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Creating a Summer Book Basket

reading

14 Jun
Some stationery items on a wooden desktop. An open moleskine notebook, a black gel pen, a micron, a rubber stamp and glue stick, and a pair of glasses.

A lovely friend, who I used to be in a book club with, had a practice of creating a summer book basket. The imagery is so beautiful. And it speaks to being intentional about how to spend the season. It always sparked such a great conversation: “So, what do you have in your summer book basket?”. Even though I don’t use an actual basket, I’ve followed this practice too, ever since.

It can take different forms:

  • a pre-summer trip to the library
  • shopping my own bookshelves for things I haven’t read yet, or to re-read
  • stopping in at the independent book shop
  • *adding to cart* books from an online bookstore
  • putting audio books on hold through the Libby app

My Summer Book Basket

So far, these are the books I’ve collected.

  1. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. Recommended by my sister who knows what I’ll like. Also, I loved The Great Alone by the same author. It’s one of those books that stayed with me long after I read it.
  2. The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys, recommended by my daughter. She also knows what I’ll like.
  3. Station 11 by Emily St. John Mandel. Emily St. John Mandel is a popular author this summer. Sea of Tranquility is her most recent book that also looks great. (Both are set in Canada, sort of.)
  4. The Carbon Almanac, by hundreds of volunteers from all over the world, including me.
  5. Olga Dies Dreaming by Xóchitl González. Highly recommended by Caroline Weaver when she was on the Erasable podcast. A reliable source, and it’s rated 4+ on Goodreads.

That should keep me busy.

One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by.

Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

Stationery in the Photo

  • notebook
  • pen
  • felt tip pen
  • rubber stamp
  • photo, a screenshot from tumblr I printed out, couldn’t find a source
  • skeleton clip
  • glue
  • alpha-numeric wooden stamp set

P.S. The photo is of the second, blank, page in the section of my Reading Journal where I keep track of recommended titles, and who recommended them. So … not showing the first page for privacy reasons, but I love having this list, it’s so helpful.

tags: reading
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Image Credits

All lovely images in these posts are created by Andrea Hunter, unless otherwise attributed, and may not be used without permission.

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