!
NonfictionPhotographyCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: Become a ‘Gram master

Feature by Susannah Felts

If you have an Instagram account, it’s almost certain you’ve wondered about the ways of Instagram “influencers,” people who make a living by mastering this photo-sharing social media service. Tezza (née Tessa Barton) demystifies it all in Instastyle. Total newb to Instagram? Tezza is here with the absolute basics on setting up an account and photography 101 tips. But she also digs deep into concepts like weekly workflow, creating grid layouts, the art of the “flat lay,” writing captions, running contests, editing tools, styling food for photos and more. (Sample tip: Odd numbers appeal to the eye.) It might all seem, humorously, a little much to those of us who casually document our pets, babies and the occasional vacation. But I found this peek into the high-stakes influencer game fairly fascinating—and I can’t help but imagine that a few decades from now, after technology has marched on, this book will surely be a wonderful “how we lived then” relic. Right now, it’ll make a great holiday gift for the budding ’Grammer in your life.

THE ARTISTS’ WAY
In Artists’ Homes: Live/Work Spaces for Modern Makers, photographer and author Tom Harford Thompson lets the smallest details in the homes and workspaces of U.K.-based artists do the work of telling their stories. For this project, Thompson insisted on no styling, staging or “tidying up,” and the resulting images hum with quiet authenticity. “Some may dismiss these details as just so much clutter,” he writes, “but they often tell us more about the people who live there than their choice of sofa or new car.” The artists and makers include a potter, a sculptor, a classic-car dealer, a journalist and many more. Tidbits of backstory are tucked into thoughtful captions surrounding photos, so people, rather than places, are the real subjects here. This book feels less intended as design inspiration and more as an unfiltered peek into creative lives.

TOP PICK IN LIFESTYLES
A similar approach can be found in famed stylist Wendy Goodman’s May I Come In?: Discovering the World in Other People’s Houses. Like Thompson, Goodman, driven by curiosity, makes a study of the interiors of artistic individuals. “[T]he most captivating rooms exist where decoration is a by-product of a person’s passions in life,” she writes. But Goodman’s quest is fueled by A-list access, and the spaces she explores belong to figures like Richard Avedon, Donatella and Gianni Versace and Todd Oldham. The homes on display here are sometimes quite posh and ornate, and other times more modest but rip-roaringly colorful, bursting with aesthetic whimsy. Goodman’s introductory essays are wonderful soupçons of observation; of Gloria Vanderbilt, she writes, “Nothing better illustrates her originality, or instinct for design, than the bedroom she created on East Sixty-Seventh Street, where she covered every inch of the room—walls, floor, and ceiling—with a collage of cut-up quilts.” Come, settle in for a look at the living quarters of the cultural elite.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Go on a behind-the-scenes tour of the homes of artists and tastemakers in this month's Lifestyles column.
FashionCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: January 2019

Feature by Susannah Felts

Finnish sisters Saara and Laura Huhta share the wealth of their successful indie clothing pattern brand, Named, in Breaking the Pattern: A Modern Way to Sew. The nifty thing about their designs is the focus on extreme adaptability: They are “designed to offer as many options for personal customization as possible,” the sisters write. They have included patterns for 10 different garments—from bags and blouses to classy cocktail dresses and jumpsuits—and claim that “it’s possible to sew at least 50 different variations of the projects,” should you wish to experiment. These garments are built on Scandinavian design—clean lines, minimalist elegance—and they range from drapey styles to more tailored looks. In the back of the book, you’ll find six full-size pattern sheets, which are arranged from easiest to most challenging.

A new friend recently gave me a small pilea plant from one of the “babies” her plant produced. This has quickly become my most beloved houseplant—one with a story behind it. That’s the kind of joy that Caro Langton and Rose Ray, the authors of Root, Nurture, Grow: The Essential Guide to Propagating and Sharing Houseplants, want more people to experience. If you’ve got a good knife and scissors, some old containers, potting mix and a few other simple items, you can turn one houseplant into as many as you like. Langton and Ray (find them on Instagram at @studio.roco) cover different types of cuttings for a number of common plants, and they also discuss division, grafting and other in-depth aspects of propagation. Even if you stick to plunking stems into jars of water and watching roots form, you’ll enjoy having this pretty guide at your side.

Readers of Martha Stewart Living will recognize the concept of The Martha Manual: How to Do (Almost) Everything: quick, no-nonsense instructions for home-related tasks. Here, Martha Stewart’s how-tos are organized by themes like “Organize,” “Clean,” “Craft” and “Create.” But I find this guide fascinating to flip through at random to learn things like how to sew an apron, how to hang a tire swing, how to play lawn games, how to fix and maintain showerheads and how to build a fire. On the whole, the slant of this content may seem a bit gendered, but it’s safe to say all humans could amp up their home skills with the help of this book. Light illustrations, bullet points and brisk copy—dip in, dip out, done—are the name of the game here.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Finnish sisters Saara and Laura Huhta share the wealth of their successful indie clothing pattern brand, Named, in Breaking the Pattern: A Modern Way to Sew. The nifty thing about their designs is the focus on extreme adaptability: They are “designed to offer as many options for personal customization as possible,” the sisters write. They have included patterns for 10 different garments—from bags and blouses to classy cocktail dresses and jumpsuits—and claim that “it’s possible to sew at least 50 different variations of the projects,” should you wish to experiment.

PhotographyCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: February 2019

Feature by Susannah Felts

File this one under “Titles Whose Time Has Come.” Sure, there are other guides to the chemical intricacies of cannabis and its therapeutic properties, but none are quite like Nikki Furrer’s A Woman’s Guide to Cannabis: Using Marijuana to Feel Better, Look Better, Sleep Better—and Get High Like a Lady, which keeps a central question in mind at all times: How do I help my mom discover the joys and benefits of this amazing stuff? Furrer thoroughly and conversationally lays out the uses of cannabis (analgesic, antidepressant, anti-anxiety, anti-aging and more); explains the whole sativa/indica breakdown; and explores the differences between THC and CBD. If you’re already a cannabis consumer, you’ll be a much better informed one for having read this book. If you’re new to the green? Well, hi(gh), glad you’re here!

Speaking of evergreen topics: Creativity and how to nurture it is one of them, but Conscious Creativity: Look. Connect. Create. strikes me as a truly fresh take on the subject. This is a redefining of creativity as an improved state of being in a world that constantly wears us down. Partly it’s the bright, wabi sabi photos accompanying the text; partly it’s Philippa Stanton’s encouraging but matter-of-fact tone. This book doesn’t try too hard to be inspiring, and as such, it succeeds. Plus, I love Stanton’s attitude toward mess: “The amorphous contents of a drawer which have been secretly shaming you might in fact turn out to be a creative liberation,” she writes. The exercises she provides are designed to make you see and experience surroundings in a new way—to utilize boredom, to notice color, to challenge ingrained perception. Note to self: Put down yo’ phone and pick up this book. 

“I often forget just how many people lack basic photography skills,” I groused recently to a friend. A tad harsh? Perhaps, but seriously—with just a few smart tips, anyone can snap much better photos, no matter the camera. And in the Instagram age, doesn’t this qualify as a life skill? Henry Horenstein’s Make Better Pictures is a succinct, handy resource for shutterbugs of all stripes, with each page focused on a single aspect of photography. Take “Clubbing,” page 85, which offers four practical tips for shooting at low-light events and concerts. Or “Hip,” page 103, which details the advantages of positioning your camera not at eye level. Throughout, a single image illustrates each topic. 

 

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

File this one under “Titles Whose Time Has Come.” Sure, there are other guides to the chemical intricacies of cannabis and its therapeutic properties, but none are quite like Nikki Furrer’s A Woman’s Guide to Cannabis: Using Marijuana to Feel Better, Look Better, Sleep Better—and…

NonfictionCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: April 2019

Feature by Susannah Felts

Top Pick
So you bought a plant or six. (I fully endorse this decision. Good job.) Now, how to help it harmonize with your home and furnishings? Baylor Chapman knows that plant stewardship goes further than purchasing, watering and fertilizing, and in Decorating With Plants , she provides copious ideas for styling your living spaces, room by room, with a wide variety of houseplants. Narrow entryway? Big flatscreen TV? Noisy neighborhood? Yes, there’s a plant for all of that, and Chapman’s design ideas will leave you ready to frame a window with cacti, geraniums and pelargoniums or to outfit a kid’s room with touch-friendly greenery. Chapman has an artist’s eye and a plant lover’s delight in the details. Her go-to plant list digs deeper than basic care info, occasionally weaving in historical background. (I love that she describes the good old Boston fern as “a mutant stowaway that has stood the test of time.”)

Gale Straub has collected travel and adventure stories from women through her website and two podcasts, and her first book, She Explores: Stories of Life-Changing Adventures on the Road and in the Wild, brings some of those short, motivational, on-the-road narratives to the printed page alongside rich color photography. We meet women who have found joy and self-knowledge in the great outdoors, but we also meet nonprofit founders, nomads, conservationists and artists. Straub includes stories from a firefighter, an indigenous archaeologist and a woman who plays the violin on mountain summits. All of their stories uplift, revealing the benefits of physical challenges, embracing fear of the unknown and shaking loose from stale routines—wherever you lay your head at night.

I felt calmer just paging through The New Rules of Pregnancy: What to Eat, Do, Think About, and Let Go of While Your Body Is Making a Baby, and I’m certain the results would be the same were I currently pregnant. The anxiety brought upon by some past pregnancy books is real; sometimes, too much information really is too much. But this sweet little book keeps most pieces of advice to a single page. Nutrition, stretch marks, sleep, birth plans, nursing—it’s all here, but it’s never more than a mom-to-be can handle. The overarching message from authors Dr. Adrienne L. Simone, Dr. Jaqueline Worth and Danielle Claro is to relax as much as you can, be kind to yourself and experience the magic. “Our mission was not only to inform, but to bring some of the beauty back to pregnancy,” the authors write in an afterword. Mission calmly, beautifully accomplished. 

Top Pick
So you bought a plant or six. (I fully endorse this decision. Good job.) Now, how to help it harmonize with your home and furnishings? Baylor Chapman knows that plant stewardship goes further than purchasing, watering and fertilizing, and in Decorating With…

Cookbooks

Lifestyles: May 2019

Feature by Susannah Felts

TOP PICK
What good can’t a walk do you—especially with the perfect sidekick? The beautifully designed Afoot and Lighthearted: A Journal for Mindful Walking, a combination of journal and quote compendium, is just that. Each of the book’s six sections—Sense of Place, Well-Being, Attention, Exploration, Devotion and Transcendence—helps you attain the benefits of walking in a different way. Each features thoughtful prompts for filling the blank pages and a wealth of passages from diverse literary and philosophical texts. Author and Belmont University professor Bonnie Smith Whitehouse brings a deep knowledge to this endeavor, so even if you never pen a word on these pages, you’ll be wiser just having perused them. Should you wish to track down the books, poems and essays she draws from, “For Further Reading” at the back of the book is a fine place to start. I’d like to give a copy of this smart, fetching book to everyone I know.

A cookbook is a popular wedding present, so why not gift one specifically written for a new duo? The Newlywed Table: A Cookbook to Start Your Life Together makes the brilliant assumption that both spouses will be getting their hands dirty at mealtime: “Let’s do away with any notions of who should be responsible for cooking and start with a clean slate,” writes author Maria Zizka. “You’re in this together. You’re a team.” This solid, basic guide is full of modern recipes with origins in diverse culinary traditions. A section on “Common Cooking Issues and How to Fix Them” is a godsend. And there’s a recipe for Chocolate Toast. Um, hello. Newlywed I am not, but my husband of 13 years and I will find much to work with here.

“Perhaps we have reached peak distraction,” Rob Walker writes in the introduction to The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday. “Attention panic” is another term he uses to describe this modern crisis. In this ingenious book, Walker compiles 131 specific ways to restore our capacity for attention. These activities are designed to employ the senses strategically: look with the eyes of a child or historian; listen selectively; create sound maps and inventories of objects around you. Some of these exercises are more surprising than others, as Walker draws from his own experience teaching at the School of Visual Arts as well as research on artists, designers, writers and entertainers. One of my favorites? A prompt from cartoonist Lynda Barry. What do you notice and why? It matters, and you can control it, and this book will show you how. 

What good can’t a walk do you—especially with the perfect sidekick? The beautifully designed Afoot and Lighthearted: A Journal for Mindful Walking, a combination of journal and quote compendium, is just that. Each of the book’s six sections—Sense of Place, Well-Being, Attention, Exploration, Devotion and Transcendence—helps you attain the benefits of walking in a different way.
DesignCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Lifestyles: June 2019

Feature by Susannah Felts

Starred review
You know those magazine spreads in which a stylish person of note shares their favorite this-and-thats about where they live, from brunch spots to boutiques? Paris by Design is a bit like those features, with all the class and elegance you expect from denizens of the City of Lights. Designer Eva Jorgensen rounds up a stellar crew of creatives to answer questions about visiting Paris, and each person lists their fave under-the-radar bars, flea markets or shops. There are itineraries for days spent in Parisian neighborhoods, such as Saint-Georges and the Right Bank, Spotify playlists made by French jewelry and home goods designers, and recipes for Parisian dishes like tomato tarts and lemon zest madeleines. I’ll be using one of the book’s cocktail recipes to mix a Suze 75 as I dream of a vacation built around the excellent recommendations that compose this book. 

In 2012, Austin Kleon burst onto the scene with Steal Like an Artist, a book that’s now in the canon of guides to creative thinking and productivity, and Show Your Work! followed in 2014. Now he returns with Keep Going, a book for anyone trying to do creative work in a world that has seemingly gotten “dumber and meaner overnight,” or for anyone who has hit a roadblock and wonders, Will it ever get any easier  ? Kleon has 10 tips for persevering, and while his directives may not all be new, they’re presented here in a most engaging fashion. Bold erasure-poem illustrations, comics and other visuals punctuate a text filled with inspirational quotes. Anyone living any sort of creative life needs this pep talk on their bookshelf.

My husband and I recently put in our modest summer garden. Then we sat down on the porch and paged through Kelly Smith Trimble’s Vegetable Gardening Wisdom, which should help us grow as stewards of the earth. Organized by season, Trimble’s book is filled with tips and interesting facts about specific veggies, along with quotes and recipes (pea-shoot salad sounds divine right now). What makes this guide such a winner is how breathtakingly lovely it is—a true work of bookish art. Each page is a different color, and there are gorgeous illustrations and smart, clean layouts. This book will make a beautiful gift for gardeners of any level of expertise. 

Starred review
You know those magazine spreads in which a stylish person of note shares their favorite this-and-thats about where they live, from brunch spots to boutiques? Paris by Design is a bit like those features, with all the class and elegance you expect from…

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