Colin Nissan did a thing. Back in 2009. He wrote an essay about what it means to find yourself in the season that is fall, meaning, decorating your home with oddly shaped gourds. This essay, “It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherf—ers” has become a classic, shared over the internet repeatedly to mock those who have a wicker cornucopia on the middle of their table every autumn.
This year, as a special treat, Nissan has teamed up with Chronicle Books to print the essay in a gift book filled with charming stock photos of happy people enjoying the falling leaves and a variety of photos of those beloved decorative gourds. It’s lovely. It’s charming. It’s autumn, with all it’s lovely colors and celebrations and costumes and candy and pumpkin spice.
But be careful with that, because it will all turn on you. While your back is turned, those gourds will rot right in the middle of your table. Fall will take all those lovely dreams of overflowing cornucopias and turn them into oozing corpses that you will need to double bag so it doesn’t get all over your floors.
That’s what happens to decorative gourd season.
And if you’re all in for that, and for more than a little cursing, then this book is for you. It is snarky, it is ironic, it is a little disturbing, and it’s lots of fun. If you are ready to go all in for fall, or you have a friend who knows just how to shellac a decorative gourd or two, then you should definitely buy this book. The cover is pretty. You can set it on the table, right next to your collection of decorative gourds, with a few colorful leaves and maybe a pinecone throw in for good measure.
I really enjoyed this book. It fed my sense of irony and my dark humor and properly set me in the fall mindset. Sadly, I do not have a wicker cornucopia of my own, but I can dream about one day finding one, and in the meantime, I can read this book again and think of the wicker cornucopias filled with decorative gourds that I have encountered in my past.
This book isn’t for everyone, because as I mentioned (and as you probably surmised from the title), there is a lot of cursing. I know that some autumn enthusiasts will be turned off by that. But if you’re not, if you’re one to pontificate like a sailor about your pretty, pretty pumpkins, then this is the book for you.
Egalleys for It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherf—ers were provided by Chronicle Books through Edelweiss, with many thanks.
