What I’m Reading This Spring, and Why I Chose It
“I’ve been reading slowly this spring. Not because I have less time. Because I seem to want less noise.”
There’s a particular kind of afternoon that only comes in spring. The light turns soft and golden earlier than you expect, and you find yourself pausing mid-task, standing at the kitchen counter or drifting past a window, just to look at it for a moment.
I had one of those afternoons last week. I’d meant to be productive. Instead I ended up sitting on the floor with my back against the sofa, three books fanned out in front of me like a tarot spread I’d laid out for myself without quite realising it.
What I noticed, looking at them, was that I hadn’t chosen them randomly. There was a thread running through all three. Something I’d been reaching for all along, without fully naming it.
I’ve been reading slowly this spring. Not because I have less time. Because I seem to want less noise.
A small note: the book links below are Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through them, I earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only ever recommend books I’ve genuinely loved.
The first is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I’d had it on my shelf for nearly two years, the kind of book you keep meaning to start and somehow never do. I finally opened it on a Sunday morning in March, and within four pages I was completely still. Kimmerer writes about plants the way other writers write about people: with curiosity, with genuine respect, with affection. She’s a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and the book weaves scientific knowledge with indigenous wisdom in a way that makes you feel like you’ve been looking at the world slightly wrong for your entire life. I read it in small pieces. It doesn’t rush, and it doesn’t ask you to rush either.
The second is Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. Someone pressed it into my hands months ago and I resisted it, for reasons I still can’t explain, because the moment I actually started it I was completely absorbed. It’s a novel about a man who lives in a house that contains the whole ocean and an infinite number of halls filled with statues. He keeps meticulous notes about the tides and the birds and the light. He pays close, careful attention to his small world and finds it endlessly rich. It sounds strange. It is strange. But it’s also one of the most quietly hopeful books I’ve read in years: a love letter to noticing things, to taking the world around you seriously.
The third is A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. I know I’m late to this one. A Russian count is placed under house arrest in a luxury hotel and spends decades making a full, beautiful, deeply considered life within its walls. It’s warm and funny and wise in a way that doesn’t announce itself. And yes, by this point the theme running through my spring reading list is becoming fairly obvious, isn’t it.
All three are books about paying attention to what’s already there. About finding a whole world inside a small one.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Spring tends to make me feel like I should be doing more: planning more, moving more, filling every gap before the good weather slips away. This year, something is quietly pushing back against that. These three books feel like the answer to a question I hadn’t known I was asking.
Maybe the right thing for spring isn’t expansion, after all. Maybe it’s just learning to look more carefully at what you already have.
What are you reading right now, and do you think you chose it or did it somehow find you?
Warmly, Evelyn
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