Book recommendations
A free association on the theme
It’s late and I can’t sleep even though I am exhausted. So I come to this blog. Should I be taking it more seriously? It seems like people are supposed to spend a lot of time working on their Substack posts. If I did that, I’d never post anything at all. I’m choosing my own path of least resistance and bringing laziness back to the blogging community. If it’s not pleasing for you, good thing you can just click out of this page and read no further. (But actually please don’t, I need you)
When I applied to work at Barnes & Noble during the holiday season two years ago, I imagined people would come to me seeking recommendations for works of literary fiction. In fact, I didn’t give a single book recommendation to anyone. Nobody asked! Mostly I just told people to pull their masks above their noses. I also directed to 30-something white men to the manga section, 40-something women to the romance section and insane people of all ages to the Funkopops.
Here are a few other things that happened to me while I worked at Barnes & Noble:
A man 20 years older than me who was buying toys for his children told me I reminded him exactly of the “main girl” in an obscure movie I probably hadn’t seen. (The movie was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” To his credit, my hair was blue at the time.
A woman asked if I was born in 1973 and I burst into tears.
Two sweet-looking, elderly woman asked me if I believed Biden had really won the presidency, holding up a magazine cover that said Biden won the presidency. I said yes and they called me a stupid bitch who will one day learn the truth.
But no book recommendations. This was distressing, because if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s recommending works of literary fiction. As I mentioned in my last post, I want to be less possessive over my library. I would like to be known as a fairy who hands perfectly curated books to people.
Interestingly, every man I have given or loaned a book to in recent memory has lost interest in me immediately afterwards. One of these people told me upon first meeting that he “mostly reads books by men,” and I tried to change him, and it didn’t work. (Favorite authors: Cormac McCarthy and Don DeLillo.) Since I love spending money and I had a crush, I went to Powell’s and bought All the Pretty Horses for myself and a copy of Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri to give him as a gift.
Shortly after, he was extremely rude to me on the day my grandmother died and we stopped talking. Three months later, he reached out to apologize and said he wanted to return the book, which he hadn't read. (To be fair, I tried to read All the Pretty Horses but the opening sentence was too long.) I was very offended that he’d try to give it back. I told him the book was his to keep and we haven’t talked again since.
But even though my habit of recommending and giving out books has not been commercially valuable and has apparently hindered me romantically, I don’t want to stop doing it. I will always force books into people’s hands. One day I will meet someone who isn’t a coward and will accept the challenge.
Maybe I should be a librarian. Or hang out at libraries more often. Or date someone who works at a bookstore. Or read the New York Times Review of Books more often. Or utilize my Netgalley account. Or philosophize about why I like reading in the first place.
How do you find books to read? I want to go back to school but just for the literature class syllabi.
This post is half-baked but it’s what I have in me. More to come, maybe.
Thank u for posting - those old women scare me !