Day 16 / Hermit Book Club Pt 1

From 1930s New York to colonial Jamaica via one hermit's reading list

Wanna know a good holiday hack?

Before you go away, host a lunch for your nearest and dearest (this step is not essential but v nice) and ask them all to bring you a book that they love for your travels.

Not only is it a v cost effective way to stockpile books, you also get a lovely warm fuzzy feeling of connection whenever you start or finish one.

I’m returning mine with a little note of thoughts. Also not essential but also v nice to do.

Bookworming

After a good couple of years of Kindling > real book-ing, I have to say it’s been completely lovely to go back to good old fashioned paperbacks.

Tattered spines. Thumbed corners. Weathered pages that rustle in the wind. Heaven.

I ended up bringing a somewhat eclectic mix of books with me (thanks friends) so here’s what this little hermit has been reading the past couple of weeks.

Wintering - Katherine May

This one had been on my list for a while and felt like the right place to start my hermit chapter.

I wrote more about Wintering here but in a nutshell, this is a book all about slowing down and making the most of fallow periods in our lives. About learning to retreat when things fall apart. To restore and reconnect.

This hermit period is turning into something of a creative reset for me and this crops up a lot throughout the book. How good things, important things are made in the darkness.

It gave me full permission to lean into this season (despite the full sun overhead) but there are also conversations around healing - whether that’s through cold water swimming, rituals and reconnection or even a brief foray into the supernatural.

A perfect starting point for this slow, salty, sun-drenched winter of mine.

The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

I’ve seen this on many a bookshelf but never actually sat down to read it myself so I was v happy to see this one brought out over lunch.

It’s own blurb describes it as an exploration of ‘the tragic fate of a family which tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how”.

But I don’t think this does justice to the writing inside. It’s brilliant, beautiful and, at times, horrible visceral. Bodies in all shapes and form. Love. Lust. Incredibly moving.

There’s a lot around rules and rebellion. Suppressing and guilt and shame. The perfect companion for a hermit processing a few belief systems of her own.

Do / Reset: Meditate – Jillian Lavender

As someone who has dipped a toe into meditation (usually a few minutes pre or post-yoga), I’ve always liked the idea of meditation but never quite got it.

This teeny tiny book was the perfect stepping stone towards getting my head around exactly what meditation is and actually giving it a go. Jillian starts by breaking down life’s three fundamental levels - doing, thinking and being - before diving into how Vedic meditation actually works.

There’s then a lovely little section about all the science-backed benefits (clue - there’s some real goodies in there) and while this isn’t a book that teaches you exactly how to meditate, it finishes with enough pointers to get started.

I now start my days (and sometimes end them too) with a twenty minute session. Have I cracked it? Absolutely not, but through the thoughts there are moments of (growing) calm - the quiet of nothing. Of simply being.

Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys

A reimagining of Bertha Mason (ie the “madwoman in the attic” from Jane Eyre), this is a short but haunting little book that’s stuck with me since I first read it in school.

I liked it then but really enjoyed re-reading it this time round.

Set on a Martinique, it’s fragmented, atmospheric and has almost a fever dream quality to it. There are depths to unpack around identity, love and madness or you can just let the descriptions of biblical gardens and island life wash over you.

Also I’m a sucker for anything giving a voice back to silenced characters so yes Jean you go gf.

Ex-Wife – Ursula Parrott

This book was the biggest surprise. A vacay revelation.

Think Bridget Jones meets The Great Gatsby. It follows a young divorcée whizzing around 1920s New York. She goes for carriage rides in Central Park with young men, drinks too much at parties and navigates building a career in the earliest days of feminism.

I still can’t believe it was written over 100 years ago. The protagonist feels incredibly modern. Funny. Going through the same emotions as anyone picking up the pieces of their broken relationship today.

One line stayed with me, “I had lived to discover that after first love one can love again – as much – more, for one knows more” (wah tears in a nice way) but the whole book is a gem.

Honestly couldn’t recommend it enough.

Anything I should have on my list for part two?!