Destination: Books

2023 Farmers Market Debut Delayed

Destination Books begins its third full year at the Freedom Farmers Market at the Carter Center on Saturday, March 25, 2023 on Saturday, April 1, 2023. (We feared rainy, windy conditions on the 25th, so we postponed it.) In addition to our standard pop-up inventory, we will be hauling in fresh titles, which includes many children's books.

Books for Sodbusters

It is time of year to get serious about tearing out that lawn grass and replacing it with something useful such as wildflowers and native grasses that attract pollinators while discouraging the need for lawn mowing and fertilizers. 

One of the books on this topic that we always carry is Owen Wormser's Lawns into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape, who explains which explains why lawns are a bad idea. Wormser writes: 

"After they are gassed up and running lawn mowers emit ten times more hydrocarbons than a typical car for every hour of operation. This means that in one hour, a commercial lawn mower the kind used by professional lawn mower companies, spews as much smog-forming pollution as driving a 2017 Toyota Camry for 300 miles. Brand-new gas-powered residential mowers running for just one hour are not much of an improvement; the amount of emissions released is the equivalent of driving a car for 100 miles...But in addition to the environmental costs, they also demand a lot of time and money. The average lawn owner spends 150 hours a year tending to their grass."

With the help of the Wormser book, one can improve the environment incrementally. I have been using it as a valuable resource to restore a dead, eroded hillside in my development with wildflowers (I don't have a yard.) and grasses. His recently published new edition includes color photographs to inspire.

I will have both editions at the next Destination: Books pop-up scheduled for Saturday morning, March 25th the Carter Center's Freedom Farmer's Market in Atlanta. We are back for our third year.  In the meantime both books are available online from the Gardening-How-To section of our Bookshop website.

 

Cool Flowers

In preparation for the upcoming Wylde Center Seeds and Scion Exchange book pop-up (details here) I am getting some of my own wildflowers ready Spring planting. Part of that prep includes looking at Lisa Mason Ziegler's Cool Flowers: How to Grow and Enjoy Long-Blooming Hardy Annual Flowers Using Cool Weather Techniques.  Recommended by a flower vendor when I was doing a popup last year, I ordered this book and kept it in storage waiting for the right time to display it.

That moment has come because Ziegler's book (kind of a classic considering it's been in print for over a decade) is a combination of specifics of what, when and how to grow annual and perennial flowers. It includes detailed instructions on how to grow them from seed. This is important as Ziegler writes:

Starting your own plants at the right time is the only way to be sure of having a fabulous hardy annual garden. It is almost impossible to find the plants you want in the fall or early spring unless you start them yourself. If hardy plants are available at all on the retail market, it is seldom in the variety you want or at the correct planting time for your garden seeds yourself is the way to go. 

Last year was the first time I grew some of my own plants from seed and I am expanding my operation this year. Ziegler's gorgeously printed book with its inspirational colorful pictures and easy-to-absorb advice, gives me hope. But you know about hope— it springs eternal.

Note: If you cannot make to the Exchange, you can purchase Cool Flowers online from the Destination: Books Bookshop portal located here.

 

Three Books on Seeds

In anticipation of the upcoming Wylde Center's Seed and Scion Exchange later this month (details here), Destination: Books has been gathering books about seeds and taking a closer look at their specific offerings. Here’s a recap:

Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners by Suzanne Ashworth. For over twenty years this book has been a mainstay reference book providing detailed information on each vegetable including: botanical classification, flower structure and pollination, isolation distance, population size, caging or hand pollination and proper method to grow, harvest, dry clean and store the seeds.

It’s well organized and includes growing tips for different regions of the U.S. Seed to Seed reminds us that few things can match the usefulness of a good, soon-to-be-dogeared, reference book.

The Seed Detective: Uncovering the Secret Histories of Remarkable Vegetables by Adam Alexander.  In this book the globetrotting Alexander, combines his personal experiences with the history and heritage of a variety of vegetables. His prose is fast-paced, breezy and loaded with fun facts whether diving into the evolutionary history of the tomato or discussing the color of carrots. Each chapter reads like a mini documentary you’d see on the Veggie Gardening Channel.

I guess it should not come as any surprise since Alexander’s day job is as a film and television producer.

The Seed Underground by Janisse Ray.  This nonfiction collection is mixture of Ray’s upbringing in the southeastern Georgia, her own experiences pursing and preserving seeds, and portraits of the “revolutionaries” who have influenced and inspired her along the way.  Ray’s book is more lyrical and longing in tone and she is also a no-nonsense activist, highly critical of large American Food System. In the chapter “What is Broken” she lists the reasons why seed diversity is important: 

1. Our food is going extinct.
2. Our food supply is being stolen from us.
3. Our food supply is being bought out from under us.
4. Bad food has been forced down our throats.
5. Our food is hazardous to our health.
6. Our food is harming the earth.
7. Our food annihilates pollinators.
8. Our food threatens democracy.

If you cannot make to the Seed and Scion Exchange to swap seeds and enjoy the company of like-minded people, these seed books are available at our online store or directly from the publisher Chelsea Green. These new books would be shipped directly to your home and you’ll be supporting independent bookstores and an independent employee-owned publisher.

BTW, Destination: Books is now a 2023 Vendor Sponsor for the Wylde Center.

Mushroom Induced Reading

As part of my off-season regime, I am hopelessly trying to catch up on books that I am scouting out for the 2023 version of Destination: Books. My anthropologist daughter Cynthia sent me one such book for consideration– The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.

The book begins by centering on the matsutake mushroom as an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. What adds to its uniqueness is that it thrives in damaged landscapes in the northern hemisphere—most notably Japan, Oregon, and Finland. By damaged, I mean scrubby landscapes of usually pine trees leftover from commercial logging by the timber industry. It cannot be grown commercially and harvesting it relies on a diverse population of mushroom hunters* who vary in background, customs, and language. In Oregon, many of the hunters are Hmong (from Laos), lu Mien (Laos and Thailand), or Khmer (Cambodia) who migrated to the Northwest after families who were displaced by the War in Southeast Asia. Also, included in the book is a history of the Japanese forestry industry, which factors into today’s matsutake landscape as well.

Tsing describes in detail this unusual supply chain of matsutake commerce. Since the mushroom thrives in human-disturbed forests, it offers some resurgence in ravaged ecosystems. Quoting the book’s jacket: “In all its contradictions, matsutake offers insights into areas far beyond just mushrooms and addresses a crucial question: what manages to live in the ruins we have made?” By investigating one of the world’s most sought-after fungi, The Mushroom at the End of the World presents “an original examination into the relation between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multispecies landscapes, the prerequisite for continuing life on earth.”

Mushroom hits the sweet spot of a Destination: Books offering—the intersection of sustainability, distant places to visit and good writing.  Tsing's book is wide in scope and can be challenging at times, but well worth the effort.

The book is available in the Fungi and Mushroom section of the Destination: Books online store (powered by Bookshop.org) next to Merlin Sheldrake’s classic Entangled Life. Purchases made there are shared with independent booksellers like Destination: Books.

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* The photograph of an immigrant Thai mushroom hunter at the top of the posting comes from a New York Times 2013 video series. Thomas Patterson took the photo. (The Mushroom book has many black and white hotos, but none that I could get ahold of.) 

Closing Out 2022

Destination: Books will be making its final 2022 appearance at the Carter Center's Freedom Farmer's Market on Saturday morning, December 10, 2022. We will have a range of books —those suitable for gift giving and some close out end-of-the-year sale books as well. A savvy shopper could find a book that meets both criteria. 

Here's some examples:

We wrote about the Katz and Bir books here earlier this year.

A chance to continue to do year-round gardening with Peter Burke. More info here.

Or is this the time of year to work on that soil before Spring planting with Jesse Frost?

Our Partners - Carlos Museum Bookshop and Andersson Gardens

These are just a few of the books we'll have on hand at the Carter Center. Also, our book partners from the Carlos Museum Bookshop (a nonprofit bookseller on the campus of Emory University) will be there with children's books, books on food culture etc. and books you will not see anywhere else in the Atlanta Metro area.

In Avondale Estates on Sunday, December 11.

Andersson Gardens will have some books from us for their popup at the Avondale Farmers Market on Sunday morning and the Avondale Estates Holiday Market, which is at the Community Center from Noon to 6 p.m. 

 

 

Gift Books at Avondale Farmer's Market

Destination: Books has supplied some of its favorite titles to Andersson Gardens in Avondale Estates. Andersson has put together holiday gift baskets to sell at the Avondale Estates Farmers Market on Sunday, December 4, 2022 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Shown here is a Festive Flora book from Kew Pocket Books. These books feature gorgeous botanical illustrations from the Royal Botannical Gardens' Kew Library and Archives.

More about Destination: Books

Even though Destination: Books is a popup and online bookshop and not a bricks-and-mortar store, we are still an independent bookseller and a member of the American Bookseller Association. We are an affiliate and a beneficiary of the Bookshop.org program. (Bookshop.org is a collaboration between the ABA and the book wholesaler Ingram.)

For every new book purchased through the bookshop.org portal, money eventually is shared to hundreds of affiliates. Moreover, if you purchase any new book through the specific Destination: Books bookshop portal, we even receive an additional commission. 

Our Destination: Books bookshop portal lists some of the books we have written about in our destinationbooks.net blog or have discussed with you while you visited our booth throughout the year (but you can search for any current title.) Furthermore Bookshop.org is offering free shipping on book orders until Monday midnight, November 28, 2022.

Thanks for your support of independent reading and thinking.

These Just In

Between popups, I have been evaluating two books that may be of interest to our "adventurous” clientele.

Dan Chapman in his recently published A Road Running Southward: Following John Muir’s Journey Through an Endangered Land mixes a travelogue with a report card on the Southeast’s various ecosystems from Kentucky to Florida. Chapman follows naturalist John Muir’s 1867 trek from Louisville, through Tennessee and Georgia to Cedarville, Florida but instead of traveling on foot through a war torn South, he goes by Subaru through a growing/sprawling South, which has prospered, depending on one’s definition of prosper, at great ecological cost.

Not only does Chapman reference Muir’s writings throughout, but he uses his journalistic skills to interview those on the front line of the Southeast’s fight against species disappearance, water pollution and habitat loss. His chapter on the 2008 coal ash flood in Kingston, Tennessee is especially poignant, especially when you consider North Georgia has been bringing the toxic coal ash (a byproduct of coal firing plants) from other states.

Likewise, in Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle, Jody Rosen takes the reader to distant lands and a journey through history. Rather than try to write a definitive, Pollyannish, account of this newly crowned symbol of green living, Rosen explores the gray areas of the bicycle (or velocipedes as it was known early in 19th century England) mixing in personal experiences and a travelogue.

Rosen effortlessly (always a good sign of a skilled writer) meshes the bicycles current standing with its checkered and uncertain past especially with airplanes and automobiles.   In one chapter, Rosen travels to the St. Giles Church in Buckinghamshire-west of London to see a stained-glass window that is graced by an early (biblical?) bicycle. The minister explains why so many make the pilgrimage. “A thing you learn about this job is the people like mysteries, I think as much as they like certainties.”

These words of wisdom explain why this book is so good.

Note: Our next popup at the Freedom Farmer's Market is scheduled for Saturday morning, November 19th. You can also find these two books at our online Destination: Books store.

Rotating Pop-Up Inventory

Just like those Gardening Best Practices books which suggest that you rotate your veggies in the garden from year to year, Destination: Books is rotating its book inventory for our next pop-up on Saturday morning, October 22nd at the Carter Center's Freedom Farmers Market in Atlanta.

Here's a sample of some of the new titles you can expect to see:

Kew Pocket Books 

Gorgeous botanical illustrations on Herbs and Spices, Wildflowers, Japanese Flowers, Fruit, Festive Flora, Herbs and Spices coupled with detailed captions. Artistry made available from the Royal Botannical Gardens' Kew Library and Archives.

Books about Fabric Dyeing

My longtime partner Denise (who does a lot with fabric) curated these two books that she suggests is inventory worthy. 

The Modern Natural Dyer: A Comprehensive Guide to Dyeing Silk, Wool, Linen and Cotton at Home by Kristine Vijar. This book is kind of Dyeing 101 book written for the person who is just starting to learn about dyeing.

Journeys in Natural Dyeing: Technic for Creating Color at Home by Kristine Vijar. This colorful book is more of an in-depth guide to dyeing techniques from around the world.

 

 

These May Interest as Well

Growing Perennial Foods: A Field Guide to Raising Resilient Herbs, Fruits and Vegetables by Arcadia Tucker. She is the author of the popular Tiny Victory Gardens book, which is a solid book for beginners with limited space.

The Seed Detective: Uncovering the Seed Histories of Remarkable Vegetables by Adam Alexander. Inspiring stories about vegetables.  Putting the culture in horticulture.