Weather permitting, Destination: Books will be taking its pop-up book shop to Birmingham, Alabama on Saturday morning, September 18, 2021. We feature books about gardening, sustainability and food culture. We are a guest of Bonnybee Designs at The Market at Pepper Place.
We return to the Freedom Farmer's Market at the Carter Center in Atlanta on September 25, 2021.
Though at first glance booksellers don’t seem to be a competitive lot, underneath their calm masked demeanor burns a desire to sell. What often makes it different is that sometimes the challenge is not quantitative in terms of sales, but qualitative. Naturally, Destination: Books stocks books that we think potential buyers are likely interested in, (e.g. books on okra and mushrooms), but sometimes we become a more adventuresome seller intentionally offering something that is more of an outlier or quirky. “It is an article of faith that such a book can be the lid to somebody's pot,” says one of our staffers.
For example, throughout the summer we have carried in our Destination: Books popup booth Freedom Farmers Market at the Carter Center in Atlanta two books about the melodic pawpaw fruit. Though the Asimina triloba is more prevalent north of here (ranging from Arkansas to Virginia and northern Alabama to southern Michigan) its southern-most habitat does include Georgia. There are pawpaw trees, I am told, planted on grounds of the Carter Center.
One such offering is Pawpaw: In Search of America’s Forgotten Fruit by Andrew Moore. The title alone tells you that the pawpaw—though the largest edible fruit in North America—has long suffered an image problem. Some say it tastes like a cross between a mango and a banana. Others say, “a pawpaw is to a mango and as quince is to an apple.” Though his travels throughout the Southeast, Moore provides a detailed cultural history of the fruit going back centuries.
Another pawpaw-flavored book is Pawpaws: The Complete Growing and Marketing Guide by Blake Cothron, which like the Moore book gives some background about the fruit. What separates this book from the Moore book is that there are instructions on how to grow your own pawpaws either commercially or for personal consumption.
Other Possibilities
There are a couple other new “long shot” additions which have been and a source of discussion in pre-booth staff meetings. One is Jonathan Franzen’s book of essays, The End of the End of the Earth, which we wrote about last month here in the blog and the other is science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s hefty novel, The Ministry for the Future, which was written about recently in the short piece “Speculating on the Future,” recently posted on our companion blog.
Both authors have name recognition and a sizeable following but would not necessarily expect to see their books on the tables of a Farmer’s Market. However, both writers creatively tackle the question of what hope looks like in the face of cataclysmic climate change.
Will these books leave the display table at our next popup appearance on Saturday morning, August 28, 2021? Should we really be surprised if they do? After all our motto says: Destination: Books “for the adventurous.”
The third annual Georgia Pollinator Census is coming up on August 20 and 21, 2021 -- an event coordinated by the University of Georgia Extension Service. The goal of the project is three-fold:
It's easy to do and on the Georgia Pollinator website there is a downloadable guide to identification and a worksheet that you can take with you while you do your counting.
More Books
At The Destination: Books online store (through bookshop.org). We've put together a short list of books including three field guide favorites from Becky Griffin who is the UGA coordinator for the census.
Destination: Books' next pop-up book stall is scheduled for Saturday morning, August 28th at the Carter Center Freedom Farmer's Market.
Jonathan Franzen’s book of essays, The End of the End of the Earth (2018) reflects the intersection of the type of books Destination: Books offers: gardening-sustainability, travel, and a touch of the literary.
Franzen is most well-known as the author of the Pulitzer Prize winning The Corrections, and somewhat as a pugilist with run-ins over the years with Oprah Winfrey and bestselling author Jodi Picoult. He was the keynote speaker at the 201o Decatur Book Festival with his less than memorable reading of his new novel Freedom. More about this in our companion blog The Book Shopper.
But in addition to being a novelist and a misanthrope, Franzen is also an essayist and an avid bird watcher, the latter which is one of the major themes of this collection.
“To my shame, I am in the world of birding call a lister. It’s not that I don’t like birds for their own sake. I go birding to their beauty and diversity, learn more about their behavior and the ecosystems they belong to, and take long attentive walks in new places. But I also keep way too many lists. I count not only the species I have seen worldwide, but the ones I have seen in every country and every U.S. state I have birded in. Also at various other sites, including my backyard, and in every calendar year since 2003. I can rationalize my compulsive counting as an extra little game I play within the context of my passion. But I really am compulsive. This makes me morally inferior to birders who bird exclusively for the joy of it.”
The quote above does a good job summing up the majority of these essays. Franzen— traveling around the world ( Ghana, Egypt, Jamaica, St. Lucia, islands off the coast of California, and Antarctica) — adding to his list of birds (African cuckoo-hawk, ringed plover, crested quail dove, black finch, Farrion murres, and the Emperor Penguin, —while commenting on the dire circumstances of shrinking habitats. He doesn’t blame everything on climate change (one criticism of book when it was first published was that he was a skeptic), but he can be witheringly critical of organizations and corporations. Fortunately, he reports on successful conservation stories as well.
As a misanthrope, Franzen does not spare himself while he investigates his own self-centeredness. In the book’s title essay while on a Lindblad cruise to Antarctica, it's Franzen, who first sees the elusive Emperor Penguin and alerts the staff naturalist, which allows others to see the reclusive “star” of the documentary March of the Penguins. At dinner that night the captain singles out Franzen for his efforts. The following day Franzen receives even more kudos. He writes:
“All day long passengers I hadn’t even met had stopped me in the hallway to thank me or cheer me for finding the penguin. I finally had an inkling of how it must feel to be a high school athlete and come to the school after scoring a season-saving touchdown. For forty years, in large social groups, I’d accustomed myself to feeling like the problem. To be a group’s game-winning hero, if only for a day was a complete, disorienting novelty. I wondered if, all my life, in my refusal to be a joiner, I’d missed out on some essential human thing.”
In the final two essays of the book (the last one was a response to early criticism that the hardback edition was too tolerant about climate change), Franzen addresses the question that lingers “How do we find meaning in our actions when the world seems to be coming to an end?” His answers are provocative, insightful, and not as dour as you might think. Pure Franzen.
Note: Destination: Books' next pop-up book stall will be at the Carter Center's Freedom Farmer's Market on Saturday morning, July 31st.
Since book shoppers who visit the Destination: Books booth like to chat about mushrooms, we are always examining new and different books on the topic. Here’s a brief rundown of what we will be serving on our book table at the Freedom Farmer’s Market on Saturday, June 26, 2021.
Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change our Minds & Shape our Futures. In a recent interview in Sun Magazine, Sheldrake, who has a PhD in tropical ecology explains the invaluable role that fungi play in the plant world as 90 percent of plants depend on the symbiotic, mutually beneficial relationship between plant and fungi. This book further explains this amazing, often hidden, and important world. People often point at the book and rave about it.
Doug Bierend’s In Search of Mycrotopia: Citizen Science, Fungi Fanatics and the Untapped Potential of Mushrooms. Bierend’s book begins with an explanation of what fungi are and how they have been viewed by the mainstream culture. He then deep dives into the rise of the underground mycelium culture, which is having significant impact (like carrying multiple mushroom books at farmer’s markets).
Tradd Cotter’s Organic Mushroom Farming and Mycroremediation: Simple to Advanced Techniques for Indoor and Outdoor Cultivation. Cotter who heads a laboratory and research space near Greenville, South Carolina has written a comprehensive how-to book to take you from mushroom eater to a mushroom grower. This gorgeously printed book is deep in detail with many illustrations and photographs.
Mike Jay’s Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic. Although mescaline is cactus-based and not a fungus-based psychedelic like psilocybin, this book from Yale University Press gives a cultural history of these psychedelics which are becoming more and more prevalent because of the rising possibilities of their medicinal value especially in treating mental health problems. We will also have a copy of Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depressions and Transcendence.
Mushroom market photography by Destination's Denise Casey.
Don't worry, our book offerings at the Saturday morning May 29th, Carter Center Freedom Farmer's Market are not limited to these books about worms. But take note -- worm subtopics can range from poetry (Connoisseurs) to general advice (Fresh Food from Small Places) to full scale vermicomposting. We will have other books about gardening, sustainability, food, travel and books about books at the pop-up as well.
More about Amy Stewart's book can be found at the posting "Upping the Worm Game" at our companion blog. It is a very enjoyable and informative book.
Our next pop-up book stall is scheduled for Saturday morning, May 29, 2021 at the Carter Center Freedom Farmer's Market. If you want a sense of what will be there check out the preliminary inventory list.
In other news Destination:Books is now a member of the American Booksellers Association and. an affiliate of the Bookshop.org project which has allows independents —even little pop-ups like us— to be competitive with Amazon.
Anytime you are looking for a new book and please consider the Destination:Books portal. Part of the money generated on the site back directly to us and some goes into a money pool for all independent book stores. Orders are fulfilled by Ingram book distributors and only take a few days to arrive at your door.
For second-hand books or some of more eclectic Destination:Books offerings, (ones we don't haul around) the primary portal is The Destination:Books Alibris Store For a sample of the offerings check the Destination:Books Catalog Page. Orders are fulfilled from the Destination:Books mailroom/garage. Sometimes the portal can be closed for a day or two because the clerk (yours truly) is not available. Any extensive closings we will provide the details on the Catalog Page.
If you have any questions, you can always email me directly at murray.browne905 AT gmail.com.
In keeping with our motto, "For the Adventurous" here's a list of some of the books we'll be bringing to the Carter Center's Freedom Farmer's Market on Saturday morning, May 1st. We specialize in gardening & sustainability, travel, and books about books.
This is a fine opportunity to exercise those flabby, well-rested, browsing muscles.
Because it is well known that books and water do not mix and considering the probability of heavy rains on Saturday April 24th, Destination: Books has moved its next pop-up book stall event at the Carter Center Freedom Farmer's Market to Saturday morning, May 1st.
For the story of what happened to the books in the photo (kind of a Earth Day saga), visit the Book Rescue posting on our companion blog.
A couple of years ago when visiting Berlin where my older daughter lives, she told me about community garden known as Prinzessinnengarten or Princess Garden. In 2009, a community garden was started in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, reclaimed from an industrial, wasteland area that had been unused and abused for half a century. To combat the problem of the barren soil coupled with the possibility that the city could reclaim the land at any time all the plants were grown in mobile containers. Not only has the city turned a brown space to green, but Prinzessinnengarten has become a center for community education about gardening and sustainability and a melting pot for Berlin's diverse population. This link has a short film (in English) that tells a more complete story.
I was unable to visit the original Prinzessinnengarten while I was there, but I did get a tour of its sister site that has recently been opened in an old church graveyard in the Neukölln borough. Navigating complicated civil and religious rules, the non-profit company Nomadic Green, which spearheads these reclamation efforts pulled up gravestones (nothing fresh) and the site is being turned into another community garden site as well. Again mobility is part of the design of the space.
Inspired, I have begun to try to remediate an eroded, barren patch of rocky hillside that butts up to the development where I live. Fortunately being here at Destination: Books I have ready access to gardening and environmental books to consult.
All three books will be available for browsing/scrutinizing when Destination: Books returns to the Freedom Farmer's Market at the Carter Center on Saturday morning, April 24, 2021. In the meantime, as you can see from the photo below, I have plenty of work to do. Because of the threat of heavy rain, our next FFM gig has been moved to May 1, 2021.