By MARSHA MERCER
Vice President Kamala
Harris visited an independent bookstore in Providence, Rhode Island, Wednesday
and bought four books.
She’d been wanting to
read them, “and I’m going to find time to do it,” she said, according to a pool
report.
Many of us share the
aspiration. Just that morning, I had vowed, again, to find time to buy and read
books.
One of the few upsides
of the pandemic has been an uptick in print book sales. Sales of print books rose
8.2% in 2020 over 2019, according to NPD BookScan.
Much of the increase came
as parents adjusted to remote learning and bought juvenile nonfiction books. The
category was up 23% in unit sales year to year, Publishers Weekly reported.
Adult fiction sales rose
6% over 2019, led by a 29% increase in graphic novels.
But the news about
bookstores isn’t as rosy. Many had to close temporarily during shutdowns, and
dozens of bookstores shuttered permanently. Bookstore sales were down 28% in
2020 from 2019, according to the Census Bureau.
We all know it’s cheap
and fast to buy books online from a certain retail behemoth, and during the
pandemic we often didn’t have much choice but to shop online.
Now, though, with
businesses reopening, we have a choice. It’s inspiring to see prominent politicians
take the time to support reading and local bookshops.
“There is nothing that I
enjoy more, or I think is more nourishing, than being able to just walk into a
bookstore run by people who love books and love reading,” former President Barack
Obama has said.
Obama has long
championed indie bookstores. When his first book was published, Politics &
Prose in Washington offered him a reading, and a couple dozen customers showed
up.
His latest, “A Promised
Land,” was the Number One political title last year with more than 2.5 million
copies sold. Several Republican candidates and elected officials also had
bestsellers last year.
Last December, he shared
his 17 favorite titles of the year. Last month, around Independent Bookstore
Day, he virtually visited six bookstores around the country.
“Each night, I’d have a
stack of briefing papers and speeches to review and notes about economic issues
or foreign policy issues. It would take me two or three hours every night to
plow through that stuff,” he said in a video conversation with the owner of
Square Books in Oxford, Miss.
“But the time I was
done, it was pretty late. . . But I’m a night owl, and what I found was that
having 45 minutes to an hour to be able to read something for me. . . helped to
reset me and also helped to extend my perspective beyond the narrow set of
headaches that were staring me in the face.”
Obama found fiction
helped him connect with people. He advises President Joe Biden to “read
whatever nourishes his soul,” adding “That’s going to be different things for
different people.”
On her visit to the
bookstore, Harris bought three novels and a cookbook. The novels were “Nickel
Boys,” by Colson Whitehead, “The Topeka School” by Ben Lerner, and “The Dutch
House” by Ann Patchett. “Simply Julia,” by Julia Turshen has recipes for
“healthy comfort food.”
I spend a lot of time
reading newspapers (always a good thing), magazines and the Internet – but lately
I’ve missed the longer commitment of books.
I started “Middlemarch”
by George Eliot, which I’d read, sort of, in high school. Everyone says it’s
much better read later in life. Perhaps too much was going on in mine to focus
on a sprawling 19th century novel – even if written by one of the
greatest English authors of all time – but it remains on my bedside table.
A good thing about books
is they stay around until you’re ready for them.
So, I walked to my local
indie bookstore, which has reopened in a new, larger location. It was lovely to
let the books call out to me again, and I brought home a first novel I knew
nothing about.
I intend to find the time to read it. What about you? Have you visited an independent bookstore? What are you reading?
©2021 Marsha Mercer. All
rights reserved.
30
No comments:
Post a Comment