[Scroll to the bottom for PLANT A SEED contest instructions]

It isn’t glamorous, but Lynda describes her farming (mis)adventures with a sort of spunk and confidence that almost makes you want to leave everything behind and test yourself on a farm. It’s a comedy, with oversexed roosters and overflowing irrigation systems. It’s a tragedy, with murderous foxes and bug-destroyed crops. It’s a romance, with a dramatic, touching scene in the field at dawn, when . . . wait! I don’t want to spoil that part.

The Wisdom of the Radish is one of those rare nonfiction books with an engaging plot that could masquerade as fiction. Lynda writes like a cheeky girl next door; she makes starting a farm from scratch and raising unruly chickens sound like an amazing adventure story. But the book is also painlessly informative about plants, buying local, and the struggling field of small farming.

But most simply, it’s just a really good book. In one of my first weeks working at Sasquatch, I was assigned to do a backup read of the book right before it was sent to the printer. My boss probably thought I was the most dedicated employee ever: I read that book with such focus, even bringing it with me on my lunch break and reading it on the bus ride home. (Shh, don’t tell him it was just because I was hooked and couldn’t stop reading!)

The book also made me desperately want to go to my local farmers’ market. The small farmers in The Wisdom of the Radish are so real, so likable, and so hardworking that supporting local farmers just seems like the logical thing to do. Plus, I know they must have some juicy farming stories to share, just like Lynda.

Author Lynda Hopkins

So, the pressing question: what is the wisdom of the radish, anyway? I suppose you’ll have to read the book to find out.

***PLANT A SEED contest instructions:

Take inspiration from author Lynda Hopkins and enter our Plant a Seed contest. Send an email to custserv@sasquatchbooks.com with your mailing address and PLANT A SEED in the subject line. The winner will be chosen at random and will receive a collection of seeds from Lynda’s farm, Foggy River, as well as a copy of The Wisdom of the Radish. Best of luck!

For more on Lynda’s adventures, visit her farming blog: wisdomoftheradish.com.

I left my apartment building and headed down the street to the park, hoping to find some of these nocturnal creatures stuffing themselves on foliage. A few slime trails glittered in the LED streetlight’s glow. In The Secret World of Slugs and Snails, I had read how slugs and snails propel themselves by secreting mucus that allows them to easily slide over surfaces that defy imagination (including razor blades and sharp glass). This slime is even being used in cancer research as a way to target specific malignant cells without affecting surrounding healthy cells.

Every once in a while, I stopped and pushed aside some wet brown leaves with the toe of my shoe. My breath curled around the flashlight’s beam like steam around a train’s headlight in a film noir. I had nearly submitted to the cold and turned home when I pointed the beam at a wall, where the light fell upon a three-inch-long light grey slug with mottled stripes down its back. Deroceras reticulatum: the Grey fieldslug.

The little fellow in front of me stretched his eyes out, maybe wondering about the bright light that had interrupted his nighttime foraging. The skin that skimmed the concrete wall looked fragile and translucent—like veins in a leaf or the flesh of an orange. These tiny creatures are much more complex than anyone gives them credit for—they’re highly evolved to slowly and steadily survive in a world that rushes on above their heads.

My favorite anecdote in the book comes from Charles Darwin. He wrote of a pair of snails who were placed in a barren garden. The healthier snail left a trail of slime over the wall toward a more abundant garden next door. Observers assumed the snail had said sayonara to its weak buddy, but a day later, they were surprised to see the strong snail return to accompany its mate to the land of plenty.

As I made my way home, I thought about the coexistent nocturnal world I’d never taken the time to notice. If I hadn’t tried to look at the world on the slug’s level, would I have noticed the smell of the soil, the millipede hiding in the gravel, or the beautiful empty snail shell half hidden in the dirt?

David George Gordon will be at the Pacific Northwest Garden Show this Sunday 2/27 giving a seminar called Forging a Lasting Peace with Slugs and Snails at 2:15 PM.

He will also be speaking at Sky Nursery on Sunday 3/5 at 11 AM.

For more information about David George Gordon and a full list of his upcoming events, please check out his website: davidgeorgegordon.com.

You know the type: These are the books that you can disappear into for a few hours, curled up in your favorite chair, listening to the backdrop of rain and your cat purring, and learn something new about the world. Books where you’re constantly nodding your head and “hmm”-ing every time you read another interesting fact. The type of book that annoys your family and friends, as you keep interrupting them every few minutes, saying, Hey, listen to this! Did you know that…

David Douglas, the naturalist namesake of the infamous Douglas fir, thought roasted bald eagle was “very good eating”?

Or that…

His death–via a freak bull-attack–is shrouded in mystery and murder conspiracy theories?

Or that…

Seattle doctors don’t really just flirt and bicker like they do on TV?

So if you’re itching for your first rewarding winter read (and want to learn some fun facts to impress guests at your next cocktail party), try one of these books:

Like Grey’s Anatomy for the literary, The House of Hope and Fear gives the real behind-the-scenes look at Seattle’s biggest hospital. Audrey Young chronicles her years as an attending physician at Harborview Medical Center as she deals with the ecstasy and frustration of trying to help patients in a crowded, bustling urban hospital.

Charles Darwin may have made the strange creatures of the Galapagos Islands famous, but Washington’s famous naturalist, David Douglas, studied these animals a whole decade before Darwin. The Collector, recent PNBA Book Award winner, tells the engaging history of Washington’s natural past through Douglas’s escapades and adventures. Without having to survive on a diet of bald eagle, you can learn what it felt like to explore the Pacific Northwest when it was still wild, uncharted territory.

And now in paperback, both of these substantial, weighty reads will feel much lighter this winter… leaving one hand free for that steaming cup of coffee.

HOW TO PLAY:

Can you guess the words that describe these groups of animals?

Email us at custserv@sasquatchbooks.com under the subject CONTEST with your guesses and be entered to WIN:
• Sarah’s new book, Have You Ever Seen a Smack of Jellyfish?
• A tee shirt featuring Sarah’s artwork
• A collection of her beautiful note cards

Example:

Now it’s your turn….

GOOD LUCK, and don’t forget to check out Sarah’s new book, Have You Ever Seen a Smack of Jellyfish available now!

The holidays are a notoriously hectic time full of bad-sweater-themed holiday parties, last-minute trips to the grocery store, and calendar pop-up reminders to DVR A Charlie Brown Christmas. Yet in this time of hustle and bustle, it has never been more important to have a moment of repose. Looking through How to Cook a Perfect Day, I found myself inspired to take a trip down memory lane and to consider: What would my perfect day taste like?

According to Nikki, everyone has a list of recipes that creates his or her very own perfect day. Mine would start off with my grandmother’s homemade challah bread French toast. There truly is nothing more comforting than thick slices of that fluffy, sweet, egg-battered bread.

Next would be a cup of strongly steeped Earl Grey tea with a tiny drop of cream and two spoonfuls of sugar, followed by a midday roasting of fresh pumpkin seeds with Cajun seasoning. The next item in my perfect day would be my secret recipe for spicy marinara sauce, a combination that leaves the air thick with the smells of Italy. (I just might take this sacred sauce recipe to the grave.) I would prepare jars of sauce for use on unexpectedly chilly nights.

For dinner, there would be a traditional Polish holiday feast (in my family, this is truly the most gluttonous meal of the year): fresh handmade Pierogi stuffed with onion, mashed potato, and farmer’s cheese, as well as the staple of any truly Polish household, Kapusta, a mild sauerkraut slowly cooked with bacon, fennel seed, and onion, and last but not least, smoked Kielbasa. Yum.

To finish off my perfect day I’d make Red, White, and Blue Parfaits with fresh strawberries from the garden, foraged wild blueberries, and perfectly sweetened whipped cream.

The wonderful thing about food is that it has the remarkable ability to bring us back to a moment. For me, these recipes are less about eating than they are about moments in my life that I treasure, just as each recipe in Nikki McClure’s How to Cook a Perfect Day is a genuine reflection of her life. She covers all of her favorites, from Lovely Gingerbread Cake to Nettle Soup, and each recipe carries with it a memory. This gem of a book truly inspires us to recall the meals that make life grand and encourages us to savor the taste of every perfect day.

You might also be inspired to select a travel destination simply because you have read about it and it grabbed your attention in some way. The opposite is also true—you may very well be inspired by a place you’ve visited and want to read more. It’s always fun to encounter in a book a neighborhood or attraction with which you are familiar.

And even if you don’t have the time, money, or ability to travel to a faraway (or nearby) land, reading about a destination allows you to escape your present location, providing an armchair travel experience that can be almost as satisfying as the real thing.

Nancy Pearl’s latest in the Book Lust series, Book Lust To Go, can satisfy all of these reading/traveling scenarios: you can consult it before leaving to read up on your chosen destination; you can read it en route to pass the time and plot out future reading/traveling experiences; you will undoubtedly be inspired to travel as well as happily reflect on your trip afterward; and you will also find recommendations for those out-of-reach locales.

Certainly Eat, Pray, Love is the most timely and well-known example of a book that glorifies the destinations nearly as often as it devotes pages to the author’s internal reflection and exploration. And like most readers, the descriptions and delights of Italy, Mumbai, and Bali intrigued me. Perhaps a visit is somewhere in my future, but until then, I will relish in what I’ve experienced through the narrative.

Reading The Devil in the White City before visiting Chicago enhanced my understanding of how the city developed and some of the key players in making it the city it is today. Visiting the Chicago History Museum was an even more rounded experience with that extra knowledge. I’ve read countless novels and nonfiction set in New York at various points in history—The History of Love. Motherless Brooklyn. The Tenth Muse. The Best of Everything. My familiarity with the city is enhanced when I read these books and I can mentally reference what I’ve absorbed about the city every time I visit.

I’ve also found escape or insight into a faraway place that I may never see: A favorite novel of mine, The Shadow of the Wind, portrays a mysterious and romanticized postwar Barcelona. The Poisonwood Bible describes a tragic, conflict-filled African village in the 1960s. My Life in France provides a charming memoir that is just as much an ode to Paris. The Crimson Petal and the White offers a glimpse of Victorian London.

Nancy Pearl recommends more than a thousand titles that provide compelling, revealing, invigorating, and sometimes distressing senses of place. She covers the globe with selections for everywhere from Afghanistan to Canada, Corsica to Holland, Hong Kong to Miami, New Guinea to Scotland, and Siberia to Zimbabwe. Book Lust To Go will satiate even the most ravenous traveler (actual or armchair!).

Read a book, book a trip, and expand your world through literature. Where do you want to escape to next?

Needless to say, my first solo attempt did not go so well. I didn’t seem to have enough fingers, and felt my determination begin to slip. That was when my dad, bless his heart, came to my rescue. As I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, passing different strands of hair to my dad, I knew this was a first for both of us. Soon enough, our collective four hands were an awkward maze of fingers and hair, with my tresses sticking out in every direction (and anyone who knows me knows I have arguably the thickest head of hair on the face of the planet). The end of our adventure resulted in, while not perfection, a fully functional pair of French-braided pigtails. PHEW! Since that fateful day in front of the mirror, I have become a French-braid aficionado, perfecting the art of weaving my hair, but like so many things (changing a busted headlight, going to college, investing for the future, etc.), I could never have done it without the support and patience of my dad.

Behold my mad skills

I know it mustn’t have been a cakewalk for my dad. After all, it must have been much easier to connect with my brother—they had baseball, erector sets, and fishing trips to bond over. How’s a girl with no patience and a tutu to compete with fishing trips? It would have been so easy to let a difference of gender build a bridge between us, but thanks to many out-loud readings of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, dollhouse-building sessions, and impromptu Disney-song recitals, we found a way to bond that exists to this day.

For all those new dads out there, don’t be intimidated by the thought of having a girl. There is now a resource to introduce you to the mysterious world of little girls. Tea Parties for Dads: A Crash Course in Daughters for New Fathers cracks open the world of the little lady in your life, exposing the secret of what is so fascinating about all things pink, playing dress-up, mermaids, and yes, even hair styles. Tea Parties for Dads even includes helpful activity recommendations to make you the apple of your princess’s eye. Here is one of my favorites:

Making a strong connection with my father at a young age laid a foundation for a close relationship as an adult, and while I may no longer be a little girl, I know I am still his Punkin, and he is still my Papa Bear. Thank you for always making the effort, Dad.

Happy Father’s Day.

Bad Day: Gave Totally Wrong Gift

Good Drink: Lonely Night

3/4 ounce coffee liqueur
11/4 ounce Baileys or other Irish cream liqueur
11/4 ounce hazelnut liqueur
1 scoop vanilla ice cream
Whipped cream

I have always been someone who gets joy out of finding the perfect holiday gift for those I love. There is something about putting in the time and effort to make someone else smile that fills me with that warm-butterscotch feeling associated with the holidays. Thought goes into the wrappings, and my anticipation grows until I get to watch my loved one unwrap their gift. It is the season of giving, and I get something out of seeing other people happy. But not every gift can be a homerun, and I cannot help but be reminded of the not-so-jolly Christmas I received a blender.

That’s right, a blender.

Disclaimer: Men out there, you may be scratching your heads at this, but believe me; unless your main squeeze blatantly says “I want a blender,” do not get her one.

On Christmas Eve, as the Yule log burned cheerily in the fireplace and the tree glowed with hundreds of tiny twinkle lights, my boyfriend and I gathered to exchange presents as snow fell softly outside. All was right in the world. Or at least it was until I found the plastic Wal-Mart bag he had plopped down at my feet. As I looked in the bag, it was impossible for me to hide my disappointment. While I had been expecting something with a dash of romance, what I got was a blender. A blender? As I looked down the barrel of the blender, I saw a theoretical house in the ‘burbs and 2.7 kids waving at me from between the blades. Not only that, but he hadn’t even wrapped it. And I already had one at home.

Do you see the 2.7 kids down there? Look closer...

The commitment-phobe inside me shrieked with terror, and in a moment of speechlessness, I forced out what turned out to be a laugh. Note: If mistake #1 was the blender, mistake #2 was the laugh. No wait…mistake #1 was not even bothering to wrap the gift.

Later, when he was justifiably angry that I had laughed at his gift, I earnestly asked the boyfriend what had made him think I wanted a blender. This was his reply:

“You like smoothies. You can make smoothies.”

Needless to say, he is now my ex-boyfriend. And, to give credit where credit is due, that summer I did make a lot of smoothies.

And so, gentlemen, do not give your girlfriends a blender.

And ladies, try to mask your disappointment better that I did. Your love life will thank you.

We all know the holidays are tough, and thanks to Kerry Colburn’s new book, Good Drinks for Bad Days: Holiday Edition, there is a cure-all for every holiday cringe-worthy moment-from holiday travel woes, to being snowed in, to going stag on New Year’s Eve. For every bad holiday, there is a good drink to numb the pain!

Kerry will be appearing at a number of events this holiday season. Come by and get your “drink” on:

Tuesday, December 8th, 5pm-7pm
Holidate at University Village

Participants receive a free drink at Sonrisa Mexican Restaurant (ticket purchase required). Books will also be available for sale.

Wednesday, December 9th, 5pm-7pm
Happy Hour for Hope at Agua Verde

Support a great non-profit organization, enjoy discounted food and drink, and maybe even win a prize!

Saturday, December 19th, 4pm-5pm
Hotel 1000 presents 12 Days of Christmas Holiday Fireside Chat

This FREE event includes a drink demonstration.

For this reason, I am thrilled to have a fashion book on our list this fall. Closet Confidential: Style Secrets Learned the Hard Way is the gift book of the season, penned by Daddy Likey blogger Winona Dimeo-Ediger. In her guide for the fashion wary, Winona shares fifty style lessons that are refreshingly accessible (for those of you who prefer your plants in a garden) and more addictive than peanut M&M’S. This is just a sampling of my favorites.

STYLE LESSON #2: The constitution guarantees freedom of speech, press, religion, petition, assembly, and to wear any style of jeans we want, so try something new–you might be pleasantly surprised.

Closet Confidential illustrations by Sam Trout

STYLE LESSON #21: Fill your purse with the necessities. You get to define “necessities.”

Closet Confidential offers a chart that displays purses of all sizes: from the teeny “evening mini bag” to the colossal “Brontosaurus.” My current bag definitely falls more into the prehistoric category. On any given day, my “necessities” include:

–A bagged lunch that will inevitably be forgotten upon my arrival to work.
–Reading material. I like variety: a novel about genetically altered prep school kids and a copy of Closet Confidential is a good combination for the bus.
–Knock-off Chanel sunglasses (fondly referred to as “Ohnels” by my husband for the intersecting O’s that, in the right light, almost resemble Chanel’s intersecting C’s).
–A coin purse shaped like a cat’s head.
–96 pens.

While friends occasionally make fun of me for my excess baggage, Winona informs me that “purses large enough to hide a murder victim have come into style in a big way.” Which is great news for me and my cat head coin purse.

STYLE LESSON #27: If you live, have lived, or ever plan to live north of the Mason-Dixon Line, you might want to consider one of those giant quilted jackets that look like a queen-size down comforter with sleeves.

Closet Confidential illustrations by Sam Trout

I attended college in Ann Arbor, Michigan, along with 30,000 other freezing undergrads. In my five-mile walk to class–what felt like five miles anyway since my eyelids were frozen open–I quickly learned that if I was going to survive, I would need a puffy coat, fashion be damned. Along with bulk quantities of Easy Mac, the Gap down comforter coat I bought that year was, without a doubt, the best purchase I made in college. (As evidence of my purchase, I have a stack of photos from 2001 displaying my inability to put my arms at my sides). Like umbrellas for Seattleites, industrial coats for Midwesterners are essential. Sometimes there really are more important things than looking cute on the way to class. Like circulation. And being able to blink when you want to.

Tell us: What are the most valuable style lessons you’ve learned?

As I was reading the book, overlooking the ocean while sitting in front of our television-, Internet-, and cell phone signal–free cabin, it dawned on me just how different my definition of “roughing it” is to Douglas’s. Witness:

(1) For the two-night stay in our “primitive” cabin—which of course had electricity, not to mention a small kitchen with refrigerator—we packed one small suitcase, one overnight bag, one large ice chest, and three large grocery bags of provisions. (And, to be honest, a GPS tracker, two iPods, a digital camera, three books, five magazines, etc. . . .)

In contrast, for his 1826 exploration from Fort Vancouver to the inland Pacific Northwest that lasted several months, besides the clothes on his back, David Douglas packed only “one extra shirt, two handkerchiefs, a blanket, a single cloak, and no stockings at all.” His one indulgence for the journey: 100 pounds of collecting paper to preserve his samples and specimens.

(2) We spent hours preparing for our “spontaneous” campfire on the beach. This included buying a package of bratwurst, buns, corn on the cob, bottles of squeezable ketchup and mustard, paper plates and plastic cutlery, aluminum foil, skewers with extendable handles, a box of kitchen matches, a stack of newspapers as starter, and two pre-cut bundles of firewood from the general store. Despite all this, it still took me an hour to get a decent campfire going, and even with our fancy skewers, we managed to simultaneously singe and undercook our brats, not to mention both dropping our corncobs in the sand while roasting them over the fire.

By comparison, after grueling 12- or 15-hour days of crossing hard terrain, Douglas and his party were often lucky to locate a dry place to camp, and even if they didn’t, they had no choice but to find a way to start and maintain a fire if they wanted to survive the night. On a good day, they would be able to hunt game for a nourishing dinner so Douglas and crew wouldn’t have to resort to eating plant roots (not necessarily predetermined as edible) or one of his collected avian or mammalian specimens for supper. During really bad stretches in hostile terrain, the party might be forced to eat one of their horses. Corn on the cob rarely accompanied their campfires.

(3) We found a few jellyfish washed up on the beach and saw a lot of birds, trees, and a few squirrels.

Douglas identified more than 80 species of flora and fauna that now have his name (douglasii) attached to their scientific monikers, and is credited with introducing hundreds of other species to the world outside of North America.
Author Jack Nisbet
Photo by Dean Davis Photography

Obviously, these are extreme contrasts. But even the most hardcore hiker or camper will never have the opportunity to explore and experience the vast and staggering wilderness of the Pacific Northwest in the way David Douglas (and others like him) did. Jack Nisbet’s amazingly detailed and documented narrative of Douglas’s life and travels gives us an idea of exactly what it was like to see through the explorer’s eyes. We are fortunate that despite the encroachment of civilization, so much of the wilderness and natural beauty of Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia remains for us to appreciate.

But I can’t help wondering: Would David Douglas think so?

Events for Jack Nisbet, author of THE COLLECTOR

Wednesday, October 7, 7:00pm
Auntie’s Bookstore
Spokane, WA

Friday, October 23
Montana Festival of the Book

Thursday, October 29, 7:30pm
Powell’s Books (on Hawthorne Blvd)
Portland, OR

Saturday, November 7th, 1:00pm
Spokane Costco (store #66)

Sunday, November 8, 2:00pm
The Seattle Room at The Seattle Public Library (book sales by Elliott Bay)
Seattle, WA

Monday, November 9, 7:00pm
Third Place Books (Lake Forest)
Seattle, WA

Tuesday, November 10, 7:00pm
Village Books
Bellingham, WA