Where do you find your next read?
For me it's: Anyplace except from where I “should”
320 Sycamore Studios believes that reading with kids can change the world for the better. Each month (except for August), we publish one original story and one post on books and reading. Everything is written by a human.
Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world* I read the blog “Transactions With Beauty.” It’s where Canadian librarian-poet-writer-photographer Shawna LeMay writes luminously about photography, music, travel, writing, and books.
Especially books.
Post titles from the past couple months include “Books are Life,” “Reading Day, Happy Places,” “Where Shall I Begin? Living With Jane Austen,” and “Finding Your Next Read (Old School).”
That last one got its hooks in me, because I’d been noodling on the same question myself.
Where does she find her next read?
Sometimes on Instagram or FB, at the library, browsing bookshops (not as often as I’d wish to but there you go), a book will be mentioned in another book, an author I admire will share a quotation, from other blogs (such as Kerry Clare’s), on my favourite podcast On Being, and from friends. This last one is so lovely — because it reminded me that much like the advice of “shopping in your closet” it’s also good to browse your own bookshelf (I hope you have one (or two or three etc) stuffed to the brim).
(Aside: I have to send a special thank you to Shawna. Her encouraging email late last year got me to restart this newsletter after a hiatus. It’s amazing what possibilities a timely kindness can catalyze.)
Where do I find my next read?
From the “free” pile on the park bench across the street.
From kids-book Substack newsletters, like Can We Read?, Readable Moments, Voracious, and Moonbow.
From scrutinizing the shelved books behind admirable people when they’re being interviewed.
In bookstores, at the library, thrift stores, museum shops, AirBNB lodgings,** and free little libraries.
From other books, yes.
And blogs and podcasts.
On my stepson’s bookshelf (which is great for graphic novels, like “March.”).
From friends and family. (Like “The Paris Apartment,” which my daughter recommended.)
On neglected corners of my own shelves, where maybe the timing hasn’t been right before but is now.
And movies. (E.g.: the “‘Cash’ by Johnny Cash” shout-out in “High Fidelity” or the “Upanishads” moment from the 1984 adaptation of “The Razor’s Edge.”)
From themes I want to research.
From the desire to hang out with authors who feel like friends. Ivan Doig, Richard Powers, John Steinbeck, Gary Paulsen, Kate DiCamillo, Sandra Boynton.
From where the gaps are. Like anyone, I can tend toward familiar themes, or characters and authors who share my race or gender or orientation or geography or spirituality. So I try to diversify.
And from guilt. I still feel a bit of remorse for not getting through “The Plague” in Ms. Mickey’s AP English class in high school. I tried to read it again a few years ago and failed again. I’ll try again, Ms. Mickey, I promise!
So, from everywhere, basically.
Except from “best of” lists.
It’s the petulant child in me bristling against anything that feels like a “should.”
Instead, I prefer “Hey, you might like this” lists.
Random Rec
Hey, you might like this: “Book Scavenger,” by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman.
It gave me all the feels.
Emily, a book-loving 12-year-old, moves to San Francisco with her older brother and her parents. Moving is an annual thing for the family, as Emily’s parents work remote jobs and pursue a labor-of-love project on the side — a blog called “50 Homes in 50 States.”
For Emily, who’s slow to make friends, the annual moves have started to wear on her. Partly because her brother is more interested these days in making fan videos for his favorite band than he is in hanging out with her.
But San Francisco has a couple things going for it: It’s the global headquarters of both Emily’s favorite game, Book Scavenger (think: real-world book hunt meets clues and community online), and of her new friend James, a puzzle-loving boy her own age who lives upstairs.
Emily finds a mysterious book at a crime scene, and in the weeks that follow, the book leads her and James on a wild-book chase across the city, following clues, solving puzzles, and dodging bad guys. All while dealing with the dramas of friendship, family, and middle school.
It’s sweet and exciting and moving and fun.
In her author’s note, Jennifer says that
“‘Book Scavenger’” began with a vision of kids finding a book in a BART station, leading them into a mystery. What book do they find? What is the mystery? I imagined a story in the spirit of some of my favorite movies and books when I was young: “Goonies”; “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”; “The Westing Game,” by Ellen Raskin; “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler,” by E.L. Konigsburg; and “The Egypt Game,” by Zilpha Keatley Snyder.”
I loved the literary references — classic kids books, books on cryptography and puzzle-solving, beat poets, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Gold Bug”).
I loved how of-its-place the story was — the Ferry Building, Pier 39, City Lights, Lombard Street, the Fillmore.
And, of course, I loved how it celebrated books and book-loving kids. Like I was.
If you like the book, you can go further …
Jennifer has written two delightful sequels to “Book Scavenger”: “The Unbreakable Code” and “The Alcatraz Escape.”
You can go even further …
Read “The Gold Bug” for free at the Public Domain Review. The page has a background piece on the cryptograph-loving Poe, who
“left his newspaper readers, in December 1841, with two final cryptographs, which he credited to one Mr W. B. Tyler. As far as anyone can tell, no one was able to solve these cryptograms until the 1990s, when American literature professor Terence Whalen and Canadian software engineer Gil Broza finally cracked their codes.
Yet one question remains unanswered even today: Who was W. B. Tyler? Poe himself? Or the rare cryptographer who could out-cryptograph Poe? Arguments on either side abound, as seems appropriate.”
And you can even go further than that …
Check out “The Gold Bug Variations,” by Richard Powers. It’s a novel about trying to crack one of the biggest puzzles of all: the genetic code. Allusions to Poe and to Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” abound.
I’ll always be grateful to a friend who handed me the book when I was living in Japan. It turned me into a lifelong Powers fan.
Reads for readers from around the book web
From poo obsession to Pooh obsession
“[A customer] also enquires about some Winnie-the-Pooh books in toddler-friendly format, because she has a cunning plan to convert a poo-obsessed child into a Pooh-obsessed child, which is the sort of thing I can get on board with. Imagine if every time a little child talked about poo they were actually talking about the best bear in the whole world. Gorgeous!”
Tawny Frogmouth is Bird of the Year!
A tawny frogmouth, I learned, is an Australian bird.
Emily Gale, writer of the Voracious newsletter, says, “They remind me of Ewoks with beaks.”
The bird’s scientific name is “Podargus strigoides.” Podargus for “gouty old man” and “strigoides” for “owl-like.”
Emily celebrates the bird’s being named Australia’s bird of the year by sharing some tawny-frogmouth-related books for kids and adults. There’s also an amazing sidebar about the ornithologist Gisela Kaplan, who
“began life in post-WWII Berlin, grew up in poverty but went to brilliant schools, didn’t find out that she was Jewish until she was a teenager, became a singer and travelled Europe, and then left Germany forever to go to Australia alone, with a baby and no English, in her early twenties ...”
Kinda restores one’s faith in humanity. And in owl-like gouty-old-man birds.
A great place to find your next great read
Auraist — what a wonderful site for readers.
Sean, the site’s founder, and his team curate great reads from recent releases and prize shortlists. They also publish “articles on prose style by the anglophone world’s greatest stylists in contemporary literary fiction, horror fiction, fantasy, literary criticism, science and history writing, and many other fields.”
Full disclosure: Sean reached out to me and asked for permission to add 320 Sycamore Studios to the site’s “recommended” list.
Well didn’t that swell my head! Yes, absolutely! Of course! Stammer stammer cough cough.
Reading with kids 1: Do not overthink it
Let me remind you that there is only ONE thing you need to do to encourage a reading habit: Reading books to your kids. That’s it. You can do more than that, of course, but that is all just extra credit. You don’t need fancy shelving. You don’t need a reading schedule. You don’t need to read certain types of books. Just read. Plain and simple. Do not overthink it. DO NOT OVERTHINK IT.
— A Reading Life, from the Readable Moments newsletter
Reading with kids 2: (Try to) Read to them daily
“A Guide to Surviving the Age of Post-Literacy: How to raise (or become) a reader” is a vast, resource-rich article about how reading is in decline, why it matters, and what we can do about it.
So … how do we get kids to read more?
“Read to them daily. Early love of books is tied to higher literacy skills later on. Have a regular quiet time in the afternoon (or the evening) where everyone reads. We have done this since our first child was born and still continue with this practice over two decades later.”
I call that time “FART” by the way. Families All Reading Together.
What I’d add is just a reminder that it’s okay to lower your standards. Read anywhere and anytime. And have fun! Make reading chocolate, not medicine. For your kiddo and you.
Maybe things aren’t so bleak
According to Ted Gioia’s post The Glorious Future of the Book,
“Data centers are in the news nowadays. And not in a good way.
But I have my own home data center. And it requires no water or electricity or any other scarce resource. It’s as renewable as they come.”
Ferdinand loves peace and quiet
“Ferdinand is not like the other bulls. The other bulls are ferocious, enjoying stomping and head-butting each other. But not Ferdinand. Ferdinand loves peace and quiet and the smell of flowers. He’s often found sitting in the shade of his favorite cork tree, smelling the flowers blooming in the hillside.”
My wife calls me Ferdinand sometimes when I’m distractedly content.
— Classics Corner: The Story of Ferdinand, Readable Moments.
And finally ...
“It seems to me October is a good time to read a poem, write a poem, go to a library. Read anything. You know. Walk down your street reading a book. :)”
Happy reading!
— Jeff
Did you know that we’ve published 20+ stories so far, and that you can read them all for free? Just visit our bookshelf page for the links. If you like physical books (and who doesn’t!), 12 of our titles are available for sale on Amazon.
*Random “Love Actually” reference.
**To Monika in Prague: I loved your place, but wanted to let you know that I’m the one who borrowed “The Black Swan.” I left another book in its place, but I can’t remember which one. Hope that’s okay.
Thank you for the nice words about Book Scavenger! Writing that series was like trying to stuff all the things I love about books and San Francisco and puzzles and games into a story. It means a lot to hear from readers like you. I like your Substack, too!
Long no see, Jeff! Thank you for the mention. Hope you're well.