ByGD
Bookstores might be my Tiffany’s. This look back at the haul from my very first Independent Bookstore Day reveals the severity of my tsundoku problem. I still haven’t read any of the books pictured. But Independent Bookstore Day remains one of my favorite holidays. This year they’re doing things a little differently to accommodate pandemic safety precautions, and I’m still not sure how much I’m going to participate. But I think next year will be the year I actually fill my passport.
ByGD
One year, I took my mom and my daughters to Victoria for a girls’ weekend getaway. We ended up buying so many books they filled our suitcase and we had to put our clothes in garbage bags on the ferry home.
Two years later, the three of us went to Portland for another weekend. But this was no ordinary girls’ weekend. Portland is home to Powell’s, and this weekend was a pilgrimage.
We spent hours at Powell’s both days we were in town. I spent so much money that the bookseller who rang us up gave us an honorary 10% discount. I spent the entire savings at Powell’s the next day. The receipts from those purchases are more than two feet long and hang above my desk to this day.
But for this trip, I came prepared. I brought a bookcase.
ByGD
On my first trip to Iceland, I naively bragged that I had read all the sagas. My listener was too polite to do more than quirk an eyebrow. Of course, I had not read all the sagas. I had read that giant paperback Penguin Classics Deluxe collection, The Sagas of Icelanders, plus The Saga of Burnt Njál. At the time, I didn’t know that more was possible.
For English speakers outside of academia, the ten sagas and assorted short stories of the Penguin compilation remains definitive. But there is another. Read More
ByGD
Some people think I’m awful because I never remember birthdays, and holidays like Mother’s Day register more as minor annoyances than celebrations. But I’m not completely unsentimental. Sometimes I get quite excited over minor holidays. Like Independent Bookstore Day. Of course, I can never remember when it’s coming up, but even caught by surprise, I try to make the day special. Read More