An Ode to Bookstores in these Trying Times

I love bookstores. You’re shocked, I can tell. But yes, I love bookstores. Bookstores in strip malls and bookstores in cute little storefronts. I love bookstore chains and used bookstores and even the book sections in Target or Walmart. I love looking at books, reading those little recommendation cards by booksellers about the books, finding books from my lists or through the serendipity of browsing. Bookstores are my jam.  

For one hot, Maryland summer in my late teens, I worked as a barista at a Borders bookstore cafe. It wasn’t a great job, to be honest. I got covered in warm milk splatters and people were surprisingly rude about their coffee. Everyone assumed we were Starbucks and wanted frappuccinos, but we weren’t and we didn’t have frappuccinos.

But the bookstore! Was glorious! This Borders was in an upscale mall (RIP White Flint), with a huge glass atrium in the front and an escalator in the center. Two stories of books! And me with an employee discount. When I bought my copy of The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, I hugged it. 

In honor of that Borders, here’s some of the best bookstores I’ve been to, in no particular order, and what I bought from them:

• Papercut Books in Wilmington, NC - most recently, Babel by RF Kuang. I’m only a third of the way through and I’m struggling.

• Loyalty Bookstores in DC - Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert. Never finished it. I didn’t find the magic like the first in the series. Lost in the flood.

• East City Bookshop in DC - I can’t remember the title but the book is blue and about lesbians.

• Books & Books in Coral Gables, Miami - Wild and Wicked Things by Francesca May. Haven’t read it (yet).

• The Last Bookstore in LA - House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films by Kier-la Janisse. Really dense and difficult to read. Gave to a friend. 

• The Ripped Bodice, also in LA (Culver City) - What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo. Still haven’t read it.

• Powell’s Books in Portland, OR - My Favorite Thing is Monsters by Emil Ferris. Amazing, heartbreaking, 5 stars. Lost in the flood. 

• This photography and art bookstore in Madrid, Spain whose name I can’t remember but I got the most amazing graphic novel, Manual de Autodefensa by Luci Gutiérrez. Lost in the flood. 

• The Strand Bookstore at 12th and Broadway in NYC - signed copy of She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran. Also have not read.

• The Tattered Cover in LoDo Denver (now closed, I believe) - a cheap Dover Thrift Editions copy of A Room with a View by EM Forster which I then tried to read at a bar while two older gentlemen propositioned me.

• The flagship Half Price Books in Dallas - I don’t remember, but it was probably cheap.

• Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, MA - Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. Lent it to a cutie who absconded with it and I never saw it again. 

• Olsson’s Bookstore in Bethesda, MD (now closed) - As a kid, my dad used to take me here while he got a haircut nearby. I accidentally bought two separate copies of the Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, because I totally forgot I had read it and it looked so interesting.

Some Housekeeping Before We Start

I rate every book I read on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. What does the rating mean, exactly? Well, mostly, it’s a feelings-based system.

To the Books!

Books Added to My Wishlist

• The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw: Dark academia and cannibalism. What could go wrong?

• My Ex, the Anti-Christ by Craig Dilouie: When your ex is literally the nightmare that ends the world. I’m intrigued enough to read a female character written by a man (always sus).

• The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling: The description literally says “bacchanalian madness.” Also possibly about cannibals.

• The Stones of Landane by Catherine Cavendish: A couple visiting a neolithic stone circle in the countryside leads to possession and ghostly hauntings. 

Books read

Graveyard Shift by ML Rio: This book looks like a horror novel. The description reads like a horror novel. I found it through a horror Instagram influencer post. Yet, as one person on Goodreads described it, it’s “Scooby-Doo for adults, minus the dog.”¹ I kept turning pages thinking something devastating and dark was gonna happen and it didn’t. While I enjoyed the characters and felt each voice was quite strong, the ending was nebulous and unresolved, and totally anticlimactic to the small amount of tension the story managed to build. 3 stars.

Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell: I am not crying anymore. I’m not. But if I think too hard about this book or even stare at the cover too long, I will start again. An enchanting, adventurous fantasy novel for kids that had me chuckling with the first line and broke my heart in the best kind of way with the last. I was expecting lighthearted fun times, but instead I got a book about love, friendship, kindness, bravery, and loyalty, even in the darkest moments, when the world is ending. I cannot recommend highly enough. 5 stars. 

The Eyes are the Best Part by Monika Kim: Full of female rage! Gross and horrifying! I enjoyed following Ji-won down the rabbit hole of her revenge-fueled break from reality. But the characters were all kind of flat and one dimensional. It’s not the grossest book I’ve ever read, but it’s pretty gnarly. 4 stars. 

This Will Be Fun by EB Asher: Very likeable, but also frustrating. The problem with multiple POV narrators is that by giving each character a voice in the story sometimes the story slows down. And for a book about a mythical, fantastical quest to save the world from great evil, slowing down is a real problem. I liked watching the characters grow into better versions of themselves but at the same time, I found the emotional journey a little heavy handed, bordering on trite. 4 stars.

Books I Gave Up On

Life is too short! Give up on books you don’t like!

• Metal From Heaven by August Clarke: So, so, so slow! But it’s getting such rave reviews, I feel like the problem might be me. 

• Perfect Girl by Tracy Banghart: The author captured the voice of a teenage girl really well and I just wasn’t interested. 

• Raiders of the Lost Heart by Jo Segura: Enemies to Lovers but they spent so much time detailing why they detested each other, I started to feel the same. 

Cat Pics of the Month

It snowed at the beach! We got something like 2 inches. Fiona and Pumpkin weren’t too sure about the cold wet stuff, but Wallace was in his element.

Show Me the Noods!

Ugh, not a great month for noodles.

For New Year’s Eve, I made the NYT’s Lemon Garlic Linguine and at the last crucial step, I totally forgot to add the lemon juice. There was still some lemon zest in there, so it wasn’t bad, but it was very, very garlicky. No vampires tried to get New Year’s smooches from me.

Following that trend, I also made the NYT’s Sheet Pan Japchae and I both undercooked the noodles and overcooked the beef (not in the original recipe, but I like a nice beef bulgogi with my japchae). Flavors were spot on, but overall, not that great!

In Conclusion

Well, that was almost 1,500 words about books, cats, and noodles. I hope you enjoyed them. Stick around, because next month it will be more of the same!

Love,
Marcella

1  If you really want Scooby Doo for Adults (But Make it Horror), I recommend Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero.