Fall Into Reading 

Staff recommendations from Pomegranate Books

Pomegranate Books is an independent bookstore in the historic Borkenhagen House in the Winter Park neighborhood of Wilmington North Carolina, where we have been finding good homes for great books since 2005. The store stocks a carefully selected collection of literary and life-enhancing titles for all ages and feature locally-made cards and gift items. According to owner, Kathleen Jewell, their philosophy of connection to community is summed up in their slogan: Read, Write, Gather.

Debby’s pick: The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

“The Salt Path,” the first of three memoirs by British writer Raynor Winn, is the story of a couple’s 630-mile walk on the Southwest Coast Path on the southern English coast. Following the tragic loss of their Welsh farm and their livelihood, and her husband Moth’s diagnosis of an incurable disease, they decided to set off on this arduous journey, relying only on what they could carry in their rucksacks. Tested by unpredictable weather, difficult terrain, sleeping rough, and little money, combined with Moth’s physical difficulties, they carried on, persisted, and survived. Winn’s descriptions of nature, the sea and skies, the people they encountered along the way, and the challenges they faced together are beautifully written, truly inspiring, and a testament to the healing power of nature and a portrait of hope and enduring love.

Rachel’s pick: Salt Houses by Hala Alyan

Although we follow four generations of a Palestinian family as they are torn from their homeland and forced to live in houses and countries that are not their own, what resonates most in this novel is the normalcy—the beauty of the enduring love and strength of the family throughout this six-decade period. Author Hala Alyan said of this novel that she wanted to “write something that avoided the usual portrayal of Palestinians and Arabs.” She said those portrayals “often involve politicizing or eroticizing them,” which she has avoided here. Alyan carries us through the timely and intricate complexities of displacement with the exquisite rendering of one family’s epic journey.

Luis’ pick: The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

This book chronicles Laing’s exploration of loneliness after a transatlantic move to New York City and the subsequent dissolution of the romantic relationship that prompted the move.  Finding herself in a foreign country she comes to inhabit loneliness daily and begins to explore this under-discussed but universal experience by way of psychology, history, and art. Through sharp observation of humanity, Laing examines the causes of loneliness and how one might resist and grow through it.

Jordan’s pick: You are Here: Poetry In The Natural World, edited and introduced by Ada Limón

It can be easy nowadays to see ourselves as removed from the abundant beauty and rich complexity of nature. But the poets in You Are Here reimagine what nature and landscape mean to them and how we are intimately connected with the little worlds around us. Take, for example, Analicia Sotelo’s rendering of her father: “The boots he wore / harbor spiders in the living room. And his red paisley bandana, / cured with sweat, calls the river line to attention.” And in Michael Kleber-Diggs’s poem, he meditates on the patience he learns from walking with his dogs: “We stroll through the grounds and stop at every tree. Their noses lead to everything I see.” In each poem, authors engage with their local landscape—be it a disappearing hackberry tree in the sweltering heat of June, moth-mothers and their babies in sweater drawers, seascapes and borders, a witch inn, snapdragons and dew drops and fat field mice. As United States Poet Laureate Ada Limón reminds us in her introduction, “Nature is who we are.” While reading this collection, I felt as if I was being pulled closer and closer to a body that is more and less human, a body more connected to the natural world. I felt less alone.