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Tuesday 10am - 6pm Wednesday 10am - 6pm Thursday 10am - 6pm Friday 10am - 6pm Saturday 10am - 5pm Sunday 11am - 4pm

The Nature of Reading Bookshop

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United States
Madison, NJ
The Nature of Reading Bookshop

📖 environmental bookstore
🌱 nature & climate change books
🌎 est. earth day 2022
🌀 where books, nature, and creativity meet

07/29/2026

Have you ever wanted to try needle felting? Tomorrow (Thursday, 7/30) is our next monthly crafting workshop here at The Nature of Reading, and we’re returning to a customer favorite: felting! You’ll receive your own felting kit that contains 8 cut-out fish, ready to be decorated with colorful wool roving however you’d like—it’s like painting, but with wool! Learn how to needle felt and make these delightful felt fish with us, then bring home the knowledge to make more fish and complete other needle felting projects.

Spots are limited so get your ticket now at our link in bio, in our stories, or on our website if you know you’d like to join us—we’ll have a lovely evening sipping herbal tea, chatting, and crafting! We hope to see you there 🐟💚📖

07/19/2026

New newsletter out today! Check it out to learn more about this month’s crafting event and our upcoming book clubs 💚📖🌱 The link is in our bio!

06/19/2026

To celebrate Juneteenth, here are some of our favorite nature & climate books by Black authors 🌟 Climate justice cannot exist without racial justice 💚🌎 You can find these amazing books and countless others at Black-owned bookstores across the country—visit the National Association of Black Bookstores’ website for an ever-growing map of Black bookstores (nab2.org).

We especially recommend When Trees Testify by Beronda L. Montgomery, which we read for our book club at the shop a few months ago. If you love history and botany, this beautifully written study of Black botanical legacy in the US will surely be one of your new favorite reads.

06/14/2026

New newsletter out today! Follow The Nature of Reading on Substack where I’m marginally better with putting out updates about the shop and events 😅 it’s been a wonderful place to have conversations with readers and share my journey with the shop 💚 You can subscribe at the link in our bio or in our stories!

06/05/2026

It’s the 2026 New Jersey Bookstore Crawl!!! My brain is absolutely fried at the moment from all the prep we’ve been doing this week to get the shop ready for the crawl, but I hope you’ll come visit us this weekend! We’re doing a gift basket giveaway and I’ve designed a special bookmark just for the crawl 💚 I hope to share more updates and all the new exciting things in the shop as the crawl continues this weekend! See you soon!!💚📖🥳

05/26/2026

We’re so very excited for the next event in the ongoing speaker series with the Madison Environmental Commission and The Nature of Reading Bookshop, When the Forest Breathes 🌲🌳🌀 Join us on Monday, June 8th from 7-8:30pm for a celebration of trees inspired by Suzanne Simard’s books, Finding the Mother Tree and When the Forest Breathes.

Simard is famous for the groundbreaking research that proved what indigenous people have always known: trees communicate with each other through underground fungal networks. If we listen to the Mother Trees, we have the potential to regenerate our forests, harvest without clearcutting, and halt the wildfires that are consuming natural areas.

The event will start off with an intro to Simard’s books and then move from the Pacific Northwest to Morris County. Kirsten Wallenstein, an MEC member and a stewardship leader for Madison’s forests, will talk about bringing resilience back to our natural spaces by managing deer, controlling invasive plants and planting for biodiversity. Then Susan Landau, Xerces Ambassador and guardian of Foote’s Pond Wood in Morristown, will teach you how to plant a pocket forest in your yard. It’s less work than a meadow—and supercharged with ecological benefits. Trees, like us, appreciate being part of a community.

The event is free and open to all—we just ask that you sign up in advance at the link in our bio or at thenatureofreading.com/whentheforestbreathes

We hope to see you there! 📖 💚🌲

05/19/2026

Are you looking for a sweet and wholesome way to spend Wednesday night? Look no further! Join us for a relaxing, cozy evening to learn the art of needle felting and celebrate our busy pollinators 🐝

This event is great for beginners who are new to needle felting—the kit contains everything you need, and I will be here to help guide you through the project and answer any questions you might have.

We’d truly love for you to join us at this event where we’ll sip herbal tea and spend a wholesome time together crafting and chatting. Plus, there’s a 10% discount if you see anything you’d like to bring home at the shop that night.

We have only a few spots remaining! Sign up at the link in our bio or at thenatureofreading.com/upcoming-events 💚🐝🌷

05/06/2026

I’m so very excited to announce May’s book club pick! Join us this month to read How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries by David George Haskell. As the world blooms around us, it’s the perfect time to grow (pun intended) a deeper appreciation of the flowers we see each day when we step outside. Haskell writes, “Without flowers, human beings would not exist. We are a floral species. Flowers catalyzed our evolution, and we now depend on them for food and a healthy planet. When we perfume ourselves, give a loved one a bouquet, or use blooms in gardens and religious ceremonies, we honor the special bond between people and flowers. The study of flowers also shaped modern science and horticulture in ways both marvelous and, sometimes, unjust. Looking to the future, flowers offer us lessons on resilience and creativity in the face of rapid environmental change. We need floral creativity, beauty, and joy more than ever.”

How Flowers Made Our World combines lyrical writing and the latest in scientific research to explore some of the most consequential life forms ever to have evolved, showing how our planet came to be and how it thrives today 🌸 You can get your ticket now at the link in our bio or at thenatureofreading.com 🌟 Swipe to see a preview of the eight flowers Haskell explores in the book!

04/23/2026

Happy Earth Day everyone! I started to write a post going through the Nature of Reading’s journey since the shop was founded on Earth Day in 2022 (wow, we’re turning 4 already!) but what was supposed to be a quick post turned into paragraphs and paragraphs of rambles (as often happens) and now I’ll be sending them out in a newsletter later this week (you should subscribe to us on Substack at the link in our bio! hehe).

We hope you can join us this Saturday for our big Earth Day/birthday/Indie Bookstore Day celebration, but until then, thank you so, so much to each and every one of you who has been on this journey with me for the past four years. From launching the online store on 4/22/22 to opening our first storefront on 4/22/23 to opening our new storefront on 4/22/25 (I do love a symbolic date!) with every passing year it further amazes me how much this community has grown around our little nature bookstore. What started as a 10x10ft space at the Madison Farmer’s Market has turned into an ecosystem of nature and book lovers far lovelier than I ever could have imagined.

The shop’s motto that you’ll find on our bookmarks is “where nature, books, and creativity meet,” so it felt fitting when today I received a special delivery that I didn’t think would make it here in time for Saturday. Pictured here are our new tote bags! I had been working on a new design for literally over a year (I go a bit crazy when it comes to my own creativity) before eventually scrapping that whole thing and using my native plant book drawings from our t-shirts (find those at the shop on Saturday!) to form a basis for the new totes. They are HUGE and can certainly fit many, many books. We hope you love them as much as we do, and we hope to see you soon to celebrate Earth Day and Indie Bookstore Day this Saturday at the shop 💚

04/10/2026

The Nature of Reading Bookshop and The Madison Environmental Commission are so excited to announce our next free event for all local nature lovers: Plant This, Not That with author Elise Howard!

Elise’s book highlights over 200 native plant swaps that you can make in your own garden to get rid of invasive species and better support pollinators and local wildlife. Elise will be interviewed by garden designer Sarah Hunt of Sarah Digs Plants.

If you’re interested in learning about how to incorporate more native plants into your own yard, this event is a perfect place to start and we truly hope you can join us. The event is free and open to all, we just ask that you register in advance at thenatureofreading.com/plantthisnotthat.

Elise’s book is available for purchase now at The Nature of Reading Bookshop and on their website. It will also be available at the event, where you’ll be able to get your copy signed by Elise. We can’t wait for this one—see you soon!

Address

4 Green Village Road
Madison, NJ
07940

Opening Hours

Tuesday	10am - 6pm
Wednesday	10am - 6pm
Thursday	10am - 6pm
Friday	10am - 6pm
Saturday	10am - 5pm
Sunday	11am - 4pm

Website

http://thenatureofreading.com/

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