There is nothing quite like actually going into a bookstore — especially if you have a little luxurious time on your hands and no particular task to accomplish. The first section you’ll come across is the new releases — stacked on tables and faced out on bookshelves. This is the perfect place to wander slowly. Go ahead and judge a few books by their covers. Read some the book flaps to decide which titles have to be added to the future stack of “must reads” on your nightstand.
Next, keep going into the store, past the displays and stacks of tempting new releases, to your favorite section — you know where it is. Maybe you love cookbooks with their inspirational photos, or memoirs, because getting into someone else’s head can be a journey or possibly you can’t read enough mysteries because you almost always figure it out right before the end. It feels indulgent and exciting to walk the aisle at a snail’s pace, pulling the books that catch your interest and paging through. In your favorite section, you likely keep a short list in your head of what you will buy when you get a chance. It’s hard to pick but in the best way — an embarrassment of riches.
Once you’ve decided which title has to be read right away, you can buy the book you just had to have this time and take it to the coffee shop right there in the store. A coffee shop inside a bookstore is probably one of the more wonderful things to have happened to people who love books. There’s almost nothing better than drinking coffee or tea within the pleasant din and hum of commerce and conversation and opening new book, full of all the drama, mayhem, history, crime or romance — full of all the promise of a book you’ve yet to read.
Before you go, you can check out the kid’s section with its own tables of colorful new releases and display of seasonal or holiday books. You can rediscover a classic book from your own childhood — because truly good children’s books have a particular way of living in the adult mind forever. The kids in your life probably have their own running list of books they really want to take home — whether they’re still reading cardboard books, picture books featuring their favorite characters or the newest graphic novel or chapter book. If you bring home a book, you’ll be a bit of a hero and you might get to read it to a kid in your life.
Originally published at yulkaseman.net.
Yul Kaseman 