There’s a particular feeling of dread deep in my stomach when I’m nearing the end of a good book and realize that my shelves are devoid of unread novels. As a commuter, these books are essential to my way of life and I refuse to go back to a time when I waste my 1.5 daily hours of El time staring at the Redeye, hoping that it will provide my brain with juicy bits to devour while knowing that it will not provide.
The worst part about finding a new book is the uncertainty of it. I’m a little picky about books and can’t force myself to finish a novel that doesn’t engage me. This usually means I read first-person fiction written by crusty old syphilitics in the mid 20th century, chained to their typewriters, stained yellow with stale nicotine and bad whiskey. I stray occasionally from the mean, but this is a formula that generally keeps me happy. This website has been a godsend. I type a book that is analogous to my mood, and it gives me a list of similarly perverse tomes. The title of the website is “What Should I Read Next?” If you register, it keeps your preferences more or less.
My husband Ryan is usually a comic and graphic novel kind of guy, but he recently started gnawing at my novel stack. We’re both nuts about stories and ideas, but he generally likes his to be surrounded by artful pictures instead of descriptive literature. I see where he’s coming from. He has great taste and I tend to read his graphic novels as soon as he’s done with them. The one downfall about graphic novels? They’re a quick read, and when stuck on the El everyday, we have nothing but time.
Now that we were both eating from the same literary trough, a bookstore date seemed like the next natural step in our relationship. I had been using Amazon as my major book source, since it’s something that I can do at work while processing orders and calculating freight rates. But I’m told that supporting your local bookstore is a noble pursuit.
I arrived at Myopic Books (which also has a vast online store) about a half hour earlier than Ryan armed with a list of hand picked titles from “What to Read Next.” I was a woman with a mission. This bookstore is amazing! It’s a maze of books. I’ve always loved used books regardless of their quality. I love when the pages are yellow, the binding is creased, and the whole thing reeks of musty basement. This place is stocked with books that are higher quality than I’m used to, most look barely read. Within minutes, my arms were full, my list fulfilled, and I was already memorizing the position of books that I had to leave behind for next time.
By the time Ryan got there, I was done. It was really more of a date with Myopic Books than a date with Ryan, but it was quite romantic.
My selections:
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey (1962)
- The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera (1984)
- The Djinn in the Nightengale’s Eye – A.S. Byatt (1994)
- If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things - Jon McGregor (2002)
- Something Happened - Joseph Heller (1974)
Ryan’s Selections
- The Hound of the Baskervilles - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (*1901)
- The Road – Cormac McCarthy (2006)
- The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemmingway (1951)
This should keep us busy for a while. Updates on how they are later.
