From the Moss & Fog Shop
We just added a shelf of books to the shop. Not a lot of them, and not the ones every gift guide already carries, but six books we would keep on our own coffee table, a set of postcards, one very good puzzle, a small kit for people who lend books and want them back, and four good things to do with your hands in the hours between.
Last updated September 2026. Thirteen titles on the shelf.
Moss & Fog has spent fifteen years choosing images: the one photograph out of a portfolio, the one building out of a city. The shop grew out of that habit, and its rule has not changed since the relaunch: if we would not put something in an article, it does not go in the store. Books are the most natural fit of anything we have added, because a good book is a Moss & Fog post that keeps going for 300 pages. So we went through publishers’ lists the way we go through a photographer’s portfolio, looking for the handful that made us stop scrolling.
Here is what made the cut so far, and why. Everything below ships from our studio, and when something sells out we get it back as quickly as our distributor allows. We are calling the section The Reading Room, and this page is its front door: when a new title arrives we add it here rather than writing a new post, so the shelf and the story stay in one place. Do you have a burning suggestion for our shop? Let us know here!
For anyone who has ever priced out a piece of land
We have written about remote cabins more times than we can count, and most of those posts trace back to one place.
Cabin Porn
Cabin Porn started as a private scrapbook for a group of friends building on 55 acres of forest in upstate New York, and became the largest collection of handmade shelters anywhere. This is the hardcover that came out of it, and honestly it is better than the website. Zach Klein, who also co-founded Vimeo, chose the best of the archive: A-frames, sod-roofed huts, fire lookouts, boathouses, treehouses, yurts. Noah Kalina photographed them, Steven Leckart wrote them up, and the longer stories about the people who built each one are the reason you end up reading it cover to cover instead of flipping.
It is the most flipped-through book in our studio. The spread in the photo, a maple sugar shack in Bolton Landing, New York, is the one we keep coming back to. Fair warning: it will make you open a real estate app.
A good book is a Moss & Fog post that keeps going for 300 pages.
The only rule of the Reading Room
For the ones who actually go outside
Two books for the camping side of the site, one practical and one quiet.
How to Eat in the Woods
Bradford Angier wrote the field guides that the mid-century back-to-the-land crowd carried in their packs, and this is his most complete one, brought up to date by Jon Young. Foraging edible plants, berries and nuts, finding clean water, fishing, trapping, insects, bird eggs, building a fire, cooking without a single utensil. Written for people who go into the woods on purpose, so the tone is direct and unsentimental, which we find oddly calming.
The cover, a tree-ring dinner plate set between a fork and a knife, made us laugh out loud. It sits well next to our Campsite Pack List and the Pocket Survival Kit.
The Healing Nature of Trees
A small green hardcover about slowing down among trees. Patrice Bouchardon starts from an old idea, that time spent with a particular tree changes how we feel, and turns it into things you can actually do: walking and breathing exercises, notes on the character of different species, a little on tree oils. It is unhurried and a bit mystical, and we mean that as a compliment. If you liked our piece on the forest bathing retreat in Japan, this is the book to take on the walk.
At $9.99 it is also the easiest add-on in the shop, and the wood-grain cover looks very good on a shelf. It is small enough to disappear into a jacket pocket, which is the point.
For the curious and the pattern-obsessed
Two books that live on the science side of Moss & Fog, where fungi and Fibonacci sequences have always been welcome.
Modern Psychedelics
A clear, judgment-free handbook for adults who are curious about psychedelics and would like reliable information rather than forum rumors. Joe Dolce, a journalist and former editor-in-chief of Details, gathers current research and much older traditions into one plainspoken guide: the history, the science, the myths and the practical questions around psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, DMT, ayahuasca, LSD, mescaline and ibogaine, with chapters on intention, microdosing and responsible use. Julie Holland, MD, writes the foreword.
We will be honest that the cover is what stopped us first, a rainbow doorway with every window thrown open. The inside earns it. This is a book of information, not a recommendation, and it is written for adults.
The Golden Ratio Coloring Book
Ninety-six pages of spirals, polyhedra, tessellations and Fibonacci sequences, drawn from the golden ratio and the other patterns mathematics keeps finding in shells, sunflowers, galaxies and cathedrals. Steve Richards’s line work is intricate enough to hold your attention for a whole evening and open enough to color with a pencil or a fine marker.
A very good present for the friend who is equally happy holding a compass or a paintbrush, and one of the few coloring books we would leave out on the coffee table.
For the Accidentally Wes Anderson fans
We have covered Wes Anderson’s world for years, from the house you can book on Airbnb to the props exhibition in London. Wally Koval’s Accidentally Wes Anderson project, which finds real places that look like his sets, is the natural next step, and two things from that project could not be left off the shelf.
Accidentally Wes Anderson Postcards
Twenty-six postcards of real places that look like film sets: symmetrical, pastel, slightly deadpan. Twenty-five are favorites from the bestselling book, and one has never been printed before. Pin them up, frame a few, or actually mail one. We keep a stack by the desk for exactly that.
Accidentally Wes Anderson Puzzle
Thirty picture-perfect places from the AWA archive, hung as a gallery wall and cut into 1,000 pieces. The box includes a foldout map that tells the story behind each picture, from the Eastern Columbia Building in Los Angeles to the Hotel Opera in Prague to the Arashiyama Monkey Park in Kyoto. A proper weekend project, and the finished puzzle is large enough to frame.
For anyone who has leaned a little too close to a painting
The newest arrival, and the one that caused a small scene in the studio when the box came open. We went down the whole rabbit hole in our history of scratch and sniff, from baguette stamps to a wall at the Met you were allowed to rub.
Scratch and Sniff Art History
Twelve famous paintings, each with a patch you scratch to smell what is in the picture: the wine in Caravaggio’s Bacchus, a strawberry out of Bosch, the fruit piled into Arcimboldo’s portrait of an emperor made of produce. Elizabeth Lunday writes the wall labels, and they are proper art history, just told by someone who clearly enjoyed the assignment.
It is sturdy enough for small hands and funny enough for the grown-ups who end up reading it at the coffee table anyway. Save The Scream for last. Trust us on that one!
For the hours between books
Four things on the shelf that are not books, and would not be here if they had not come out of one. A colour manual from 1692, a 220-page field journal, a coloring book from the people who fund the parks, and a perfume house that writes the story before it makes the scent.
Watercolour Swatches Memory Game
In 1692 a Dutch artist named A. Boogert sat down and hand-painted his way through every colour he could mix, filling roughly 800 pages with swatches and instructions on how to make each one. He appears to have produced a single copy, and it sat largely unseen for three centuries. Pantone arrived at the same idea 271 years later. Roomytown’s design team in Bath went back to that book and pulled the swatches out of it.
Forty-eight cards, twenty-four pairs, in a hinged box. Being a memory game, you will spend most of it failing to recall which of two nearly identical greens you turned over a minute ago, which is the whole pleasure of the thing.
The Outdoors Oracle
An oracle deck set somewhere that does not exist. A Nature Unknown invented the Blight Wilderness Region, drew 84 cards for it, sorted them into six outdoor archetypes, and added a merit die and a topographic map to guide the draw. What puts it on this shelf rather than the games shelf is the 220-page journal that comes with it, tying every card back to a longer story.
We are not especially mystical about the fortune-telling part. We like it because someone built an entire wilderness on paper and then made you draw a card to find your way through it.
National Parks Coloring Book
Parks Project is the certified B Corp that funds conservation work in the national parks, which is reason enough to carry them. This is their coloring book: 12 by 12 inches, printed on heavy FSC certified matte stock, so a pencil bites into the page instead of skidding across it. The illustrations are proper landscapes rather than the usual mandalas.
It belongs beside the Golden Ratio book above, on the very short list of coloring books we would leave out where people can see them. Good for a rainy afternoon at home, better in the back seat on a long drive.
Short Story Fragrance Sampler
This is the one that needs explaining, so here it is. Imaginary Authors is a Portland perfume house that writes the novel first. Every scent is credited to an author who does not exist, given a title and a cover and a plot, and then built to smell like the book that was never written. The fiction is not marketing wrapped around a fragrance. It is the thing the fragrance was made from.
The sampler is eight of them, 2ml apiece, roughly forty half sprays to a vial, and it costs ten dollars less than buying the same eight on their own. We know perfume on a book shelf is a stretch. We put it here rather than with the candles because it is the only thing in the shop that is genuinely made out of stories.
One more thing, in every parcel
The Reading Room bookmark
Every book that leaves the shop goes out with one of these tucked inside the cover. Front: a small riso treeline and the only reading advice we have ever felt qualified to give. Back: a miniature library checkout card, so when you lend the book (and you should) you have a record of who has it. Printed in the same letterpress style as our pack lists and field studies.
It is not for sale on its own. It comes with a book, and when the 250 are gone, they are gone.
For the generous reader
Personal Library Kit
The original Knock Knock kit for people who lend out books and would like them back. Twenty self-adhesive card pockets with matching checkout cards, a date stamp, an ink pad and a pencil, so you can run your shelf like a small public library and know exactly who has your copy of Cabin Porn. In print since 2009 for good reason.
It is the obvious companion to everything above, and the reason we put it on the same shelf.
Browse the Reading Room
Books, postcards, puzzles and paper goods, chosen the way we choose everything else here. New titles arrive a few at a time, and this page grows with them.
A note on the shop, since it should be said plainly: the Moss & Fog Shop is ours. We choose what goes in it, we buy the stock, we pack the parcels, and we make a margin on every sale, which is part of how the magazine stays free to read. Nothing on this page was sent to us for review, and no publisher paid for a place on the shelf.
