The Pleasures of Reading Outside
'Reading has been unfairly maligned as an indoor activity for far too long,' Bekah Waalkes wrote this past spring. 'As a child, when nice weather came around, I was told to put down my book and go play outside.' But why can't reading a book be a form of outdoor play? Reading outside can also be a practice in sustained attention, Waalkes writes: The act of focus can actually sharpen 'one's perception of the trees, the soil, the friends chattering at the next table in the beer garden.'
Today's newsletter offers a guide to reading outdoors—how to make the most of it, and which books to take with you on your adventure.
Six Books You'll Want to Read Outdoors
By Bekah Waalkes
Reading has been unfairly maligned as an indoor activity for far too long.
Read the article.
24 Books to Get Lost in This Summer
By The Atlantic Culture Desk
The Atlantic 's writers and editors have chosen fiction and nonfiction to match all sorts of moods.
Read the article.
The One Book Everyone Should Read
By The Atlantic Culture Desk
The Atlantic 's staffers on the books they share—again and again Read the article.
Still Curious?
Other Diversions
P.S.
I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparked their sense of awe in the world. 'I had awakened early on this morning in July 2016 and tiptoed out of the hikers' dorms at Rifugio Lagazuoi, which is perched at 9,000 feet in the Italian Dolomites,' Tim Tumlin, 74, in Darien, Illinois, writes. 'As I hoped, the silent overwhelming beauty made the climb the day before more than worthwhile.'
I'll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
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a day ago
- Atlantic
The Pleasures of Reading Outside
This is an edition of The Wonder Reader, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a set of stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Sign up here to get it every Saturday morning. 'Reading has been unfairly maligned as an indoor activity for far too long,' Bekah Waalkes wrote this past spring. 'As a child, when nice weather came around, I was told to put down my book and go play outside.' But why can't reading a book be a form of outdoor play? Reading outside can also be a practice in sustained attention, Waalkes writes: The act of focus can actually sharpen 'one's perception of the trees, the soil, the friends chattering at the next table in the beer garden.' Today's newsletter offers a guide to reading outdoors—how to make the most of it, and which books to take with you on your adventure. Six Books You'll Want to Read Outdoors By Bekah Waalkes Reading has been unfairly maligned as an indoor activity for far too long. Read the article. 24 Books to Get Lost in This Summer By The Atlantic Culture Desk The Atlantic 's writers and editors have chosen fiction and nonfiction to match all sorts of moods. Read the article. The One Book Everyone Should Read By The Atlantic Culture Desk The Atlantic 's staffers on the books they share—again and again Read the article. Still Curious? Other Diversions P.S. I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparked their sense of awe in the world. 'I had awakened early on this morning in July 2016 and tiptoed out of the hikers' dorms at Rifugio Lagazuoi, which is perched at 9,000 feet in the Italian Dolomites,' Tim Tumlin, 74, in Darien, Illinois, writes. 'As I hoped, the silent overwhelming beauty made the climb the day before more than worthwhile.' I'll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.
Atlantic
2 days ago
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What John le Carré Learned in Corfu
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Many of my most memorable reading experiences are conflated with incongruous settings. I first picked up Slaughterhouse-Five in Venice, on the recommendation of a fellow backpacker. I read Death in Venice, however, in Amsterdam, where the canals thinly evoked Thomas Mann's pestilent waterways. And if you ask me about San Sebastián, the lovely Basque seaside town, I'll flash back to the mind-blowing middle section of Cloud Atlas, which is set in postapocalyptic Hawaii. For authors, too, a place can serve as more of a catalyst than a setting. They go somewhere on holiday and end up learning something about their characters—or themselves. This is what happened to John le Carré in Corfu, and it's why, for this week's installment of The Atlantic 's literary-travel series, ' The Writer's Way,' Honor Jones chose to investigate le Carré's 600-page masterpiece, A Perfect Spy, by traveling to a place that takes up only a few pages in the novel. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic 's Books section: 'If you wanted to write about le Carré and travel, you could go almost anywhere,' Jones explains: 'Vienna or Bern or Kenya or Cornwall would make the list long before Corfu.' But consider the predicament of le Carré's protagonist, Magnus, an MI6 agent who has betrayed his country to the Communist Czechs and is lying low in Greece under cover of a family vacation. 'If you're trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found, you don't go to the obvious places,' Jones writes. 'You ignore the booked flight to Washington and the train ticket to Paris because you know they're false leads. You look where the trail is colder.' Le Carré himself had a chance encounter in Corfu that made its way into A Perfect Spy, in a scene that opens up a central theme of the novel—the legacy of a father (Magnus's but also le Carré's) who was a monstrous, charismatic narcissist. It was on the Greek island that le Carré ran into a man who'd worked for his father, a globe-trotting con artist. 'We was all bent, son,' the former henchman told him. 'But your dad was very, very bent.' Because great novels are rarely on the nose, le Carré sets a fictionalized version of this encounter in England. Corfu instead becomes the place where Magnus's Czech contact, the mysterious Axel, tries to entice the Brit to join him behind the Iron Curtain. The island, for centuries beset by repeated invasions and then an onslaught of tourism, holds broader thematic significance for Jones: 'Corfu is a good place to think about influence and identity, about how so many disparate fragments can cohere into a whole.' As it happens, I'm going to stop in Bern next week on a European rail vacation. The Swiss city takes up many more pages in A Perfect Spy than Corfu does; it's where Magnus, as a very young man, first meets Axel. But I've already read the novel, so I'll pack a different one. Inspired by The Atlantic 's new list of staffers' recommendations for must-read books, I'm going to finally dig into Hernan Diaz's Trust, which is set primarily in New York. So although I'll be in Europe, I'll probably be thinking of home. Chasing le Carré in Corfu By Honor Jones If you're trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found, you don't go to the obvious places. What to Read Ravelstein, by Saul Bellow Bellow's thinly veiled 2000 roman à clef about his friendship with the star academic Allan Bloom—the philosopher who wrote the best-selling jeremiad The Closing of the American Mind —is a tender portrait of its subject. But Bellow's novel is as much about the institutional culture that shaped Bloom. It is a paean to academia as an enterprise that works to sort ideas that are base and quotidian from those that are noble and timeless, and its titular character embodies this faith in the professoriate as a kind of secular priesthood. Abe Ravelstein is a study in contradictions. Devoted to a life of the mind, he approaches reading the classics as a kind of soul-craft, and he's preoccupied with the wisdom of ancient philosophers, poets, and statesmen; yet he also nurtures an irrepressible fondness for modern luxuries such as Armani suits, Cuban cigars, and 'solid-gold Montblanc pens.' The irony of Ravelstein is that its protagonist's celebrity is a symptom of the same commodification of knowledge that is eroding the things he most holds dear. Read 25 years later, the novel is an artifact of its time: The diminishment of the university's purpose that Bellow witnessed feels much more advanced today. — Out Next Week 📚 Flashout, by Alexis Soloski 📚 Kicking the Hornet's Nest: U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East From Truman to Trump, by Daniel E. Zoughbie Your Weekend Read When It Feels Good to Root for a Bad Guy By David Sims The local sheriff in Eddington, Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), is the film's Bickle, though his final showdown is a far more absurd spectacle than the one in Taxi Driver. Aster's film is frightening, yes—but it's a dark and lacerating comedy first and foremost, playing out the power fantasies that fueled many an online conspiracy theory in the pandemic's early days (and still do now). And although Cross may not be as crushingly lonely as Bickle, he does share the character's escalating sense of paranoia. 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Hamilton Spectator
2 days ago
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6 Niagara hotel restaurants on Canada's top 50 list
Six Niagara dining establishments, including four in Niagara-on-the-Lake, cracked a new top-50 list of best hotel restaurants in Canada. The local restaurants appeared in the inaugural list released by OpenTable and KAYAK this week. The Niagara restaurants are: Where: 3845 Main St., Jordan Village, Lincoln This is a popular spot for weddings that sports a panoramic view of the beautiful Twenty Valley, featuring lush gardens and trees. Located in a boutique hotel in Jordan Village, Inn On The Twenty says it provides a 'handcrafted menu favouring farm-to-table flavours' from the Niagara region. The menu includes seared scallops, pork belly, Arctic char and king oyster mushrooms. Where: Hilton Niagara Falls, 6361 Fallsview Blvd., Niagara Falls Corso, in the Hilton hotel that overlooks Niagara's spectacular falls, features classic Italian dishes such as lasagna and porchetta, along with fusion items such as oxtail ravioli. The restaurant website says 'we savour the stories behind each dish and the regions of Italy from which they originate.' Where: Pillar & Post Inn and Spa, 48 John St., Niagara-on-the-Lake Cannery is within a five-star hotel in a 19th-century building in beautiful Old Town in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The restaurant is well known for its steaks, particularly its rib-eye. There are also chef specialties such as short ribs and swordfish Niçoise, a swordfish salad. Where: Moffat Inn, 60 Picton St., Niagara-on-the-Lake This sushi spot is also located Niagara-on-the-Lake's Old Town and says it uses the finest seafood brought straight from Japan, providing an authentic yet modern Japanese cuisine experience rivalling Sushi restaurants of Tokyo. It has gluten-free, vegan and vegetarian options, along with classic rolls such as dragon rolls (with shrimp tempura) and spicy salmon rolls. The 'Maki Sushi' menu also includes combos such as lunch specials. Where : The Prince of Wales Hotel, 6 Picton St., Niagara-on-the-Lake Located in Old Town's Prince of Wales Hotel, which describes itself as a 'destination rich with timeless elegance,' The Drawing Room says it can 'bring a little whimsy' to a visit. Guests can partake in a traditional afternoon English tea offerings, with light foods such as finger sandwiches, assorted pastries and homemade scones, served on ornate tea sets amid regal decor that has an 'attention-to-detail that transports you to the Victorian era.' Where: Queen's Landing Hotel, 155 Byron St., Niagara-on-the-Lake Tiara is in the Queen's Landing Hotel in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a Georgian mansion that overlooks the Niagara River. Tiara says it offers a five-star 'culinary experience complete with succulent flavours and panoramic views of Niagara-on-the-Lake's harbour' with 'fine dining featuring the best Canadian ingredients, Niagara wines, craft cocktails and local beer.' Other restaurants on the list include Cambridge's Langdon Hall Country House Hotel and Spa, Toronto's Akira Back, Café Boulud, Clockwork, Joni Restaurant, KŌST, Louix Louis, ONE Restaurant, Reign, The Tea Room — Windsor Arms Hotel and Toca at The Ritz-Carlton. The new rankings are based on data from OpenTable and KAYAK reservations. The OpenTable metrics used data from online reservations from June 1, 2024, to May 31, 2025, and compared those metrics to the previous year. Each hotel restaurant had to have a minimum number of reviews and be present on . These eateries serve great food at prices that won't break the bank. OpenTable data was used to gather info on which diners were also local, versus travelling in the area. According to the data, 61 per cent of the diners were local. KAYAK search data showed its 'restaurant' hotel filter almost doubled within a year, highlighting how travel and dining are becoming increasingly connected. With food being an integral part of the travel experience, it is also no surprise 68 per cent of Canadians would also book the same hotel again because of a positive dining experience in its restaurant. Which could mean there could be a continued trend of more residents and travellers putting Niagara hotels on their list.
