A LOVE NOTE TO BARNES & NOBLE | March Recap
The place where I could always find myself again. And also, I'd like to get to know you a little better at the end.
Does anyone else remember the glory days of the big-box bookstores? Barnes & Noble? Tattered Cover (if you’re a Colorado local)? Something else I want to call Staples, but that’s not it….oh Borders! Remember Borders? It was always in a mall, and I think the first to go?
I can directly link my love of reading as a kid to my visits to Barnes & Noble. There was a big one right next to a park in suburban Colorado where I grew up. My mom would take me there weekly after school, a tradition we carried on even after I graduated.
My mom was a big fan of celebrity memoirs and magazines. I would stroll through first the children’s chapter books, then the YA section as I got older, and carefully read the back of every book that caught my eye.
We would both collect whatever would interest us that week and then would meet at the center (fake) Starbucks cafe, drinking coffee and reading through our finds.
It was amazing.
I remember starting to read a new chapter book, remembering what page I was on when we needed to leave, and thinking, I’ll come back and read the rest next time I’m here. I NEVER finished an entire book reading like that, something different always grabbed my attention at the next visit. Still, I would hide away books that I felt were mine at the back of their shelf, like friends I would come back to later.
I loved that Barnes & Noble never needed anything from us. We rarely bought anything. We would spend hours there doing basically nothing. And we were never pressured to buy or sign up or leave cause ‘someone else needs this seat’. The whole store’s goal seemed to be just to keep us cozy and safe.
This bookstore being my safe place continued with me the rest of my life.
When I was 20 and moved to New York by myself, I had never felt so alone. Sure, I had a roommate and some friends I was slowly meeting, but even as an introvert, I was missing plans and just being around PEOPLE. I needed to find deep connections somewhere.
You know where I went a lot that first year?
You guessed it.
When it would start to get dark and I was sad there weren’t people at home to chat and connect with- a trip through the book aisles and then settling in with a (fake) Starbucks coffee at the cafe was all I needed to feel connected, not only to the world around me, but to myself again.
I hope Barnes & Noble stays around forever (unlike Staples…uh, I mean Borders. A quick Google search told me they shut down in 2012). I still go whenever I have a free afternoon/evening and need some time to wander aimlessly. I do love a good indie bookstore- there are several by me, and I frequent them. But I also love a book space that’s so big you can get lost in your thoughts. It’s just you, the books, and a hundred future friends/families/stories waiting for you to open them.
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We are going to wrap up this month with a short March Recap:
Books Reviewed:
Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth
One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware
The Forever Witness by Edward Humes
Bookstores Visited:
Page and Petals in Wappingers Falls, NY
Rough Draft Bar & Books in Kingston, NY
Also we’ve had a huge number of new readers join us, which is exciting and MIND-BLOWING to me! I’m beyond grateful to meet so many of you and to get to read together. Let’s get to know each other a little better? I want to know your reading styles, habits, what you like and don’t like- everything!
Thanks for reading with me this month! See you guys next Tuesday for a new book review (our first fantasy!) and check-in.