Cottage Reader
May 2026
Greetings, Cottage readers!
The Cottage reader is an occasional newsletter for Cottage subscribers, written by Richard Bass, Diana’s spouse and co-conspirator. It’s usually only for paid subscribers, but since we are in the midst of our May Blowout Sale, we’re sending this issue to everyone. I hope that those who can will join in supporting the Cottage.
My ramblings here are really the least of the benefits of the Cottage Reader. I do tell you about what I’ve been reading and why, and I also talk about what I wish I were reading and what I plan to read. But the best part of the Cottage Reader is the comments from you, the readers, where you talk about what you’ve been reading. My reading list has been shaped by those comments for years now. Thank you!
It’s all a lot, isn’t it? Politics, the news, the evil buffoons running the U.S. government.
It’s oddly compelling to see what fresh thing will enrage us each day, but also repulsive. I find it very difficult to look at or listen to our president, so I’ve been avoiding the news, especially now that baseball is back. A modestly entertaining and successful Washington Nationals team is preferable to a sickening Washington political establishment. This all has implications for my reading.
Reading can take many forms: it can inform, inspire, make you think, or offer an escape. Although I often hope for the first three, I more often find myself using my reading to avoid the unpleasantness. And what better way to escape than to immerse yourself in yet another murder mystery (or three) in the quaint Quebec town of Three Pines?
Yes, dear readers, I spent the month of April watching baseball and reading three Chief Inspector Gamache novels by Louise Penny (with a side trip to Boulder, Colorado, that included participation in a truly inspiring No Kings march).
I don’t like to give away too much about the books—they are well-plotted and worth the time to discover the secrets hidden within them. This trilogy of books departed from the earlier ones in the series because characters we have come to know well are now suspects in murder cases. Bury Your Dead continues the case begun inThe Brutal Telling, so I couldn’t stop after the first book. The fact that they are set in a different country at a different time was also appealing. I enjoy these books are I’m sure I’ll return to the series again soon.
And here’s a little dose of reality via The New York Times: The Last Days of Butter Ridge (gift link). “Brad had supported Donald Trump in 2024 in part because Trump promised to change all that by becoming “the most pro-farmer president you’ve ever had.” Instead, new tariffs had cut into Brad’s potential export market and the emerging war in Iran had sent gas and fertilizer prices surging by as much as 70 percent. He was losing thousands of dollars each month and falling behind on his feed bill, until he made the call he’d been dreading his whole career. He dialed up an auction house to arrange the Watson family’s final dairy sale last month.” A heartbreaking read on many levels.
But here’s what I really want to talk about in this issue. What are you reading and what should I read next?
The Environment
I recently met Bee, a Cottage reader, who expressed the wish that I focus on some books about environmental issues. A great idea, but I wouldn’t know where to start aside from our friend Bill McKibben. I still remember how, back in 1989, everyone was talking about The End of Nature, his important book that argued human activity had overwhelmed and shifted the course of nature. He’s followed with other important books, most recently Here Comes the Sun, as have others.
Here’s your chance, Cottage readers, what should I—or we—read to fully grasp, and perhaps even inspire activism, about what is happening to our environment and not be overwhelmed by the apparently intentional efforts by the Trump administration to undo environmental regulations and disinvest in technologies that could help slow the degradation of the Earth.
Transcendentalism
Ironically, perhaps, I’ve been gearing up for a deep dive into Transcendentalism, which I think of as the first, and perhaps greatest, American intellectual movement. I’ve engaged it off and on for years, and read Walden many times. But I don’t think I’ve put it all together yet, and, of course Walden is a very different book to a 70-year-old than it is to a 15-year-old. But it still calls.
Is Emerson’s “Nature” obsolete now that we’ve reached the End of Nature? Is Self-Reliance a virtue in today’s atomized world? Etc. I’ve got books and collections, biographies and studies, and perhaps most important to the Transcendentalists, my own personal experience. We’ll see what happens.
Do any of you have any advice for such an excursion?
Ireland
Diana and I are going to Ireland this summer. It will be my first trip there. I love the music and the beer and whiskey are pretty good, too. I love Once, Angela’s Ashes, Derry Girls, U2, Stiff Little Fingers, and the Pogues. I’m reading Colm Toibin’s The News from Dublin and picked up From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan on the recommendation of a bookseller in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where we are currently
So what do you suggest? Must reads to get a feel for the country? And once I’m there, what must I see?
Among my hopes is to meet a Glen of Imaal Terrier in the home country. That would be great fun.
You can't beat The Overstory, by Richard Powers, a Pulitzer Prize winner, for a thought-provoking novel about the nature of people and the nature of trees. I loved his writing.
My current favorite escape novel is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. It's reminiscent of Olive Kitteridge, about a *mature in age woman that reveals a complex character. (*Notice I didn't say, "older").
Wendall Berry's The Art of Loading Brush is an excellent Earth care thoughtful collection of short essays.