The Fun Happening at Bookstores!

Bookstores are fun places! I was at two different bookstores over Memorial Day Weekend. On Friday, my younger daughter had to have a dental procedure and requested a fun outing for after the procedure. She asked to go to Barnes and Noble to see if they had any nonfiction cat books (side note: she’s writing a nonfiction book about cats at school). She also wanted a brownie to go with her books!

When we were at Barnes and Noble, I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who were there. The cafe was quite full - people having coffee and a treat, talking, and sharing books. My daughter noticed how many people were talking about books while we were there. She was very excited to sit down and go through each of the FIVE books about cats that she found. It took some time, but she was able to make a decision and select one of the books!

Over Memorial Day Weekend, we drove upstate to New Paltz and Kingston, NY. There’s a great bookstore in Kingston, Rough Draft Bar and Books. When we walked into the bookstore, it was bustling. There were people sitting at the large tables and at the bar as well as reading on the couches. The great part about this bookstore is that the books were really well placed so that they were near the bar as well as close to the tables. This meant that it was hard to not interact with the texts. My daughters noted how fun this bookstore was to be in and how people could read, eat, and talk.

This led me to think about the role of bookstores and how they not only house and sell books, but that they are places to talk to others - maybe about books and maybe about other aspects of life.

One of my former graduate school colleagues recently wrote a book about the digital lives of kids. She argues that kids today are growing up in a world that is very different from the world we grew up in. And, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I was thinking about the argument of her book when I was in Kingston, NY at Rough Draft. So much has changed since the covid pandemic. In order to get people into bookstores (rather than buy on Amazon), have bookstores become fun places where people can connect over books and beverages? I’m not sure - but it was interesting to think about!