Books to Read When the World Feels Loud

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Not just the light.

[00:00:04]One of the phrases I've adopted for myself is I aspire to not be busy. I love when I do not have a crammed schedule. I'm not going hither, thither, and yawn to every event and volunteer work and work.

[00:00:26]and I'm just turning it around to continue to fill my schedule with busyiness. I really do aspire to not be busy. I also think the illusion of busyiness is so pervasive in this modern life as there is access to technology and as technology is so addictive especially on social media apps and and so on. And I just think that being on technology, it really does create an illusion of busyiness for me. And that's not what I want in my life. I feel like I am a better person when I calm myself down. I have a moment to think. I even spend a moment outside.

[00:01:12]In those moments, I feel like I can reset and feel even more full when I give myself to others. And yet, it doesn't always happen. I'm a mom of two and my kids are rapidly growing up.

[00:01:26]They're in second and fourth grade. I'm a teacher and a librarian, barely towards the end of the school year, a wife, a pet owner, somebody who has a lot of hobbies. And so, finding that quiet has to be a priority. One of the ways that I find quiet is through is through reading books.

[00:01:49]is just through the act of reading. It is one of the best ways for me to access that calm just meditative state that I'm that I'm in. Even though I read critically, I'm often sparring with the author as to how well they're doing at their craft and arguing with them in the text. But I find that me with myself in the book is a really like it's a really quiet moment. The other way that I find this kind of peace is by being outside.

[00:02:23]Being outside in some way, listening to the birds chirp and the whooshes of cars even going by. Sometimes I can hear the cicatas starting to buzz and frogs riveting just outside my window. But being actually outside and taking in a moment with nature is one of the other really great ways for me to calm right down and to feel refreshed and full when I face my busy life ahead. And so I was thinking about literature from people who also find a calm in nature. Um and so it's kind of pairing these two things that I myself find so calming and so I wanted to share them with you. So, if you're new to my channel, thank you for listening to that very I don't know that rambly ramble at the beginning of my video. I don't I now I don't remember if I said my name. Oh my gosh, sometimes I am a hot mess and I just have to accept it. Most people around me know this. I don't know if it always comes off on video. So, my name is Shelly, which you probably know because that's my channel's name. And I love to read and I love to think about literature. and I hope you are will subscribe if you're enjoying the vibe. Without any further rambling on, let's go ahead and get into the meat of this video.

[00:03:46]This first book is a is an easy one because it comes from a category of books that I adore. I love books about a writer and an animal or just a person and an animal and the meditation like a thoughtful meditation on the relationship between said human and animal. I just love books like that. I find them really fascinating, especially as the writer dives deeper into the behaviors of the animal and perhaps a little bit of the history and funny anecdotes that the animal brings to the human's life. I just am a sucker for that kind of book. So, this book is Fox and I, an uncommon friendship by Katherine Raven. Now Raven is starts this book at at a time in her life when she is being met with a lot of disappointment. She herself she finds herself kind of awkward and socially awkward, a little bit odd. And so she's kind of tired of life and people and she takes herself away to a plot of land in Montana. She lives in this tiny little house and she spends the majority of her time away from other humans. She does have human contact. Um, she teaches a couple field classes, but truly the majority of the book is Katherine by herself thinking about the land. I remember there's this whole section about vos. I learned all about vos, which I love, by the way. I like those little details and why a pest might be a pest in one area and not a pest in another area. And she does some beautiful writing about that. But she also, as the book would allude to, she befriends a fox. It's a wild fox. So it's not a friendship like she's taking the fox into her home and domesticating it. No, no, no. The fox stays wild. And Katherine herself is a scientist. So she knows not to I don't know anthropomorphize the the fox to make the fox more human than what it actually is. But she notices the fox and she is keeping intense notes on the box which is really what makes up the majority of this book. And it was just really fascinating. I mean Raven is clearly an intelligent person. She spent a lot of time by herself and she was able to create this beautiful book where she is really immensely paying attention to something around her that she can't control and that she's very curious about. And so she takes you on this journey and it's just it's it's just so sweet in a lot of ways. And she's also just a lovely nature writer and the way that she engages with nature and it's also this other component is like this reckoning with her own self, you know, when you feel this way about yourself and you're trying to figure that out and so you're taking time away from society to do so. And so it's all of those pieces put together and it creates just a really lovely story. Let me just read you a tiny bit from this book so you get a sense of the writing. The first chapter is called St. ex's boa. For 12 consecutive days, the fox appeared at my cottage. At no more than one minute after the sun capped the western hill, he lay down in a spot of dirt among the powdery blue bunchrass. Tucking the tip of his tail under his chin and squinting his eyes, he pretended to sleep. I sat on my chair with stiff spikes of bunchgrass poking into my calves, opening a book I pretended to read.

[00:07:43]There's just something sweet and playful about her writing. And it just gosh, what a just what a gem of a book. The next book might be a little bit of a tough cell, but hear me out. It is a book of poetry from the great Mary Oliver who is so thoughtful and so wise and this is her book American Primitive that has strong themes of nature. I've not read a ton of Mary Oliver. I think I've read two or three of her poetry books and this idea of quiet and meditation and nature often come up in her writing. So I remember when I read this a few years ago just how gorgeous these poems are. They are something to just just delectively taste and have a moment with. Oh my goodness are they a treat. Let me give you a little flavor of it. The poem is called May. It's currently May right now as I'm filming this, so it's a perfect poem for this moment. May among the miles of leafing blossoms storm out of the darkness, wild flowers and moccasin flowers. The bees dive into them, and I too gather their spiritual honey. mute and meek. Yet theirs is the deepest certainty that this existence too, this sense of well-being, the flourishing of the physical body rides near the hub of the miracle that everything is a part of, is as good as a poem or a prayer can also make luminous any dark place on earth.

[00:09:32]Oh my gosh, I just love it. It's so beautiful. It unfold. It unfold. I'm so excited. I can't even talk. It unfolds quite beautifully and I just This is so beautiful. I love it. These next two books come from the same author and they're the approach to the book the books are very very similar though the themes are quite different. Um and I'll get into that in just a moment. So the books are from May Sartin. May Sartin was a very prolific writer in throughout the 1900s um the mid 1900s to the latter um po part of that century basically she wrote fiction non-fiction poetry and these just happen to be two of her journals which I think though I'm not certain are the most widely read today and I think perhaps her most popular book still today is journal of a solitude which I believe was published in the early 1970s ies followed by the house by the sea. Now journal of a solitude it they both cover about a year though journal of a solitude is may sartin meditating particularly on the themes that you would find in Virginia Wolf's a room of one's own. So, she's really diving de diving deep. I don't know what I was gonna say. May Sartin is diving deep into this idea of what it means to be a writer, what it means to be a female writer, and what it means to have that space to yourself, to crave space to yourself, to feel like be that you are an introvert and that you need that time away, both just because that's how you're made, but also because you are a writer. and she is in conversation with uh Virginia Wolf throughout this journal and it's it's a gentle theme but it's definitely there and um and so Mayan is also somebody who just is attuned to the natural world. She's constantly describing um well partly what's it like inside her house. She has some really sweet anecdotes about you know setting up for certain events or what her home looks like. Um there are some really interesting pictures in both of these books of her setting. So she's attuned to her setting, but she's also very um she's very attuned to what's going on outside of her doors basically in her natural like in her in her home and then what's happening immediately outside of her home. Whether it be springtime and flowers are starting to bloom or whether things are dying and taking their time away to regroup, regrow, that kind of thing. And she does that with both of these books. Some of the entries are just an annotation on what it looks like outside of her windows basically. And it creates this really lovely sense that you're with somebody who appreciates that. And I notice that when I'm with somebody who appreciates that, it helps me appreciate that as well. I'm like, "Oh, I didn't I didn't realize that there are so many birds out right now or I didn't notice that really, you know, the ice crystals are starting to form on the grass." That kind of thing. And so in this, you know, in this book again, she's very much has those themes of like what does it mean to be a female writer. In this one, The House by the Sea, I feel like she's really reckoning with aging, with getting older, with being a woman who is getting older and what that is like.

[00:13:02]Meanwhile, she's also very much thinking about again her home that what's right outside of her home. In this book, she is partly in Maine, which um is a is a very northernmost state in the United States, so it's very cold, very long winters. And there was something about that that I just really loved. It was almost like I know she wasn't writing to me, but it's almost like having a pen pal who is sharing her thoughts and worries and meditations on aging and getting a little bit older, feeling like you are not a spy chicken anymore. But more than that, she's also just thinking about her life as a writer. when it's time to write poetry, when she feels like she must write poetry, that kind of thing. Um, while she's also just thinking about what's happening um at the sea, like the sea that she sees, like literally the seashore that's near her, nearest to her that she can access.

[00:14:01]So, it's just like this beautiful mix and it just, you know, she's taking you through her year and there's something about that I just really I really liked and she just made good company especially as somebody who May start is somebody who wants the quiet but doesn't always get it and I can really relate to that right now in my life. I really like the way that this starts uh the house by the sea. So, I'm going to read you a tiny bit of that. So, it's Wednesday, November 13th, 1974. At last, I am ready to start a journal again. I have lived here in York for a year and a half, dazzled by the beauty of this place, but have not wanted to write about it until today. Perhaps something cracked open in Europe. I went over for a month in midocctober for the first time I can play records and poems are shooting up. So, I like that she's she's always thinking about her writing life, which I don't know if I mentioned well enough. She's always thinking about her writing life and who she is as a writer um as she's going through different seasons seasons in her life. This last book is the posist resistance of this kind of book. Okay, the kind of book about being out in nature, finding the quiet and appreciating the world around you and like getting energy from the solitude.

[00:15:16]Um and it is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. So this is set though it I mean it matters in that like it matters that she spent so much time in solitude on this place but it also doesn't really matter because she's describing things in nature and nature is all around us but it is set in Virginia in the Rono Valley in Virginia at Tinker Creek and Annie Dillard goes there for a period of time and she describes so many things.

[00:15:49]There is so much to take in and it's so good. I mean this book she made me interested in bugs. Prior I was not really a bug kind of person. I did not think insects were very interesting but the way Annie Dillard described them I was like bugs are the most interesting thing on the planet. Now you have to be a pretty good writer for me for me to have wanted to even read more about bugs. But she made them fascinating. And she's all she's doing is like observing, paying attention, trying to understand the world around her and like doing a really good job thinking deeply about it. It's kind of mind-boggling and so and and her writing is so beautiful.

[00:16:34]It's so poetic and so just anxious. Let let me just read something from it so I don't have to continue to yammer on about it. This is partway through chapter 3. It snowed. It snowed all day yesterday and never emptied the sky.

[00:16:47]Although the clouds look so low and heavy they might drop all at once with a thud. The light is diffused and hueless like the light on paper inside a Peter bowl. The snow looks light and the sky dark, but in fact the sky is lighter than the snow. Obviously, the thing illuminated cannot be lighter than its illuminator. The classical demonstration of this point involves simply laying a mirror flat on the snow so that it reflects in its surface, the sky, and comparing by sight this value to this to that of snow. This is all very well, even conclusive, but the illusion persists. The dark is overhead and the light at my feet. I'm walking upside down in the sky. Oh my gosh, it makes me want to reread it. Okay, it makes me want to reread it. Okay. All right, that that Oh gosh. Okay, that's it. I'm going to stop to please leave recommendations for these kinds of books down below. I would love love love to hear from you.

[00:17:48]But mostly, I'm just so glad that we got to hang out. I appreciate you so much and I hope to see you all in my next one. Bye.