Dear diary: Other people's diaries for light bedtime reading
February 4, 2021 4:43 PM Subscribe
My favorite genre of bedtime reading is currently diaries or "seasonal memoirs" (like a chapter dedicated to each month or season) that are non-fiction, low on trauma, mostly about every day life, and insightful about the local environment/climate. I want an endless supply of these books. Examples of what I've loved so far inside.
I've really enjoyed reading diaries of real-life non-famous people doing mostly banal things with the occasional burst of stress, but no trauma. Especially when it talks a lot about the weather/seasons/local environment. Here are some examples of what I've read and loved:
Sue Hubbell's A Country Year (thanks to the MeFite who recommended it last time I asked for book recs!) - A former librarian takes up beekeeping in the Ozarks. The book is divided into seasons.
Katherine May's Wintering - this is more of a memoir than a diary but I liked the meditation on the progression of winter and the parallels for our own need for rest. The book is divided into months.
Shaun Bythell's The Diary of a Bookseller - A year-long diary from February to February of the life of a second-hand bookseller. Lots of eccentric characters, some snark, but nothing totally terrible besides some leaks in the bookshop happen. There are some great descriptions of Scottish weather. I am a librarian so I think I also enjoyed the book-ish nature of this.
Trying to avoid:
-Fictionalized accounts. I really like non-fiction.
-Trauma. Please no genocide, war zone, or experiences with firsthand violence type diaries.
-I can handle some snark and gossip (Bythell's book kind of pushed the outer boundary for me at times) but I prefer gentle over mean.
ps - I already saw this AskMe about diaries with a Pepys vibe.
I've really enjoyed reading diaries of real-life non-famous people doing mostly banal things with the occasional burst of stress, but no trauma. Especially when it talks a lot about the weather/seasons/local environment. Here are some examples of what I've read and loved:
Sue Hubbell's A Country Year (thanks to the MeFite who recommended it last time I asked for book recs!) - A former librarian takes up beekeeping in the Ozarks. The book is divided into seasons.
Katherine May's Wintering - this is more of a memoir than a diary but I liked the meditation on the progression of winter and the parallels for our own need for rest. The book is divided into months.
Shaun Bythell's The Diary of a Bookseller - A year-long diary from February to February of the life of a second-hand bookseller. Lots of eccentric characters, some snark, but nothing totally terrible besides some leaks in the bookshop happen. There are some great descriptions of Scottish weather. I am a librarian so I think I also enjoyed the book-ish nature of this.
Trying to avoid:
-Fictionalized accounts. I really like non-fiction.
-Trauma. Please no genocide, war zone, or experiences with firsthand violence type diaries.
-I can handle some snark and gossip (Bythell's book kind of pushed the outer boundary for me at times) but I prefer gentle over mean.
ps - I already saw this AskMe about diaries with a Pepys vibe.
Nigel Slater's autobiography, Toast.
Everything by Bill Bryson. Very easy to feel like you're ambling around beside him.
Pot on the Fire, by John Thorne. Gets reviewed a lot as a cookbook but it absolutely isn't.
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 4:52 PM on February 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
Everything by Bill Bryson. Very easy to feel like you're ambling around beside him.
Pot on the Fire, by John Thorne. Gets reviewed a lot as a cookbook but it absolutely isn't.
posted by some little punk in a rocket at 4:52 PM on February 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Oops - my last link to the Pepys-inspired AskMe question went to the wrong link (but also a good book thread!). Here's the right one.
posted by mostly vowels at 5:02 PM on February 4, 2021
posted by mostly vowels at 5:02 PM on February 4, 2021
It's extremely focused, but you might enjoy The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature. "In this wholly original book, biologist David Haskell uses a one- square-meter patch of old-growth Tennessee forest as a window onto the entire natural world. Visiting it almost daily for one year to trace nature's path through the seasons, he brings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life."
posted by ChuraChura at 5:17 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by ChuraChura at 5:17 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
This is a weird thing, but it's a distant relative of mine whose diary got uploaded. She talks a lot about putting up peaches and how her husband is holding seances (he was a Spiritualist). But it's pretty relaxing reading her entries.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 5:45 PM on February 4, 2021
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 5:45 PM on February 4, 2021
I have not actually read it yet, but Aug 9 — Fog seems like it could be up your alley.
posted by eponym at 5:52 PM on February 4, 2021
posted by eponym at 5:52 PM on February 4, 2021
I loved "A Sand County Almanac: And Sketches Here and There" by Aldo Leopold.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:24 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by wenestvedt at 6:24 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence, comes to mind.
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 6:37 PM on February 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by Maxwell_Smart at 6:37 PM on February 4, 2021 [2 favorites]
John Thorne (and Matt!!) writes discursively and passionately and personally about food. One of his books has a whole chapter on chowder -- a good 60 pages -- that never flags. Not structured around the calendar, but they might still appeal to you.
The slim, standalone book "An Unprejudiced Palate" is the mid-century story of an Italian immigrant's experience in California, growing and cooking food through the year.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:44 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
The slim, standalone book "An Unprejudiced Palate" is the mid-century story of an Italian immigrant's experience in California, growing and cooking food through the year.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:44 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Woodswoman by Anne LaBastille will probably be right up your alley, and she has follow-up books as well.
posted by umwhat at 6:59 PM on February 4, 2021
posted by umwhat at 6:59 PM on February 4, 2021
Not a diary, but a collection of daily letters written by a family of four children and their mother to a father away in WWII. Surprisingly sweet and absorbing. Full of detailed descriptions of everyone's daily lives.
posted by shadygrove at 7:43 PM on February 4, 2021
posted by shadygrove at 7:43 PM on February 4, 2021
You might enjoy memoirs about birdwatching "big years," where people try to see as many different bird species as possible in a region within a calendar year. Some are more focused on the competition than others, but they are all yearlong memoirs, very uplifting while still being exciting, and very much about nature and the environment. Check out The Big Year (the only non-memoir on my list but the one most people know), Extreme Birder, Kingbird Highway, Lost Among the Birds, and Birding Without Borders for a start.
posted by Threeve at 7:54 PM on February 4, 2021
posted by Threeve at 7:54 PM on February 4, 2021
Dorothy Gilman, of Mrs. Pollifax fame, wrote a very nice chronicle of her experiences living by herself in an Eastern Nova Scotia fishing village after her son left for college: A New Kind of Country.
posted by jamjam at 9:09 PM on February 4, 2021
posted by jamjam at 9:09 PM on February 4, 2021
Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted, by Annie Hawes. Charming, funny memoir about Annie and her sister Lucy’s experiences moving to Italy to work and live in a community of olive farmers. The sequel, Ripe for the Picking, is lovely too.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:37 PM on February 4, 2021
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 9:37 PM on February 4, 2021
If you can find it (it's from 1948 and out of print), Gladys Taber's The Book of Stillmeadow is exactly this and it's delightful.
More living-history focussed, but Fiona J Houston's The Garden Cottage Diaries covers a year while she lives as an 18th century woman might, in Scotland, lots of writing about the seasons and weather and her local area, very gentle, very good.
posted by cpatterson at 10:26 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
More living-history focussed, but Fiona J Houston's The Garden Cottage Diaries covers a year while she lives as an 18th century woman might, in Scotland, lots of writing about the seasons and weather and her local area, very gentle, very good.
posted by cpatterson at 10:26 PM on February 4, 2021 [1 favorite]
Michael Palin's diaries are delightful. There are many volumes with the promise of more to come. Of course it helps if you're interested in him, his career and his world (Python, film making, travel documentaries, etc). I found them hugely evocative with just the right balance of insight and trivia.
posted by srednivashtar at 12:14 AM on February 5, 2021
posted by srednivashtar at 12:14 AM on February 5, 2021
I really enjoyed One Man’s Wilderness, which is based on the journals and photography of Richard Proenneke while he lived in Alaska. He vividly describes the seasonal changes in the temperatures, landscape, and wildlife surrounding him. It’s very soothing to read.
posted by keep it under cover at 12:55 AM on February 5, 2021
posted by keep it under cover at 12:55 AM on February 5, 2021
Esther Woolfson's Field Notes From a Hidden City is a beautiful and detailed observation of the landscape and city wildlife of Aberdeen in the North East of Scotland over a year.
I also highly recommend the work of Kathleen Jamie for this - it doesn't have the diary aspect so much but she writes so incredibly well about landscape and daily life and seasonal change. Sightlines or Findings are both essay collections well worth a read (and her poetry too!).
Alice Vincent's Rootbound is a memoir looking at a year of her life through city gardening, where she deals with a relationship ending and thinks a lot about the importance of plants in her life. It has a chapter per month if I remember correctly.
posted by Lluvia at 1:35 AM on February 5, 2021
I also highly recommend the work of Kathleen Jamie for this - it doesn't have the diary aspect so much but she writes so incredibly well about landscape and daily life and seasonal change. Sightlines or Findings are both essay collections well worth a read (and her poetry too!).
Alice Vincent's Rootbound is a memoir looking at a year of her life through city gardening, where she deals with a relationship ending and thinks a lot about the importance of plants in her life. It has a chapter per month if I remember correctly.
posted by Lluvia at 1:35 AM on February 5, 2021
The poet May Sarton published a few volumes of diaries—the one I’ve read, Journal of a Solitude, hits a ton of these notes. She’s living by herself in a farmhouse in New Hampshire in the early 70s, and there is a lot about gardening and nature and watching the seasons change.
PD James’s Time to Be in Earnest is structured as a diary but also has more memoirish elements. The diary parts are more social and gossipy and the viewpoint might be too sharp for what you’re looking for.
I also thought of the multi volume LM Montgomery journals - I don’t remember how much nature content there is in them but given her books it’s a good bet there’s some. They do get dark, though.
And if you want to lean into nature journaling there’s always John Muir!
posted by yarrow at 4:19 AM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
PD James’s Time to Be in Earnest is structured as a diary but also has more memoirish elements. The diary parts are more social and gossipy and the viewpoint might be too sharp for what you’re looking for.
I also thought of the multi volume LM Montgomery journals - I don’t remember how much nature content there is in them but given her books it’s a good bet there’s some. They do get dark, though.
And if you want to lean into nature journaling there’s always John Muir!
posted by yarrow at 4:19 AM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
Oh also Heidi Julavits’s The Folded Clock is maybe too complicated and mannered (it’s a diary, sort of, but not chronologically arranged) but super worth it.
posted by yarrow at 4:26 AM on February 5, 2021
posted by yarrow at 4:26 AM on February 5, 2021
Came in to recommend The Garden Cottage Diaries but cpatterson beat me to it, so seconded! Exactly what you're after and a very soothing read.
posted by penguin pie at 5:11 AM on February 5, 2021
posted by penguin pie at 5:11 AM on February 5, 2021
More on the bird theme: this delightful bird-watching diary/memoir by a London musician.
posted by altolinguistic at 8:43 AM on February 5, 2021
posted by altolinguistic at 8:43 AM on February 5, 2021
Richard Adams (of Watership Down fame), A Nature Diary.
posted by JanetLand at 9:08 AM on February 5, 2021
posted by JanetLand at 9:08 AM on February 5, 2021
Annie Dillard -- Pilgirm at Tinker Creek
posted by archimago at 10:11 AM on February 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by archimago at 10:11 AM on February 5, 2021 [3 favorites]
I am currently reading Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty. Set in Ireland, takes place over an eventful year of his life (nothing traumatic as you’ve defined it, but difficult for him). As you might guess from the title it’s very nature focused — it’s like one part Sand County, one part Bildungsroman, maybe? I am loving it.
posted by eirias at 4:45 PM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by eirias at 4:45 PM on February 5, 2021 [1 favorite]
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posted by kickingtheground at 4:47 PM on February 4, 2021