Casey Scieszka's favorite places to read a book

Welcome to The Guest List! This is a recurring feature here at The Jiffy, where writers, artists, researchers, farmers, scientists and other interesting people doing cool work in the Hudson Valley share a list of their favorite things!

It can be anything, just as long as it’s their favorite (with a local connection).

And today on the list is Casey Scieszka, who owns and runs the Spruceton Inn in West Kill and hosts an annual artist residency there. And as of March 17, with “The Fountain,” she’s also a published novelist.

“The Fountain” follows Vera Van Valkenburgh, who is secretly more than 200 years old but forever in her 20s, as she returns to the Catskills (after nearly 200 years away) to figure out what made her immortal, and whether she can reverse it.

There’s a dubious well-funded tech startup, something mysterious in the water, and themes on what it means to be a local and what it means to live a meaningful life (and death).

Kirkus calls it a “provocative novel that incisively explores the question of what makes a meaningful life,” and Emma Straub says it’s like “Tuck Everlasting” for adults.

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Casey spoke with me over the phone from a cafe in Philadelphia while on book tour. She said the novel started as a ten-day writing accountability exercise with a friend.

“ I was in the middle of this other novel that had gotten too big and unruly and just was in a complicated place. And I was like, whatever. I'll just start this fun little thing. And I wound up writing basically the first chapter of ‘The Fountain.’ And in that kind of magical way that happens with creative work sometimes, it basically just came to me.”

While sitting outside on her stoop in West Kill, looking at the mountains, Casey said she realized this project had to be of this place. “That was the part that fascinated me. I liked the idea of even using, basically my old farmhouse. I was like, what if this woman came back, and she looks like she's new to town, but she's actually like the oldest OG in town? […] I've absorbed so much of this place. It's a part of my mind and body in a way that makes it accessible and fun to then put on the page.”

Casey is also, she will tell happily tell you, an evangelist for reading in unexpected places.

“ Have you ever actually taken a book on a hike, and then looked at the view and then read a chapter and thought in this new way?” she said. “It just gets you. It's kind of like how traveling will make you think about your life completely differently, even though, on the surface you're like, I'm just having breakfast, but I'm having breakfast in this totally new place, in this cafe in France, or whatever it is. I think reading in new places can do something like that for you, too.”

Casey’s Guest List is below, exactly how she wrote it:

Not sure what to read? Rough Draft has got you! Talked-about new releases, loads of fiction, great essay collections and poetry, cookbooks and memoirs and other non-fiction, you name it!  Their rotating curated table is always a treat. (Most recently it was titled GOOD FOR HER and included everything from the Britney Spears memoir to Amelia Bedelia, haha!) The fact that they’re also an all day café and bar means you can literally spend all day there sipping, reading, and chatting with locals and the knowledgeable staff. Maybe even time your visit for one of their Night School panel readings!

Throw a book in with your water bottle and snacks, take the mile-ish long, mostly flat trail from the parking lot to Diamond Notch Falls and set up for a chapter or two. Depending on the time of year and therefore flow of the creek, you might be able to perch on the big flat rocks up top, or you can settle onto a mossy one below. If it’s full-blown summer, go ahead and dip yourself all the way in! There’s nothing quite like reading to the sound of rushing water as you breathe the mineral-clean scent of the falls.

There is something so elegant about dining alone, especially with a good book. But beware, Brushland is such a cozy and friendly place that you might wind up only getting through a few pages before you befriend your table neighbors. Not to mention the food is so outrageously good you’ll absolutely have to set your book down for at least some of the meal. (Looking for something in particular to read while there? I highly recommend SWEETBITTER by Stephanie Danler who was an Artist Resident at my Inn which is about the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll behind-the-scenes lifestyle of the high end NYC restaurant world.)

I definitely don’t recommend reading while you roller skate at Skate Time, but I definitely do recommend doing a bunch of laps under the disco lights to the fun music, then taking a breather with a bag of BjornQorn Popcorn (made on site!) and a book. To have a completely on-brand experience, crack open SkateTime co-owner Stefan Merrill Block’s fascinating memoir HOMESCHOOLED.

My absolute favorite place to read is at a bar. Bring a book to West Kill Brewing’s bucolic brewery and you can set up at the bar itself or outside on their grounds with an epic view of the mountains, and absolutely delicious, expertly-crafted beer in hand. Bonus points if you order the smoky THE FOUNTAIN ale, a limited run collab I did with them of a skibsol “ship beer”, aka the kind of beer the main character of my novel THE FOUNTAIN might have drank in a place like this once upon a time.

Or in one of the cozy beds that all have a view of the wild flowered meadow and mountains, or in the barn where we have a lending library, or with your feet in the creek, or at the bar where you honestly might not get that much reading done, because I will chat you up about whatever it is you're reading, or with a coffee on a blanket outside, or with a headlamp by a fire or…!

You can find “The Fountain,” by Casey Scieszka, at Bookshop.org, or wherever amazing books are sold.