Book Shopping Time is Now Writing Time

From Kate’s Writing Crate…


(I had grand plans for my December blog posts, but illness has changed everything. I love the Backpack Literature course I'm auditing. I shouldn't have scheduled it during the holidays. Rather than rush it, I'm moving my next Backpack Literature review to January 30th.

I've moved up posts I wrote in advance so I can rest up and recover. Hope to be back on track with book reviews soon.)

          Not buying any more books for a year as discussed in my November 14th post has already freed up a lot more time for writing. I didn’t realize how often I visited online book-selling sites. Some people facebook. I just book.

         

         Almost daily, I used to check out new titles and titles-new-to-me. Between recommendations from friends, family, and coworkers and book reviews, something always piqued my interest. Sometimes I would buy, sometimes just put it in the cart.

I confess I buy more books than I delete. If you are a voracious reader who likes to make books her own with underlining and marginalia, it’s hard not to buy books. Since most of my friends and family give me bookstore certificates for gifts and I give myself a book budget, it's easy to buy books.

Also, I read every day. I read more than I do anything else—except writing on deadline.

Yes, this means I get up very early so I can read an hour or two before my day’s responsibilities start. I read while I watch TV and when waiting in lines or waiting for someone. I do my chores and run my errands as efficiently as possible so I have more time to read.

My jobs require reading so even when I’m working, I’m reading.

I need a steady stream of incoming books so I never have to scramble for books to review and so I’m never bored. However, I created a backlog for myself (buying ten more books than I read each year for a decade adds up); hence, the no buying of books for a year.

I’ve changed my habits. I’m not visiting online sites that sell books so I’m not tempted to browse or buy. If I hear about an interesting book, I look it up. If interested, I put it in my shopping cart and leave the web site. If I visit my local bookstore, I’m buying only a writing magazine or two.

Now I have more time to write. With the holiday season here, I’m trying to write my posts and book reviews in advance so I can enjoy all the festivities.

A big upside to my new way of life, I’m saving money. Since there are always bills to pay, a retirement to fund as well as opportunities for family fun, this money will be well spent or saved.

I never have and never will consider buying books a waste of money or reading a waste of time. I’m reading the same amount of time. I’ve merely narrowed down the book choices to those already in my home. 

Once I’ve caught up, I’ll go back to buying books. There will always be a backlog, but I’ll never let it build up to the point I have to stop buying books for a year—maybe only a month or two.

A Year Without New Books

From Kate’s Writing Crate…

          

          About five months ago I reviewed Howards End is on the Landing by Susan Hill. In this memoir, Hill goes looking for her copy of Howards End on her landing, but it isn’t in that bookcase or in the many other bookcases in several other rooms. By the time she finds it, Hill comes across about 200 books she hadn’t read yet. Deciding to read these books, Hill decides she will not buy any new books, unless required by her publishing job, for a year.

          

         I’ve been reorganizing some of my books and realized I have a few hundred of my own that I haven’t read or started but haven’t finished.

How does this happen?

It’s easy. While I read every book I received as a gift or bought through the Scholastic catalog in school when a child, as an adult I can buy or borrow more books than I have time to read. As I’m a voracious reader, most friends and family members give me gift certificates to bookstores for birthdays and holidays and it doesn’t take long to fill a shopping cart/basket.

Although I read and write for a living, I have to read most books on deadline. When looking for novels to review, I have to read two or three to find one to I’d like to review. For non-fiction, I don’t have to finish reading the book before I decide if it is review-worthy so I save a little time there, but end up with a lot of partially read books.

I don’t get rid of them because sometimes these books are review-worthy, but I can’t complete reading them with enough time to write the review by deadline so I save them for the future. Sometimes I need to digest books so a few months after I read them I decide to review them. No wonder books pile up.

Not surprisingly, I have decided not to buy any books for a year. This moratorium started on November 1^st.

So far so good! All these unread books caught my interest or they wouldn’t be piled up in my home so it’s not painful to concentrate on them. As I read and review them, I’ll lend or give them to friends or donate them—unless I truly love them. These books will grace the shelves of my personal library.

Unfortunately, the pain will come when I hear or read about fantastic new books or favorite authors have new releases. Luckily, I can make a list or pile these books in an online shopping cart. In only fifty weeks, I’ll have room to pile them up at home again!

Reads for Writers: My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop or as I call it--Bookstore Vacation Destinations

From Kate’s Writing Crate…

As a reader, I always love finding books that appeal to me. As a writer, I am twice as pleased when the authors also provide masterclasses within their books.

          Masterclasses take place when performance artists and musicians work one-on-one with students. Writers don’t generally have this option, but I have found some books to be masterclasses for characters, backstories, plots, settings, voice, and/or creativity.

          For readers and writers planning summer vacations, check out My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop, edited by Ronald Rice and Booksellers Across America, published in 2012). There are eighty-one independent bookstores in thirty-six states to choose from as an added bonus to or as the main purpose of any trip.

          After reading the fantastic tributes by writers like Isabel Allende, Wendell Berry, Meg Waite Clayton, Fannie Flagg, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Pete Hamill, Ann Hood, Mameve Medwed, Ann Patchett, Chuck Palahniuk, Michael Tisserand, Luis Alberto Urrea, Abraham Verghese, Terry Tempest Williams, and Simon Winchester, not surprisingly, I want to visit all of them. Luckily, two are within an hour of my home. On the next trip to see my dad, we will visit the one within an hour of his home.

Then I will branch out with friends and other family members in tow. I think we could visit maybe ten or twelve more in daylong trips from their homes—only one or two a day so we have plenty of time to browse, read, and shop once we arrive. That is the point after all.

All of these tributes mention the importance of the book-loving owners and knowledgeable staff. Beautifully summed up by Ann Haywood Leal in her tribute starting on page 201: “Finding a book a home in someone’s heart is a talent. They may not know it, but…the staff of Bank Square Books [Mystic, Connecticut] are in the business of matchmaking.”

Some excerpts from the tributes:

The floors have to creak, of course. There should be a bit of a chill inside—not dank, or damp, but enough to bring on thoughts of curling up somewhere with one of the bound companions. If the table displays, favorite picks, and the like have a quirky randomness to them, in defiance of the latest imperatives from publishers, all the better…

All of this you take for granted at The Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle.

                                                Timothy Egan (page 88)

At Watchung Booksellers [in Montclair, New Jersey] there’s a daily rhythm to the life of books. Kids are running around—a bookstore like this is where kids are first brought into the wider world of reading—and there are the sounds of conversations about books, and the humming quiet of the browsers, and the crisp tearing and folding of gift-wrap paper at the counter, and it smells like books, with that fresh, subtly seductive smell. Independent bookstores such as Margot’s [owner] collaborate with writing in such an intimate way that makes cyber bookselling seem merely retail.

                                                Ian Frazier (page 119)

…The event is an author series called Book Your Lunch, and it’s the brainchild of bookseller Jill Hendrix, owner of Fiction Addiction an independent bricks-and-mortar bookstore in my hometown of Greenville, South Carolina. Book Your Lunch is a fantastic way to bring readers and a wide range of authors together—from mystery writers, to award-winning novelists, to non-fiction and cookbook authors. Fiction Addiction sells tickets in advance, and the featured author reads from her work, or gives a short talk, followed by a Q&A session, a delicious lunch, and then an on-site book signing.

                                                          Mindy Friddle (page 121)

Some of the writers of the eighty-two tributes may not be familiar to readers. All of the essays end with writer bios, listings of their books/works, and/or website addresses. (While 84 writers wrote tributes, two were collaborations and The Strand in New York City received two tributes so in total eighty-one bookstores are celebrated.)

As if dream bookstores and writers new and familiar to readers weren’t enough to delight readers of this book, within the essays many of the writers mention their favorite authors.

What more could a reader ask for? Well, I do wish the bookstores’ addresses, phone numbers, and websites were listed at the end of the essays or in the Bookstores by Location index on pages 375-378. Not hard to find online, but still it would have been better in the book.

Whether you are traveling or not this summer, My Bookstore is plain fun--fabulous destinations and numerous book suggestions for readers. It’s almost as good as visiting one of these treasured bookstores!

Bookstore Shopping with My Dad

From Kate's Writing Crate...


     After I learned to read, I learned to love book shopping.

     I am not a shopper by nature--my mother and siblings got that gene. I prefer to stay home with a good book like my dad. However, we all got dragged to the mall one weekend a month when I was growing up.

     After 45 minutes or so, my dad would say he was heading to the bookstore and I would grab his hand when really young or start walking away with him when older before my mother could tell me to stay.

     Once we arrived in the bookstore, I would rush to my favorite section which changed as I aged. It was a long, narrow store and my father was taller than the shelves. He could usually see me or he kept an eye out that I did not get past him to the door--as if I would ever walk away from books without being called!

     I felt so grown up. I could browse the shelves before I knew the word browse looking for books I liked all by myself. Heaven!

     I always found a few books, occasionally more than a few. I would carry them to my dad who would gather them up and take them to the counter. I would stand beside him as they were bagged separately so I could carry them myself. That always made the rest of the shopping trip bearable.

     My dad and I went to a bookstore recently--something we hadn't done in a long while as our favorite bookstore had closed years ago. It was a fun outing; we weren't escaping from the rest of the family and now we go to a lot of the same sections even sharing a few favorite authors like Louis L'Amour and Suzanne Brockmann's SEAL series.

     Happily, some things never change. We gather our books separately, but put them in the same basket. Dad carries them to the counter and has mine put into a separate bag, more because we live apart now, but I am so glad we still love to go bookstore shopping together. 

What memories of bookstores do you have?