Beautiful vistas. Shocking greenery. Bright, airy calm. Nature is magnificent, but sometimes the bug bites, poison ivy and boot-staining mud are not. Here are five literary landscapes you can discover from the comfort of your couch.
A Girl of the Limberlost
The U.S. is full of landscapes that capture the imagination, but the ones that remain are only a fraction of what once existed. Gene Stratton-Porter has preserved one of these lost natural wonders, the Limberlost Swamp of Indiana, in her bestselling 1909 book, A Girl of the Limberlost. As lonely young Elnora Comstock roams the swamp to collect moth specimens, Stratton-Porter uses her keen naturalist’s eye to bring its eerie beauty, watery dangers (quicksand!) and unique fauna to life. She hoped the book would encourage conservation of the wetlands, which were being ravaged by oil rigs and drained for agriculture. Read this classic to immerse yourself in a lost world, then console yourself with the fact that, due to recent conservation efforts, a small portion of the swamp has begun to bounce back.
—Trisha, Publisher
A Wizard of Earthsea
Practically all of the important action in Ursula K. Le Guin’s iconic fantasy novel happens outdoors on the windswept seas and craggy islands of Earthsea. Le Guin’s mages skip along the enormous ocean in small boats pushed by winds that they command, or they transform into birds to fly from island to island. As her protagonist, Ged, travels from the harsh island of Gont to a school for wizards on the island of Roke and then embarks on a quest to hunt down a shadow creature, Le Guin treats readers to one stunning vista after another. My personal favorite is the island of Pendor, which was once a stronghold for pirates and outlaws before their vast treasure attracted the attention of dragons. Once the dragons took over the island, they used the towers of Pendor as glamorous perches before flying off to terrorize unsuspecting villagers.
—Savanna, Associate Editor
Gathering Moss
Recently I have fallen back in love with moss, that ubiquitous, unexamined miniature landscape that is, rather surprisingly, absolutely everywhere—on the driveway and in sidewalk cracks, adorning tree trunks and hiding in the garden. It’s so small that it can easily become set dressing to the larger wonders of the forest, but through naturalist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s eyes, there is nothing more exciting or life-giving than a carpet of moss. In this loving series of personal essays, she is a gracious guide to the boundary layer where mosses flourish, blending scientific detail with poetic ruminations on her life spent observing these tiny rainforests. Her love of the mossy world is as buoyant as deep peat, and she leaves her readers with a profound sense of stewardship. If you’re like me, you’ll soon find any opportunity to stop and pet the moss.
—Cat, Deputy Editor
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Who better to deliver a shock to your stay-at-home system than Annie Dillard? Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is her nature writing masterpiece, full of all the scenery and savagery, tranquility and tragedy, mystery and miracle of the great outdoors—“beauty tangled in a rapture with violence,” as Dillard put it. This work of narrative nonfiction documents a year she spent exploring the natural world around her home in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley, through which the titular Tinker Creek runs. Dillard plays the part of pious sojourner, venerating monarch butterflies, muskrats, grasshoppers and pond scum in prose that is alternatingly lilting and electric. If summer’s monotony has dulled your senses, I recommend dipping into this iconic collection for a jolt of wonder.
—Christy, Associate Editor
Prodigal Summer
I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer for the first time one summer in Boston. I’d moved into an attic bedroom in a sprawling old house in Lower Allston, a neighborhood overrun with college students like myself. It had unfinished wood floors, mice and no air conditioning, so I often stayed up into the cooler hours of the morning reading, then caught a few hours of sleep before I had to head downtown for work. Kingsolver’s tale of the intersecting lives of humans and creatures in Appalachia was intoxicating. Reading it felt like falling under an enchantment—particularly since I was in the heart of a big city. Kingsolver explores the connections between humans and nature in many of her works, but this is the one I find myself returning to every year when the trees turn green and the sun shines warm.
—Stephanie, Associate Editor
Of all the quarantine reading and listening I’ve done, no audiobook has inspired more people to ask me for more information than You Never Forget Your First, Alexis Coe’s myth-busting biography of George Washington. Coe contextualizes and humanizes Washington’s victories and losses on the battlefield, his many (many) illnesses, his politics and home life in a whole new way, and it’s made all the more accessible by Brittany Pressley’s wry, clear narration. Most importantly, you’ll explore the hypocrisy in Washington’s fight for liberation from British rule while keeping black people enslaved. For readers interested in thinking critically about American history, this is a good start.
I didn’t think it was possible to be more chained to my phone—and thus, more uncomfortable with my relationship to social media—but here we are in a pandemic, and nearly all our social interactions are now on screens. Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing has helped temper those feelings by providing guidance to resist the guilt of feeling unproductive and the demands on our attention. I find Rebecca Gibel’s narration to be hypnotic in its dryness, allowing me to reprioritize and realign where I give my focus.
My thoughts have increasingly strayed to the week each year my family spends at a condo on the Florida gulf—specifically, to the books I read on last summer’s trip, one of which was Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue, which feels like an Aaron Sorkin production with the more melodramatic moments of “The Crown.” When I decided to reexperience it via the audiobook, I’m not sure whether I was motivated by a desire to return to the world McQuiston’s ebullient romance between the president’s son and an English prince, to return to the beach itself or to transport myself to a happy moment in a simpler time. Probably a bit of all three. Regardless, the absorbing and rapid-fire story, paired with Ramón de Ocampo’s warm, exuberant narration (and fantastic British accent, when performing Prince Henry’s lines) made for the perfect, swoonworthy escape.
Ninth House is an addicting mystery set at a magical secret society at Yale University, author Leigh Bardugo’s alma mater. Narrators Lauren Fortgang and Michael David Axtell alternate between Galaxy “Alex” Stern and Daniel “Darlington” Arlington; of the two, Fortgang is the standout. Her performance is as sharp as Alex herself, who’s been through a lot before arriving at Yale. Scenes where Alex lets her rage and trauma surface are riveting as Fortgang snarls and performs through clenched teeth. Fortgang’s visceral performance of Alex’s anger makes the rare moments of genuine affection that Alex permits herself—particularly toward Hellie, a close friend, and Pamela Dawes, the society’s in-house researcher—moving in their tenderness, as Fortgang softens her voice to convey Alex’s vulnerability. Anyone looking to be swept up in a story of dark magic in which nothing is as it seems should give Ninth House a try.
I read a hard copy of Kiese Laymon’s memoir Heavy when it came out in 2018 and loved it—in that had-to-lie-down-for-two-and-a-half-hours-afterward kind of way. (The book is aptly named.) When my professor assigned it for a graduate class I took this spring, I decided to give the award-winning audiobook a try for my second reading. Hearing Laymon’s words in his own voice was even more affecting than reading them on the page. In the audio version, you get the full playfulness of he and LaThon’s middle school riffing on words like “galore” (gal-low), “meager” (mee-guh) and “y’all don’t even know.” You also hear the full tenderness of Laymon’s conversations with his mother, in which they try to tell each other the truth about addiction, abuse, deception and love. When I finished listening to Heavy this time, I still had to lie down afterward to digest its contents—white supremacy, disordered eating and violence against Black Americans, among other things—but since a late afternoon stress-nap was already a staple in my quarantine routine, it turned out to be a perfect pandemic listen.
I was two chapters into my hardcover of Trick Mirror when the audiobook became available to check out from the library. (Apparently, I had placed it on hold during pre-COVID times and then, along with all the other trappings of normal life, forgot about it.) Jia Tolentino’s nuanced essays are the sort of reading you want to absorb every word of, so I wasn’t sure the audiobook would be the best fit. But out of curiosity (and a desire to make good on the library’s monthslong waitlist), I checked it out and grabbed my headphones. Next thing I knew, I was three hours in and plumbing the depths of my to-do list for more things to work on so I could keep listening. With an engaging balance between the personal and the reported, Tolentino’s exacting explorations of feminism, the internet and the self lend themselves nicely to audio, as it turns out. And as for my to-do list, her intellectual, no-frills narration provided the perfect soundtrack for taking a walk, doing the dishes, brushing the cats, making banana bread and mending that tear in my duvet cover.
Piranesi by 
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
A Deadly Education by 
Girls Against God by Jenny Hval
Leave the World Behind by 
Spoiler Alert by 
The Man Who Ate Too Much by John Birdsall
The Devil and the Dark Water by 
A Measure of Belonging, edited by Cinelle Barnes
The Once and Future Witches by 
All Thirteen by Christina Soontornvat
She Come by It Natural by 
Black Sun by 
Memorial by 
The Little Mermaid by 
We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper
The Office of Historical Corrections by 
