I love getting and giving reading recommendations, so I’ve created a space with this Substack for lists of recently read books by friends and associates who have the reading gene, as well as librarians and owners of some of my favorite bookstores.
This week I’m sharing what Will Pratt has been reading.
I’ve been a Tandem Coffee fangirl since Will and Kathleen Pratt launched their micro-roasting business on Anderson Street in 2012 and opened their bakery on Congress Street in 2014. If you have not had their loaded biscuit, then grab your shoes and wallet and jump on your bike or in your car and immediately, and I do mean right now, GO TO TANDEM and have one.
One of the things I admire most about how the Pratt’s approach their business is their humanity. Towards fellow humans and our planet. They compost, get their milk in glass bottles that get returned and re-used. Installed a car charger at the Little T (Anderson Street) location. Got rid of plastic straws. Charge customers who need single-use containers 25 cents more. Continue to look for more sustainable/user-friendly packaging. Donate a percentage of sales to environmental non-profits. Buy almost all their electricity from a community solar farm in China, Maine. And I LOVE this and have to try it and just found out about it right before I typed this—at Little T you can bring in a reusable container and they’ll fill it with coffee and you get a 20% discount for doing so. Hello, yes! 🌎🌲☕️
In a 2019 interview with News Center Maine, Will said "Just the amount of single use things that we go through, you know; cups, boxes, bags: it was just hard to turn a blind eye to that stuff."
Will has been reading:
Outline by Rachel Cusk—A 2014 novel by British author Rachel Cusk, the first installment in her critically acclaimed The Outline trilogy.
The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgard—The New York Times describes it as a “a hybrid of a Stephen King novel, multi-perspective realist drama, true-crime thriller and theological/spiritual treatise.”
I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen by Sylvie Simmons—The definitive biography by the legendary artist.
Meditation for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman—for info on this non-fiction book check out the publisher’s site.
Tyll by Daniel Kehlmann—The author transports the medieval legend of the trickster Tyll Ulenspiegel to the seventeenth century in an enchanting work of magical realism, macabre humor, and rollicking adventure.