Preserving a species
This time of year, sooner or later most of us are hit with The Glut. Generally it’s when we’re in a mall, with Christmas cheer being forced down our ears while people squabble over bargains, but you know the feeling.
I have one solution: Give a gift that makes you feel good at the same time. A gift that helps preserve an endangered species, and keeps our landscape diverse and rich for the next generation.
Spend some of your last-minute holiday dollars or pounds at an independent bookstore. This is the time of year this poor beleaguered bookseller looks at the till every day and knows that what it holds has to stretch for the rent in March. The time of year when they’re worked off their feet, but in the back of their minds is the knowledge of long hours in the dead of January.
Buy a book. A silly book, a cook book, a picture book, a novel you enjoyed, a biography of someone you never heard of, a book by a local writer, a book with a great cover or an interesting title or a photo of an author who seems like someone you’d have a nice chat with. If you have kids anywhere in the family, buy them two or three books, and if you have the chance to sit down and read to them, all the better. Or if they’re old enough to read on their own, thank you, buy two copies and read along with them, a sort of mini reading group. And if you don’t know what they’d like, any good independent has a kids’ book specialist who can suggest something for a five year-old or a teenager.
And while you’re at it, consider making it a hardback.
Already done–have ordered a (signed) copy of Touchstone from Watsonville’s Crossroads Books.
Happy, Safe, Healthy Holidays to you and yours!
I received a gift certificate for Capital City Books, and I can’t wait for Touchstone to come out so I can spend it. I went a little crazy in Schuler’s books the other day (it’s an independent Michigan chain)–picked up some books for kids who had tags on a giving tree, and for some kids in a family we “adopted” for the holidays, along with a gift for my son, and of course a couple for myself. When my son was two, we started the tradition of his getting a picture book on Christmas eve. He’s 20 now, and it’s harder to find appropriate picture books, but this year there are some beautiful books out. Don’t tell him, but he’s getting The Grimmerie, the behind the scenes book about the Broadway production of Wicked.
We’re planning on buying TOUCHSTONE at Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale when you come. But we wish you were coming to Changing Hands, too!