One of my favorite activities in elementary school was visiting our local public library, a five minute drive from our house. Getting my own library card felt like freedom. I ventured from the short stack children’s section to the taller shelves of mystery, young adult fiction, romance and fantasy along the east side of the library.
I’d run my fingers along their laminated spines, pulling one out that piqued my interest, read a few pages or glance at the insert. Satisfied with what I saw after a couple sections, I’d place it under my arm. I accumulated books in this way in a daze, often not noticing my pile had grown to 15+ books until my arms started to ache. I almost never brought a bag, choosing instead to wedge a precarious pile of books between my chin & outstretched arms. At that point, I’d head to the checkout counter.
Because we had one family account between my mom, dad, and two younger brothers, no trip to the library was complete without bartering with a librarian for additional renewals for that one book or DVD we were absolutely sure was under the couch. After getting home from the library, I’d splay all the books out across my bed, rub my hands together & decide on which one I wanted to read first.
After I left for college, I found it more challenging to regularly check books out from the library, so I began to frequent bookstores. Books became a treat to me, as I’d have to select each one carefully on my meager budget. In the aisles of Barnes and Nobles, I gravitated towards more practical self help or business books. I’d often pore over reviews on my phone in the book store aisle, making sure the book I was buying was generally thought to be a great read and have a financial return on investment. This period was characterized by a narrowing of tastes and a focus on practicality, especially with the selection of self-help and business books.
As I phased into my career and started traveling more, I’d make a point of visiting bookstores in cities I’d travel to – my favorites being Dog Eared Books Valencia and City Lights in SF and The Strand and Book Club in NY. Each has their own character & special curative style – but Book Club has got to be my favorite. A snug bar serving teas, coffees, beers, and wines, Book Club is the business every aspiring writer at 15 wants to run one day – a cozy nook to relax & read.
Bookstores offered me a chance to deeply explore genres I enjoyed, and I’d find myself gravitating to the newest Joan Didion memoir or business book. But while book stores offered me a deeper dive into genres I was familiar with, my tastes grew narrow. Recommendations from the book store team members often mirrored those I saw on TikTok. And after getting a book from a bookstore, I’d sit down & read each page of every book – not getting another one until I finished my existing book. I stopped reading as much because sometimes I’d just hate the book and not want to finish it.
A bit of the magic of exploration was brought back by my boyfriend. In the first months of getting to know each other, we conducted a surprise book club, alternating sending each other books outside of our own comfort zones – a science fiction adventure for me, a romantic historical fiction for him. The sense of curiosity and wonder I experienced in my childhood reading days sparked again as I ripped through Snow Crash, Red Rising, and Ready Player One, and I loved hearing his thoughts on books like Beatriz Williams’ Along the Infinite Sea. Flash forward to today, one of our favorite activities together is to lay out in a meadow or on a beach reading after a trip to a bookstore.
This same longing for the unexpected prompted me to seek out a new library card last week, reigniting a passion for discovery that had been dormant for too long. On a sunny lunch break, I got my own library card again and was filled with familiar feelings of wonder & curiosity.
I never look at reviews in a library, preferring to select by whimsy and vibe & place myself at the mercy of a book’s cover. Because the books are free to peruse, I feel a sort of laissez faire attitude, likely what contributed to my more well rounded reading lists as a child.
I picked out a wild variety, circling the multicultural adventures, selecting a few with roots in cultures I wanted to understand more deeply – Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia, Slow Noodles by Chantha Nguo, Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward, The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. These books will take me on an adventure through Cuba, Cambodia, the South, and India.
And in the cooking section, I picked out The Complete Small Plates Cookbook by America’s Test Kitchen as I’d like to learn how to make more simple small plates for myself or entertaining. After flipping through a few pages before dinner, I got inspired & picked up a few custom spice blends at a nearby spice shop – tossing together cajun shrimp with pineapple jalapeno slaw over homemade tostadas.
Two wildcards were Love and Friendship – Jane Austen and My Year Abroad by Chang-Rae Lee. I read some of Love and Friendship, a slim volume, drinking an espresso tonic and watching cable cars go by. Her consistent mentions of anything inconvenient & the girls fainting is cracking me up, although the writing is particularly dense. I haven’t read Jane Austen in a while & thought her style would be interesting to read.
As for a Year Abroad, the sidebar sounded very interesting. The first 15 pages are at once slightly unreadable but addictive. The sentence variation reads like someone telling you a story as fast as possible while getting chased by a lit firecracker. Explosive and slightly distracted.
When I got home after my library trip, instead of forcing myself to read one at a time, I skipped around – reading a few chapters of Jane Austen’s book in the sun (I noted it was quite dense for night time reading), then picking up My Year Abroad at lunchtime & getting immersed. The freedom of exploration trickles down to how I consume library books as well – the books become occasional, dependent on the weather or time of day. If I’m not interested, I simply place a book by the door so it’s ready for me when I return to the library next.
As I returned to the library, I couldn’t help but ponder the changing landscape of reading in the digital age. How have curated recommendations and digital algorithms shaped our reading habits, and what are we missing out on in the pursuit of convenience? In embracing the freedom to explore the library shelves once again, I rediscovered not only the joy of reading but also the importance of serendipity and curiosity in our literary journeys. Perhaps, in a world inundated with curated content, there is still value in the simple pleasure of stumbling upon a hidden gem.