In praise of browsing bookstores
This one's for you, humble bookstore
Up with the New Year. Down with Amazon.
Just kidding. Kind of.
I cannot sit here and tell you I don’t also use Amazon to get books, especially books that aren’t usually carried at typical bookstores (aka Wendell Berry, sadly). Amazon can be very useful for that kind of book buying because of their vast inventory; however, and hear me out, I believe we miss something mysterious and magical and important when we stop frequenting bookstores.
What we miss is the browsing.
Two weeks ago I went into Commonplace Books in Midtown Oklahoma City because I was doing a little last minute Christmas shopping, and Jacob—the manager there—recommended I check out Jeff Deutsch’s In Praise of Good Bookstores. A week later I went back because why not, having forgotten about the book, and discovered it on a table while I was browsing. So, of course, I bought it.
Here’s an Instagram-ready picture of it:
In the book, he writes an extended meditation on the beauty of browsing and the importance of creating a space that encourages it:
Browsing is a form of rumination. Books, like leaves and shrubs known as the browsage, provide ruminant-readers with their nutrients. What an unparalleled activity it is to browse a bookstore in a state of curiosity and receptivity, chewing one’s intellectual cud! The space of a bookstore must be conducive to unhurried rumination, if only to promote good digestion.1
It’s hard to put words to what it feels like to walk the alcoves of a bookstore with nothing specific in mind. I don’t mean to be hyperbolic, but I actually think that—in a culture which prizes action and decisiveness and the easy answer—it is an act of resistance. Amazon is all action and decisive and easy, but a bookstore is a space to discover, to be surprised, to be curious, to chew your “intellectual cud.”
So please, visit your local bookstore if you have an extra Christmas dollar or two burning a hole in your pocket.
Some favorite books of 2022
Got a few extra dollars from Christmas? Interested in a good book? Here’s a list (in no particular order) of a few books I read and loved in 2022. Check one out!2
The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days by Frederick Buechner (Non-fiction)
I finally pulled some Buechner off the shelf when I found out he had passed this fall. I believe God was saving his works for this exact moment in my life; it was so moving to read about Buechner's reflections on life and the ways God moves—often behind the scenes.
Shaking the Gates of Hell: A Search for Family and Truth in the Wake of the Civil Rights Revolution by John Archibald (Non-fiction)
I just found this book fascinating. I was trapped in my room with covid and—gratefully—couldn't put the book down. I've spent a long time attempting to reconcile my faith and race with the often ugly history of racism in American churches, and this book tackles it head on. Archibald's father was a Methodist minister in Birmingham, and, after his father passed, he discovered all of his sermons in a file cabinet. He deeply, deeply loves his father but interrogates the ways his father—despite being progressive for that time--interacted with the Civil Rights Movement.
Plainsong by Kent Haruf (Fiction)
Kent Haruf is one of my favorite novelists (he's similar to Wendell Berry and Marilynne Robinson), and all of his fiction revolves around the same fictional town in Western Colorado. Plainsong doesn't have a main character; rather, it follows disparate members of the town of Holt, following them as their lives converge, ending in something beautiful and composite.
The Groundbreaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice by Scott Ellsworth (Non-fiction)
The Tulsa Race Massacre happened over one hundred years ago, and its effects are still felt (and visible) across the city. This book describes the actual event in the first third or so of the book, but then it details the years in which the massacre was buried and—seemingly—forgotten by the city. Black residents didn’t speak about it out of fear of white retaliation, and white residents didn’t speak about it because they wanted to bury it with the past. Scott Ellsworth was the journalist who uncovered and reported on the massacre decades ago, and he writes about his—and others—fight to bring the history to the light—including the recent push to uncover mass graves that many assume are strewn across the city.
One Long River of Song: Notes on Wonder by Brian Doyle (Non-fiction)
Brian Doyle was a man in love with life. His writing style is beautiful and distinct, and the subtitle—“Notes on Wonder”—is the perfect way to describe the book.
Wait, but Drew, don’t you also sell books?!
Why yes, yes I do. Check out these amazing books I happen to own and want to sell to you at a reasonable price!
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
The Name of God is Mercy by Pope Francis
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Dusk Night Dawn: On Revival and Courage by Anne Lamott
I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
And, finally, the Wendell Berry poem I seem to always share around this time of the year
Here’s my eschatological prayer for you and for me this year:
There is a day when the road neither comes nor goes, and the way is not a way but a place.
May today be the day and this be the place.
-drew
Deutsch, Jeff, In Praise of Good Bookstores, Princeton University Press, Princeton. 27
If it wasn’t already obvious, all five of my books were written by white men. I didn’t realize my reading habits until I wrote it all down just now. I think much of this year (and my life) was spent trying to learn from white men who modeled a healthy masculinity and relationship with their race. However, as I reflect in real time, I also want to balance it with reading voices that are not white or male.