Western Europe Archives - A Geography of Reading

My Pandemic Reading List: Stage Four — Evaluation

May 15, 2021 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

When I last wrote about my pandemic experience in December, I was ready for transition. I was thinking about the after, even though we were very much still in the middle. I needed the hope, then, to get through to a time when this might be over. Now that my husband and I are both fully vaccinated (and I believe our son could be before the end of the year), I’m ready to pause for a bit and evaluate where we came from and think critically about where we need to go next.

Who I Was Before

In the middle of a random conversation the other day, I blurted out “remember elevators?” Many things have disappeared from our individual lives this past year as we shrank them to survive. One of the things I set aside was my love of the paranormal. I had quite enough fear in my life as it was, thank you. I knew I was starting to regain bits of my former sense of life when I reached for Victor LaValle’s The Changeling, which both terrified and invigorated me. I took that liveliness and ran with it to read two more spooky books.

Never Have I Ever by Isabel Yap

This collection of eerie short stories quickly became one of my most recommended books. I loved it so much I sent a copy to a friend (another way I’m trying to re-engage with life this year). Yap’s stories span parts of Asia and the U.S. and carry with them bits of lore from all over. They are surprising, smart, and delightfully creepy. Because I work in tech, I hardly ever read fiction about tech life, but the way Yap wove together magic with an insider’s view on this subculture in “A Spell for Foolish Hearts” was insightful and wicked and very much worth the read.

I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

I have not finished this book yet, but it is one of the scariest things I’ve read in a long, long time. A true ghost story, I Remember You is also something that’s formed a new habit for my family: my husband reads a few pages some nights after I go to bed, I catch up in the mornings I wake too early, and our son questions us relentlessly about it over breakfast. I love the book. I love the sharing. I hope we get to do this forever.

How I Am Changing

Wake. Play. Eat. Work. Eat. Play. Work. Cook. Eat. Rest. Sleep.

This is my routine; the way the days blend together; the way time has stopped. I am often so tired during the “rest” portion of my day that I don’t fully comprehend what I’m reading until I’m far into a book—something I was definitely guilty of when reading Bird Summons.

Bird Summons by Leila Aboulela

I bought the book in the minutes following my second vaccination as part of a gleeful armload of treasure acquired during my first visit to a bookstore in over a year. It tells the story of three Muslim women in Scotland on a journey to visit the grave of the first western woman to take a pilgrimage to Mecca. Each of the women is beautifully drawn both in their individual struggles and in the ways they push and pull against one another.

I loved the book immensely even before I realized they had somehow become mired in an in-between place where supernatural elements are converging to help them work through the circular paths they are each trapped in. In ordinary times, this would make for an interesting story. In the now, it’s a poignant reminder that we make our lives and we have the chance to emerge from this bubble into a new, better future.

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

Speaking of patterns and being doomed to repeat history we haven’t learned from, In the Dream House was not at all what I expected from a memoir of abuse, but it might be the book I need to help me work through some patterns I’d like to shed. Machado’s writing is gorgeous, always, and the book is a tender recounting of a relationship that felt like love, for a time.

The combination of her vulnerability on the page with her willingness to experiment with form allowed me to sink deep into her story. For example, what better way is there to immerse a reader in the trap of the cycle of abuse than a choose your own adventure that always ends in the same place?

Like pregnancy, this time of confinement has led me to look deeply at the relationships in my life and what I do and do not want to carry forward. Machado reminded me that what feels familiar is not always the same as what feels good. And I’m grateful.

What I Must Not Forget

It has been easy in this daily routine to forget what life was like before. And yet we have to make a life after. Two books are helping me remember what’s important to me to carry forward.

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper

My son entered a spooky place sometime during the pandemic where he latched on to Scooby-Doo and began asking for more. Although he’s only five, I thought he might be ready for The Dark is Rising series, one of my favorites from childhood. And I was right. I’ve loved every night we’ve cuddled late past bedtime reading just one more page. Over Sea, Under Stone taught me something important, too. As Jane, Barney and Simon crept up to the attic to explore the treasures of the Grey House, I found myself on an adventure with my son. And I remembered what that felt like. How essential adventure used to be to my sense of being, even when I was actively resisting it.

It will be a long time, yet, I think before we hop on a plane to discover another continent, but it will be longer still before I forget the shock of remembering that I almost abandoned something I once held so dear. Our stretches are small as we ease back into life—a Mother’s Day picnic in the park—but they are stretches still.

Dialogues with Rising Tides by Kelli Russell Agodon

I am a writer. This is a through line of my life that I have had to fight for. It is also what carries me forward in the hardest times (like the past year). I often look to Agodon as a model—a successful poet and publisher who lives on the side of the water I dream of. Dialogues with Rising Tides reminded me that her writing is also something I can learn from. I particularly enjoy the breadth of her voice, the way she embraces the quotidian “we’re replacing our cabinet knobs / because we can’t change the world,” casual wit “the apocalypse always shows up / uninvited with a half-eaten bag of chips,” deep insights “She tells me the reason I wake up / screaming is because / no one ever dealt with that pain,” and artful imagery “This is postpartum with suicide corsages.” I don’t always re-read poetry books (the way I should), but I will be re-reading this one.

“Now the only language I speak / is seascape” – Kelli Russell Agodon, Dialogues with Rising Tides

The Work Ahead

While it can feel like the world ended when the pandemic hit, COVID was merely one more travesty in a world where we are not living as we should. Or at least as I hope we can. When I’m actually past the “using all the energy I have for sheer survival,” I want to to more to make a brighter tomorrow for my son and his entire generation. These books are giving me ideas on how to start.

Nicotine by Nell Zink

Nell Zink is the best writer of my generation. She captures the essence of what makes us tick (for better or worse) as individuals and as a society and she’s not afraid to call bullshit when necessary. I was sucked into Nicotine by the descriptions of Penny trying to support her father through hospice and death while the rest of her family found anything else to do. What held me, though, was the nuanced descriptions of the squatters Penny encounters in her grandparents’ former home and the ways that Zink allows her characters to break past the labels we might want to place on them.

I did not fully appreciate what was happening in my city during the WTO riots while I was in college (I was mostly concerned with my hard-working partner being able to get home in the chaos) and I have derided some of the anarchist marches here since. But that does not mean that I believe in capitalism as the answer for our future. Zink made me look more deeply at myself and the values I hold. And she made me think about the future I want to build (all in the guise of a wildly entertaining story).

Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Speaking of a post-capitalist life…this book is a gorgeous look at what life would look like if we embraced love and humanity as our underlying values, and it’s filled with reminders of the damage we do to ourselves and our planet every day we do not. The ideas lap like ocean tides against loving descriptions of sea life we don’t look at closely enough.

When I first encountered an essay from this book in Boston Review, I dared hope of a world where we could use nuanced discussion, intuition, love and science to make a better future for our planet and ourselves. The full book is a great place to start. Read it.

“We can trust cycles older than our species. We can do this between-work with grace and surrender. With patience and bravery. With all of who we are. And what made us will reclaim us as soon as the tide.” – Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned.

My Pandemic Reading List: Stage Two — Stasis

May 9, 2020 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

When I last wrote about what I was reading for the pandemic, it was all about preparation — what was essential to know as battened down the hatches. Now it’s been almost two months since my last dine-in meal and we’re as suspended in time as most. Finding a copy of The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima (which I have not yet read) at our Little Free Library made me realize that my reading had, necessarily, shifted of late, too. So today I’ll share with you the books that bring me comfort and a thought or two about why reading can feel so hard right now.

Garden by the Sea by Mercè Rodoreda

I confess that my reading of Garden by the Sea by Mercè Rodoreda was broken. I picked it up night after night and would read a few pages before falling asleep with it open and the lamp on. But it wasn’t the book’s fault and in some ways this was the perfect book to read in this way. (In my reading anyway) not a lot happens in the first half of the book.

The narrator is the gardener of a marvelous villa by the sea in 1920s Spain. He shares stories of what’s going on in the big house during the summers, but the story I connected with right now was his life of sitting in a cottage watching that life happen. His residence and employment continued as the property changed hands, as the seasons changed, and as lives were made and ruined nearby. This observer narrator feels less involved in the main drama than Nick Carraway was in The Great Gatsby and I very much connected with the feeling of daily maintenance that was reinforced by Rodoreda’s choice to describe the plants and the care thereof. As though this world will continue on, with minor changes, no matter what happens through the window. It doesn’t hurt that Rodoreda’s writing is gorgeous enough that I felt wrapped in a dream (even when I was still awake).

It helps that we’re investing a lot in our garden right now. Or maybe investing in our garden helps a lot right now. I’ve ripped all the grass out of our front yard and populated it with the few plants that I could order and my first careful reconfiguring of plants we already had. We also planted our veggies early and added a new bed for more. Not only is this all a place to put my angst, it’s also something for the future that I actually have control over.

Now by Antoinette Portis

Now is one of the books my son pulls from his shelves when he knows I’m upset and could use a calm down. Beautifully illustrated, this book walks through moments of a young girl’s life. I bought it so he could learn (gently) about mindfulness. Clearly I need it as much for myself. Still, this book is an excellent reminder (for readers of all ages) about appreciating the moments we’re in. At the end of the book, the narrator says “and this is my favorite now, because it’s the one I’m sharing with you” and shows the girl being read to by her mother (at which point my son always gets an extra big hug).

This week I started writing moments in our wall calendar. I needed some reminder that there was purpose to each day and that time is, indeed, passing. Some days are little (we planted seeds yesterday) and some are big (we finished building those new garden beds on Sunday), but these few daily words feel meaningful enough that I plan to go back through my Twitter and phone reel and fill in all the days since March 13.

Also, I’m trying to appreciate things more as they happen and to make magic in simple ways. It’s been a trying week for the whole family, emotionally, but slowing down and looking has helped. One day I lay face down on our grass and watched ants take food back to their hills (did you know they eat dandelion seeds?). Later that night I watched the dust settle in the beam of my son’s lamp as he picked out books. All of these gentle moments helped me reset a little and find the pleasures of now. Best of all, last night I finally traipsed out to get lilacs for my bedside (they’re great for wilding up your dreams). It was late, I was barefoot, and our back porch light was off. My husband came with me and there was definitely magic in realizing how much we could see in the dark and in spotting the big dipper overhead on a balmy night.

Why Reading Feels Impossible

I wish I could recommend to you old favorites like An Atlas of Impossible Longing about feeling angsty or out of place, but even pulling those books from my shelf feels exhausting right now. This came up on a family Zoom call recently—one of those discussions with people you love who are backgrounded by walls full of books you know they’ve actually read—except the conversation was about why we aren’t reading, or why reading feels so hard. For me it’s about empathy.

While reading can be a wonderful escape into another world, reading well and fully also requires us to empathize with the characters, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t have empathy to spare right now. I’m spending all the love and care I can muster on those in my household (trying to reserve some for myself). I’m reaching out to friends I might not otherwise be on schedule to connect with. I’m weeping for strangers in newspapers or on Twitter. And at work I’m trying to think about what our audience needs so I can help them. None of this leaves much room for the fictional characters with whom I usually keep company. So much for the stacks of books that I keep ordering. I guess there will be time for those later.

Are you reading now? If so, what brings you comfort? I could use a few good recommendations before I move on to the “returning to outside life” stage of this pandemic.

Normally at this point I ask you to buy books from indies (yes, please, when you can), but right now the investment I’m making in the literary future involves donating (my money and time) to Seattle City of Literature to help keep our culture vibrant. Please join me in donating, if you can.

Eight Minutes in Rome with The Pope’s Left Hand by Friedrich Christian Delius

June 8, 2019 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Phillip Lopate once said, “The reason I read nonfiction is to follow an interesting mind.” The best nonfiction example I’ve ever seen of this travel is Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting” in which she goes out in search of a pencil and we learn everything there is to know about everything she sees along the way (along with all the associations those things bring up). This meander through an interesting mind is less common, though, in fiction, especially in book-length fiction. This is likely because it’s very hard to sustain over a long period and also because most fictional characters don’t have the breadth of knowledge that makes a mind truly interesting. The Pope’s Left Hand by Friedrich Christian Delius is a wonderful exception.

A Back-Alley Tour of the Corruption of Rome

An 88-page novella about the five to eight minutes that a German tour guide in Rome watches the Pope during a visit to a Protestant church, this book races rather than meanders through topics as varied as “the complete fabrication of the life of St. Francis of Assisi,” the Numidian stallions, and why a Roman police car might park empty in front of a fashionable store. While many of these tangents have corruption at their core, each digression is diverse and detailed enough to be fascinating in its own right (and would have led me on countless Wikipedia dives if I had been anywhere near a computer).

Reading The Pope’s Left Hand is like having a drunken dinner with a disgruntled and wildly intelligent tour guide as he goes off on a city that he’s grown weary of but can’t get off of his mind. It is both fascinating and entertaining. I learned countless things about the personalities attached to the Catholic Church, the Roman Empire, and the Nazi invasion of Rome. None are subjects I would have considered myself ignorant of, but Delius took me deeper and tied the stories together in waves that enhanced my understanding. There are remarks on tourists, a history of the relic of Jesus’s foreskin, and more than a few pokes at Augustine.

Grounding the Reader in a Non-traditional Narrative

One of the things I have hated about Roberto Bolaño is the feeling that I’m trapped next to him at a bar and he just won’t shut up. Which is to say that I’m not always down for a chatty narrator who thinks I should be interested in what he has to say. In The Pope’s Left Hand, though, Delius draws me in with his careful observation, applying an archaeologist’s eye to every detail of the few minutes the narrator is in the Pope’s presence. This gives the reader something concrete to hold as the diversions start. Most importantly, Delius returns us again and again to our close observation of that hand. It’s these loops that give the book a strong enough structure to hold the digressions together.

“There are sights more exciting than the pope in profile, and I felt little inclined to stare at one side of a milky, careworn face. I just peered over at the partially shaded hands, hanging, resting, supporting, on their fingers no sign of the ring that his subordinates and the devout are wont to kiss. Turn on your brain camera, I commanded, point the zoom at the hands.” – Friedrich Christian Delius

In the beginning it’s necessary for Delius to intersperse these observations more closely to build the groundwork for us to return to. As the book continues, though, he’s free to wander farther and farther because the moment is built and we know already what we’ll be coming back to.

My only advice when reading this book is to find a place where you can sit with it uninterrupted for a couple of hours. That’s the closest you’re likely to get to the full feeling of spending the evening with Delius’s fascinating narrator.

To tour millennia of Rome’s corruptions with Friedrich Christian Delius, pick up a copy of The Pope’s Left Hand from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Revisiting a Beloved Childhood Favorite for #TheDarkisReading: The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper

December 23, 2017 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

When I saw on Twitter that Robert Macfarlane had proposed a book group where we all start reading The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper on Midwinter’s Eve (the day the book starts) and share our experiences under the hashtag #TheDarkisReading, I was in heaven. He’d brought together my so many of my favorite things in one simple idea: my favorite social platform, sharing thoughts about books, and a beloved childhood classic. What a wonderful trip the past few days have been.

The First Time I Read The Dark is Rising

I can’t remember if I was nine or ten when I read Greenwitch, the third book in this series, for school, but I was instantly hooked and read the whole series. Though I’ve always been a reader, this was my first “gotta read ’em all” experience. I don’t remember a lot else from that first exposure, except a swelling pride in my Welsh heritage and maybe (just once I swear) asking my mom if we were descended from Welsh magicians. And when I saw the word “rook” in this text, I remembered these books were my introduction to that word (and others) and what that quest to understand first felt like.

The Dark is Rising in the Past 30 Years

I may have re-read the series once since I was a child, but my main relationship to the books since then has been forcing them on anyone I cared about who I thought would enjoy the books themselves and maybe also sharing in this magical other world that I carried in my heart. My victims included my brother (who lost my copies but eventually bought me the new ones I’m reading today), my now husband (who probably never actually read the books but humored me with Salinger so he’s forgiven), and my stepbrother (who found the books too scary at his tender age and was the reason I stopped forcing them on people). I’ve been saving my (new, thanks Tosh!) copies in my son’s closet for the day I thought he might be ready for them, but at the age of two he thinks Gruffalo is scary, so we have a ways to go.

What Re-reading The Dark is Rising Felt Like

The Old is New Again

In opening The Dark is Rising for the first time in decades this past week, I realized how little I remembered and how much this book now reminded me of other books. From echoes of Woolf’s To the Lighthouse on the first page to more expected similarities between Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Grossman’s The Magicians and L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Some of these convergences are unavoidable coincidences of trope and some are loving tributes (in all directions because some of those books predate The Dark is Rising, one is a contemporary of the book and one is modern to now). Regardless, The Dark is Rising manages to feel fresh and compelling throughout. Even to someone who’s read it before.

Coming of Age, Coming to Light

“As he stared at the fierce, secret lines of that face, the world he had inhabited since he was born seemed to whirl and break and come down again in a pattern that was not the same as before.” – Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

Perhaps one of the most important things The Dark is Rising made me appreciate was the way books written for children use the specialness of one child to inspire generations of children on their own individual quests for greatness. This should have occurred to me with Harry Potter (which I still haven’t read) or any number of other books, but the craft in The Dark is Rising is such that I could see how other children could aspire to be like Will, an otherwise ordinary boy among a passel of siblings, who happens to be born on Midwinter’s Day as the seventh son of a seventh son. It isn’t until his eleventh birthday that he starts to realize he is special, the last of the Old Ones to be born, and even that realization takes much coaching from a mysterious old fellow called Merriman Lyon (a name that made my heart leap with glee and reminded me instantly of his true name—but that’s a story for another book).

“He was crystal-clear awake, in a Midwinter Day that had been waiting for him to wake into it since the day he had been born, and, he somehow knew, for centuries before that.” – Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising

This type of story reaches into the heart of every child at an age where they’re growing from the light of their mothers’ eyes to being parts of a much larger world. It’s a tricky age and a difficult transition and, while a standard formulation for a coming of age novel, Cooper does a better job than most of creating that atmosphere where each of us is special enough to become something more than we are today. She shows us some of the struggles and the work, specialness isn’t simply handed out, and that we each have a role to play. Whether we’re descended from Welsh magicians or not.

The Craft of Unfolding

The biggest literary lesson I’m taking away from The Dark is Rising is how Cooper uses Merriman Lyon to teach the reader about the world Will is newly entering. On the surface, Merriman is teaching Will with lines like “Expect nothing and fear nothing, here or anywhere” because the Dark cannot kill an Old One, but these words also tell the reader what to expect. From direct instructions on what will come next to advice on how to cope, Merriman imparts these lessons throughout the book which keeps Will from bumbling through a disorganized quest and also helps us understand the rules of the book we are reading. This is not a tactic I’d actually recommend to most writers because it’s far too easy to end up telling the reader things you want them to experience instead, but Cooper’s allusions are just delicate enough and the rest of the text enthralling enough that it’s the perfect choice here.

About the Magic

I start to crave magical stories at this time of year. Maybe it’s because I’m not religious but would like to be. Maybe because my dad read Lord of the Rings to my brother and me at a very early age. Or maybe it’s because it’s easy to get a little cooped up in a Seattle winter. But I had just finished binge-watching the latest season of The Magicians on Netflix when it was time to read The Dark is Rising and I didn’t see the connection until I read this piece in The Guardian and understood that this is a season when many of us seek wonder. Because virgin births and a man who can fit through every chimney don’t quite do it for me (though my son thinks Santa is the shit), I’m glad for a great series of books that can connect me to a more ancient form of wonder.

I sometimes wish I could write books like these—full of wonder and eschewing the boundaries of our world. I can’t, yet, but I can run back and start this series over again with Over Sea, Under Stone. Maybe we can re-read it together.

Buy The Dark is Rising for a young person, buy it for yourself. If you buy it from Powell’s Books using that link, your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Finding Home in the World’s Best Bookshops with Jorge Carrión

November 18, 2017 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I opened my review copy of Bookshops: A Reader’s History by Jorge Carrión the week I was to finally visit the famed City Lights Books in San Francisco for a friend’s book launch. Like most avid readers, bookshops have long been an important part of my life—from perusing the dusty stacks of Twice Sold Tales with my dad as a child, trying to figure out if I had enough quarters to add another Stephen King to my collection, to discovering that I actually like the new Elliott Bay Books even better than the old as I thumb through the poetry section at its heart. Still, Bookshops had a lot to teach me about my beloved haunts, both those that are familiar and those that are not.

Travelogue in Bookshop Form

Bookshops is not a reassuring collection of thoughts on why bookstores are important like My Bookstore. Instead it’s filled with micro essays and deep contemplation, glimpses of booksellers both longstanding and soon-to-be forgotten and, yes, loving tributes too. This is a curious book and the way that it’s ordered would drive a researcher mad, but if you surrender to Carrión’s particular labyrinthine logic, it’s magical. For example, you’ll find the history of City Lights Books not in “America (I): Coast to Coast” but instead beside its sister shop, Shakespeare and Company in “Shakespeare and Companies,” a pairing that reminds us geography is only one way of finding kinship. But it’s a fascinating psychogeography and I enjoyed learning about Carrión’s way of thinking as much as I enjoyed learning about the bookshops he describes.

Busting Up My Ethnocentrism

Speaking of geography, one of the highlights of reading Bookshops was Carrión’s Spanish perspective. As much as I feel like I read widely, especially in Latin America and Eastern Europe, he exposed me to so many writers I’d never even heard of. It was a pleasure to step outside the echo chamber of contemporary U.S. writing. While there are North American writers writing in English whom I adore, Carrión reminded me that I’d let my world get too small again and my to-read list is now forever blessed by this book.

Covering bookshops on five continents, Bookshops also reminded me of some of the pleasures of other cultures from haggling to the experience of finding a collection of books in your own language while traveling in a distant land.

Book Learning

I very much enjoyed the way Carrión wove historical tidbits about books and publishing into his narrative with lines like “Books depended on the rag-and-bone man until the 18th century,” a note which forever changed my view of the rag-and-bone man, the books I hold, and our current disposable culture. I had also never stopped to consider that “the first publishing houses comprised groups of copyists” or that the bound nature of a book is something I shouldn’t take for granted.

Carrión also thinks deeply about what it means to be a reader and a writer. His assertion that “literary bookshops shape their discourse by creating a sophisticated taste that prefers difficulty” made me reflect on my own reading and writing habits and desires. While a remark on how “changes of abode and language led to a state of artistic extraterritoriality” fell uncomfortably close to home.

I won’t go into how many of the bookshops Carrión describes closed before he could even put their glory down on paper—it makes me too sad—but maybe that’s part of the importance of experiencing our favorites now and of this loving documentation of the ones that once were. In that way they don’t leave us at all.

Visiting the Hallowed City Lights

“You create books solely to forge links with others, even after your own death.” – Stefan Zweig

Because of my father, the first poet I ever loved was Lawrence Ferlinghetti, which led me to love the idea of the Beat Generation and developed in me a reverence for City Lights Books. But, after a brusque encounter with the man himself at a reading one night, I was reminded of Flaubert’s maxim: “Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles, la dorure en reste aux mains,” which translates loosely as “don’t touch your idols because the gold might come off on your hands.” So as many times as I’ve walked past this landmark while visiting San Francisco, I’ve never let myself walk in so as to preserve my reverence. But when my grad school advisor and friend was launching her newest book there, I thought it was probably time to get over myself. It seemed too much like one of those confluences of the universe that you probably shouldn’t avoid.

I’m a little shy to say that I rushed into the store and up to the poetry section where the reading would be held, but that particular trip was stretching me in a lot of ways and it’s what I could manage at the time. What I found in that bookstore, though, was better than anything I could have expected. The building that had been built up into some Sacre Coeur-like icon shining brightly from a hill was, once I crossed the threshold, approachable and homely. It felt small and cozy and the reading was mercifully easy to find. The stairs creaked familiarly and I wanted to take pictures of each and every hand-lettered sign encouraging readers to sit and enjoy or the posters for iconic events. But I didn’t. I didn’t have to. City Lights Books became to me one of those places I could sit and absorb. I was at home there. I read an entire book by Kimiko Hahn while waiting for the reading, I met writers old and new. I even met the proprietor of a bookshop whose balcony table became my momentary home—sustaining me during the precarious year after grad school as I scribbled letters to fellow writers trying to keep hold of the community I felt slipping away.

So while for Carrión City Lights was an anchor and a genesis for “new levels of literacy and sophistication in The West after the Second World War,” for me it was a reminder that the bookshop is my home and that when I feel lonely and far from myself, I’d do well to return there. I don’t know if I can make time for weekly letter-writing (and book-buying, let’s be real) field trips to Elliott Bay right now, but I think I’d better try.

To travel the world’s bookshops with Jorge Carrión, pick up a copy of Bookshops: A Reader’s History from the magnificent Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.