(Image: CHS)

By Kimberly Kinchen

Bookkeeping is an occasional series touring some favorite places from Capitol Hill and the nearby via bookshelves, covers, and spines

Since opening in 2011, SugarPill has been Pike/Pine’s stop for herbal remedies and time-honored health wisdom. CHS Bookkeeping made a visit to the Hill’s apothecary where Karyn Schwartz’s homeopathic prescriptions sometimes include book leaves.

How does a book make it onto the shelf? Half of them are books and texts that I used in school. I studied herbs informally by apprenticing with people and taking workshops and going to gatherings. That was very hands-on, like learning a language when you move to a place where that language is spoken. But homeopathic medicine I went to school for and so this whole [left] side is all my homeopathic texts.

The right side is all herb books. This is a fraction of what I have, but these are ones I refer to frequently. I always wanted to actually have a book section here, but I’ve never had room. And there’s always new stuff coming out. And since the bookstore is right around the corner, I’m like, let them sell the books. And we’ll give the advice.

There’s so many different voices in the herb world. It’s nice sometimes to cross reference things and see if you really resonate with the way somebody writes. In the Before Times, I used to just let people sit up in the side room and read books. Now I just send them home with people and ask, “Please bring them back.” I’ve had a couple of walk off, but most people bring them back.

Schwartz (Image: CHS)

Schwartz (Image: CHS)

What for customers is in heavy rotation? Are there a handful you find you’re always recommending? No. You know, everybody’s got a different question. Everybody has a different need. There are a few. Rosemary Gladstar has a really beautiful compendium, it’s a good beginners class in Western herbalism, Family Herbal. That’s probably been lent out more than anything else for people who are just getting started and aren’t sure where to begin. I also have a book about how to make bitters by two friends of mine who are herbalists. It has recipes for bitters and cocktails, but is more about the plants and why things taste the way they taste. I’ve found it to be very popular among bartenders and people who are making stuff at home and want to understand the plants more. DIY Bitters.

A lot of what happens here is not just purely physical medicine, a lot of what happens here is people looking for relief from the pressure of being a human in a complicated world. And I have found that a lot of people don’t need a book about remedies, they need bell hooks’ All About Love or they need Mary Oliver’s poetry. I find myself recommending literature in a prescriptive way a lot more than I recommend tomes of information. Which is the other reason I love having the bookstore around the corner. And sometimes I’ll read a book and I’m like, “Oh, my God, the conversation we’re having is totally related to this thing that I was just reading, Go get that book.” Ellen Fourney’s Marbles is a book that I recommend a lot. It just really depends on what people are coming in here for.

What is a book that should be on the shelf but hasn’t made its way there yet There’s a ton. A lot of really good authors who weren’t getting published are finally getting published. Which I’m really happy about. There’s a whole world of new herbal texts and books about foraging and wildcrafting and a more coherent indigenous understanding of the lands. For anybody interested in herbs, or in wildcrafting, or hunting for mushrooms, or having any kind of partnership with nature, I think starting in a non-scientific way is really important. DIY Bitters I mentioned, by Jovial King, and Guido Mase — Guido is one of those people that has such a deep scientific understanding of plants and chemistry and biophysiology. But he also has such a deep relationship to the land and the plants themselves in a more energetic and spirited way. He is able to explain things scientifically that actually makes sense to me. My whole practice has been so changed by the way that he describes very simple things that I’d learned before in either a physiological way or some other way but they didn’t sink in. And there’s something about his voice that I was like, “Oh my god, that totally makes sense. How come nobody said that before?”

Have you read all of these? I have read almost all of them. With the caveat that the homeopathic texts like Materia Medicas and Repertories are references. They’re not books that you read. There’s probably a few up there I haven’t gone from cover to cover.

These are my personal books. I started working in this field 30 plus years ago, and up there somewhere are my original herb journals. There’s a diagram in one of the very first herb garden I ever planted. And the experiments that I did, the ones that worked and the ones that failed. I love going back to those because there are things in those journals that I’ve forgotten. I forgot that I went to that workshop or met that person or had that experience, you know? And I go back, and it’s in my handwriting and I’m like, “You knew this, you found this out.”

What is a favorite of yours or the single book you’d save in a disaster? I don’t know. I’ve never considered that question…..I don’t have favorites. If I could only have one book, it’d probably be blank, and I would need a pen.

You can find SugarPill at 900 E Pine. Learn more at sugarpillseattle.com.

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