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.

“Summer always overstays its welcome by about a month,” my colleague Elizabeth Bruenig wrote last week. “After the Fourth of July, which has its charms, nothing but a stretch of relentless heat lies ahead, reaching toward Labor Day, and I begin to yearn for fall.” That yearning is reflected in American consumer culture: “By mid-August, grocery stores are stocking their shelves with autumnal goods—pumpkin-pie Pop-Tarts, cinnamon-maple Frosted Flakes, pumpkin-spice cinnamon rolls in pressurized cardboard tubes.”

This early push to transition into fall can make us lose sight of what’s so special about the season we’re in now. For Bruenig, it’s accompanying her children on adventures and watching them play freely. For others, it might be spending more time with loved ones, travelling, or enjoying the simple pleasure of ice cream (although it is my personal belief that ice cream has no seasonal limits). Today’s newsletter explores how to make the most of the end of summer—without putting too much pressure on yourself to do it perfectly.

If Only This Could Last Forever

By Elizabeth Bruenig

Summer is the worst season of all, and also the most beautiful.

Read the article.

An Easy Summer Project Worth Doing

By Elaine Godfrey

Finding small moments of joy can make every day feel—at least a little—like vacation. (From 2025)

Read the article.

You Can Do Leisure Better, Seriously

By Arthur C. Brooks

If you think of personal time only as “not work,” you could be missing out on truly enriching experiences. (From 2025)

Read the article.

Still Curious?

• Go for a walk: In 2021, Arthur C. Brooks recounted what he learned about transcendence from a very boring 100-mile trek.
• The new parent trap: At summer camp, the kids may be far from home, but technology is keeping many moms and dads tethered to them—and anxious, Russell Shaw writes.

Other Diversions

• The dystopia of modern singlehood
• Our last WiFi-less refuge is gone.
• The elite college students who can’t read books

PS

I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “Last night I couldn’t sleep and sat on the front porch in the dark, surprised to hear rain,” Bliss G. wrote last month. “This morning, no sign of the rain but this one, glorious drop, which even in the breeze, wouldn’t disappear.”

I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.

— Isabel

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.

Over the past two decades, Matt Seaton discovered something about himself: He loves building walls. Seaton started by mending a stone wall at the Vermont home his wife inherited from her parents, and then, he writes, “bit by bit—which is the way with walls—my interest and knowledge deepened until what had begun as recreation morphed into a hobby job, mending other people’s walls.”

Eventually, Seaton’s new passion changed his life: “In what probably struck friends and family as an act of lunacy, I quit my day job as an editor at this magazine and became a part-time waller.”

Not all of our passions turn into part-time jobs, but Seaton’s story is a reminder that sometimes the things that bring us the most joy are the ones we stumble upon. Today’s newsletter explores how to seek out—or just open yourself up to—a unique new hobby.

On Unique Hobbies

The True History of New England’s Stone Walls

By Matt Seaton

Why we love them, and why I build them

Read the article.

Six Underrated Hobbies to Try Out

By Stephanie Bai

Picking up a new pastime is no small feat.

Read the article.

Eight Books for Dabblers

By Sophia Stewart

Casual pursuits can enrich our lives, regardless of whether we’re any good at them.

Read the article.

Still Curious?

• How hobbies infiltrated American life: America has a love affair with “productive leisure,” Julie Beck wrote in 2022.
• How leisure time became work: The rise of the attention economy has accelerated our habit of engaging with our hobbies in a data-driven way, Shirley Li wrote in 2021.

Other Diversions

• Why so much Millennial fiction is boring
• Too scared for sex
• How the American office became inevitable

PS

I recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks their sense of awe in the world. “I moved to Rhinebeck, New York, to a modest condo in July of 2023,” Maria F, 73, writes. “This sunset over the pond directly off of my porch appeared three days after I moved in.  Three years later, I continue to welcome evenings with these ever-changing sunsets, grateful for these moments that remind us to be present.”

I’ll continue to feature your responses in the coming weeks.

— Isabel