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When Wanderers Cease to Roam
When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put | Vivian Swift
9 posts | 2 read | 7 to read
A charming, illustrated celebration of puttering, doodling, daydreaming, and settling down after years on the road. Following a lifetime of trekking across the globe, Vivian Swift racked up twenty-three temporary addresses in twenty years, finally dropped her well-worn futon mattress and rucksack in a small town on the edge of the Long Island Sound. She spent the next decade quietly taking stock of her life, her immediate surroundings, and, finally, what it means to call a place a home. The result is When Wanderers Cease to Roam. Filled with watercolors of beautiful local landscapes, seasonal activities, and small, overlooked pleasures of easy living, each chapter chronicles, month by month, the beautifully mundane perks of remaining at homefrom curious notices in the local paper to the variations of autumnal clouds. At once gorgeously rendered and wholly original, this delightful and masterfully observed year of staying put shows us how the details of travel and the details of our lives remain with ushow they can nurture and sustain us, and how the past and the present become, in the end, intertwined.
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review
Lindy
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Pickpick

A contemplative memoir in the style of a nature journal, organized by month, lavishly illustrated with watercolour art. Vivian Swift pays careful attention to her surroundings: the weather, seasonal changes, random objects found on her daily walks, her cats, & the minor events that are considered newsworthy in her village‘s paper. Whether melancholy or celebratory, Swift‘s vignettes, art & literary quotes are charming & poetic.

Lindy @ReadingEnvy Thanks for recommending this. I loved it. 5y
arubabookwoman Such beautiful watercolors you‘ve shown from this book! 5y
Lindy @arubabookwoman 😊 🎨 5y
ReadingEnvy @Lindy I'm so glad you liked it! I did too. 5y
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Lindy
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My 2nd fiancé believed in long engagements—but after a year and a half I had to insist, “It‘s time to set a date.” “OK,” he said, as if agreeing. “Here‘s a list of things you have to change about yourself before I marry you.”
(Note: painting is of the place in Scotland where the author says she goes when her love life falls apart.)

Cathythoughts Beautiful painting 5y
Lindy @Cathythoughts This memoir is illustrated with lovely watercolour art throughout. 😊 5y
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Lindy
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Some days “staying put” might feel the same as Going Nowhere. Make a cup of tea and wait for that feeling to pass.

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Lindy
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Big story in the Village newspaper: a white squirrel was spotted on 3rd Ave. And there‘s going to be a lecture on the history of paperweights for the off-season meeting of the Garden Club.

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Lindy
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My new kitten kept climbing onto the stove. No amount of shoo-ing kept her away from the flame, so I scooped her up and put her in the pocket of my apron. She settled down like a baby kangaroo.
It was while I was pouring hot marmalade into jars that I thought: of all the things that the Earth‘s 6 billion people are doing tonight, I am probably the only person making orange marmalade with a kitten in her pocket.

saresmoore Cute! 5y
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Lindy
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If you wake up early enough you can join the squirrels for breakfast in the woods, you with your vanilla tea, them with their Rose of Sharon flower petal crêpes.

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blurb
ReadingEnvy
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June was a good month with six 5-star reads.
Total books: 26

Audio: 5
eBook: 15
Print: 6

Purchased: 5
Library: 8
Review: 13

Asia 2019: 4
Camp ToB: 2
Joint Readalong: 1
TakePrideinReading: 6
TBR Explode: 3

Links to reviews: http://readingenvy.blogspot.com/2019/06/books-read-june-2019-134-159.html

StillLookingForCarmenSanDiego That's a great month! 💖📖💖 5y
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ReadingEnvy
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Pickpick

One of the books from my #tbrexplode project for June - I loved this year-long meditation on staying put, through memories and watercolor, drawings and observation.

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LauraBrook
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Some early morning #bookmail for myself! It came with several presents, though, so I don't feel quite as badly as I probably should. 😉

ValerieAndBooks Did you like the Wanderers book? I‘m curious because Elizabeth Gilbert recommended this in a recent article! (You‘re the only one who posted about this on Litsy , and that was two years ago 😄) 6y
LauraBrook @ValerieAndBooks Hi there! Sorry for the delay in replying. I haven‘t read this yet, but I adored another book of hers, and bought the rest of her works right away. If you can find a copy somewhere I recommend it. It‘s all hand watercolored illustrated lettered, so it‘s wonderful to look at - the content looks pretty good too! 😘 6y
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