Guilty Pleasure: "Bad" Books & Why I Read Them

By Sara E Thompto

I enjoy reading a wide range of books. Most books I read out in the open, with no hesitation. However, throughout the years there have been a few books I'd rather not be seen reading. I've perfected holding the cover down low, dodging questions by co-workers about what I'm currently reading, and taking off dust-jackets to take away easy recognition. 

But, why read these books if they're so embarrassing to read?

There's really only one answer: Because they're a guilty pleasure. 

My balance between guilty pleasures and what I think society deems as actual good literature is a fairly 50/50 mix. After all, I think the number one reason why I read is for a sort of escapism effect. Diving into another world far from my own is something I enjoy, because many times, the more serious literary pieces I read tend to touch home in some way or another. And, sometimes, you just want a break and it's easy to jump into someone else's world. 

Take Twilight for example; teen vampires that sparkle in the daylight, and a human who ends up forming a fairly unhealthy relationship with one of them. In that one sentence synopsis that seems to be thrown around a lot by Twilight critics, it's not particularly something I would think would grab my attention nor something I would typically find as "good literature." But, during my sophomore year in college, when my friends started telling me I just had to read it, I decided to give it a go. 

Although while reading the books I hid them under my desk while in class, covered as much of the cover as I could while on the train, and tried not to get into any conversations about the books while in public... in the end, I loved the story of Bella and Edward.

I've never quite been a Twi-Hard. I just can't bring myself to defend the series that much. But, as someone who is a sucker for true love, and is a hopeless romantic in her heart of hearts... I have to say I actually love the series. With my rose colored goggles on I don't see their relationship as unhealthy, as much as  it is beautiful. Of course, the key phrase here is "rose colored goggles," because, as I said before, it's a guilty pleasure. 

I think another key reason why I like some books that are fairly embarrassing to admit to read, is because they're so different from what my personality actually is in real life.

Gossip Girl, a series I read throughout middle school and high school, was a fun way to look at another world. One in a large city, not rural Iowa. One where rich, well dressed people partied in hotels and famous clubs, not at a place outdoors on a back gravel road. It may have been completely outlandish and nothing close to reality... but it was also one of the books that made me think "what else is out there." A thought that has stayed with me ever sense. 

There was hardly any substance, and it was basically a teenage magazine in the form of a fiction book, so it was most definitely a guilty pleasure. But, I don't think that just because a book is a guilty pleasure, it also has to mean the book has to substance. 

The more I think about the books I read that fall into the guilty pleasure category, the more I think about how important they are in the world of literature. They're a release, and they might even offer new insight or help push your boundaries. 

Every book you read has some sort of value, somewhere within the pages, guilty pleasure or not. 

Series 3, Post 1: Creative Writing- A Story About Jones

     Jones liked to paint on her walls. That’s what she did to relieve stress—she painted her walls a different color.

     “What are you doing Jones?” I’d call and ask her on a random day of the week at midnight or after.                     

     “Painting,” she’d say, almost lethargically. She always got a bit high from the paint fumes. 

     “What color today?” I’d ask. 

     “Peaches and cream.” 

     “Clint out with his friends again?” I knew which colors went with what life crisis. 

     “You know it.”

   Clint was Jones’ boyfriend of two years; they were theoretically engaged but not realistically engaged. He had mentioned it one night after drinking until four a.m. and then never spoke a word about it again. But when he did mention it that one time, she painted her walls white at 4:30 a.m. Like a wedding dress. The next day when he had no memory of their conversation, she painted it black. Like a funeral. Needless to say, Jones was a moody individual who read The Bell Jar more often than she didn’t.

     Peaches and cream meant Clint was out with his irresponsible friends, who also caused Clint to be irresponsible. She felt the shade of the peach calmed her down. But, it could’ve been the cigarette she smoked in between paint strokes. Or the adrenaline rush she got from not blowing herself up by painting in a non-ventilated room while smoking a Camel Light. 

     But, she hadn’t always painted. Growing up, her bedroom had been a quiet pink, the stereotypical color for a growing little girl. She had a mural of the Eiffel Tower painted on the East wall and a gorgeous white bed spread that her father had brought back from one of his many trips to France. For a seven year old, her bedroom was quite cultured, completely unlike my room filled with teddy bears and flowers. And then age eight hit and Jones’ room took on a more drastic appearance. 

      It was a Monday when her dad died. It was a Thursday when she first painted her walls black. As soon as the funeral was over she asked her grandmother to take her to the store where she bought her first can of paint. I watched from her My Little Pony bean bag chair as she spent nine hours covering her beautiful Eiffel Tower. And since then, her walls had been black more times than they have ever been any other color. That was Jones’ sordid little story, dead father, remarried mother, lifetime of pain and angst.

     And paint cans. So many paint cans. She didn’t keep track of how many times she had painted her walls in the last fifteen years, but I did. Each color was recorded in a log with the day of the month and year along with a reason for the paint change. I figured someday, perhaps when the painting stopped, that is, if it ever did, she would find it interesting to see her life in colors. The amount of paint coats was up to 2448, with 100 different shades. And counting.

• Deep orange meant she felt bohemian, one of her more common colors.
• Eggplant meant she was happy, which was a very rare color and usually got repainted over in a matter of hours.
• Tickle me pink meant Clint had made her feel special.
• Grassy Green meant Jones was feeling appreciated and noticed.
• Red meant she was in love, also a short lived color because...
• Peaches and cream would show up before you knew it. It was a color I never really understood, but it was common nonetheless.
• Dark blue meant her mom had pissed her off.
• Burnt yellow meant she was feeling feisty and you had better watch your back.
• One week, her walls were even poop brown. That was a bad week; we call that the ‘lost week.’

  
  

There was a myriad of other colors throughout the years, colors that were results of moods she couldn’t explain. It was amazing the colors she would discover, sometimes inventing her own.

“How’s about this color?” Jones asked one Wednesday afternoon at Sherwin Williams. Sometimes, when she had money to burn or thought she might have the paint on her walls for more than a week, Jones would buy fancy paint at a paint store. Other times, she went to Wal-Mart.

“It looks like squished peas,” I answered, distantly. 

 “Perfect, because I feel like vomiting after Clint hit on the waitress last night at the bar. This will be perfect.”

 She grabbed the can of paint and started walking to the counter. 

 “And then he’ll buy you flowers this afternoon and we’ll be back here buying deep red.” 

“Guess you’ll have to keep the afternoon open then, won’t you?” she sneered.

 I sighed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want Jones to relieve her stress; she was much more pleasant after she had finished painting. I was just worried about what the painting was doing to her life. Now that we were in our 20’s, it seemed like she should find some other way of dealing with life and its everyday stresses. She didn’t sleep. When she painted, she didn’t eat. She smoked like a chimney. But there was something else happening, something I never thought was physically possible. Her room was getting smaller and smaller, the paint becoming thicker and thicker until, I feared, there would be no room for her to paint in. And quite possibly, no her.

 “When you move out are you going to stop painting?” I asked, while watching the squished pea green painting over the bright red shade from Tuesday. 

 “Will life stop being a bitch every other day of the week?” she laughed a little when she said it, but I heard the seriousness in her voice. 

 She honestly had no idea how to live day to day without a different shade of paint. I didn’t know where to go from there. The truth is, I handled life with a pen and paper, which led to bookshelves full of journals, but the fumes from those weren’t as violent as the fumes from the coats and coats of paint. Not only that, but my method didn’t interrupt my life as much as hours and hours of painting interrupted hers. 

 “Have you talked to Clint today then?” I picked up a paint brush and began painting along the baseboard. 

 “He’s called about forty four times, but no.” She sighed softly. 

 The problem with Clint was, he was an absolute jackass 98.6 percent of the time and she still loved him. I tried to convince her to just get rid of him, to move on, but she couldn’t live without Clint just as much as she couldn’t live without paint. 

 “J, I hate to say this, but I really think he’s your problem.”

 I looked out of the corner of my eye to see her reaction, but her face was completely unrecognizable. She continued painting with long, soft strokes, speaking not a word.

 I continued on, “I mean, he’s the only thing keeping you here and he has become a pretty bad reason. He didn’t used to be, but we both know he isn’t the Clint who you fell in love with.” 

“He still is. He just isn’t right now. He’ll come around. He always does, always has.” 

 I shook my head, used to her saying those same exact words, always Clint’s defender. Despite the hopelessness that Jones seemed to possess, she was amazingly hopeful when it came to him—her biggest downfall. 

 “Do you realize how small your room has gotten in the past fifteen years, Jones?” 

 “Yea,” she laughed a little, “Mom told me the other night that I was going to have to move out soon because my twin bed wouldn’t fit in this hallway anymore.”

 “Ever think that might be a good reason to give up painting?” I tried to be passive aggressive when it came to Jones. It never worked. 

 “I don’t need a bed; I’ll sleep on the floor.”

Jones was my best friend, my only real friend and I stayed around in our Podunk town because I worried if I didn’t, no one would watch over her. No one would be worried about her obsessive painting or her mood swings. But at 23, I was ready to move on with my life so when I got a job at a magazine in California, I couldn’t pass it up. 

 “I’ll have my own office, not a cubicle, an office. And I’ll be on salary. And I can write. And I can get paid to write. Paid cash money, not in paid in ‘experience’.” I was telling Jones all this over the phone while pacing back and forth in my room. 

 “That’s great.” 

 “I still can’t believe I actually got the job. I just…ah, I can’t believe it.” I was smiling. Jones, I could tell, was not. 

 “Listen, I gotta go,” she said abruptly. 

 “Jones, are you ok? I’m sorry. I know that this means I’ll be thousands of miles away. You know I’ll miss you. In fact, I want you to come with me.” The truth is I wasn’t sure how to live without Jones either.

 “I can’t leave, you know that.” 

 “Clint isn’t worth it, Jones.” 

 “I know, but that doesn’t mean I can just pack up and move to California.” 

 “You could. You are 23 with nothing holding you back.”

 “Except myself, I know. Seriously, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up. 

I knew I should feel worse than I did, but my dreams were coming true. I couldn’t always be worried about what Jones would do without me. I wondered what color she’d be changing her room to in light of this news. She had always told me my color was turquoise. But what was turquoise when it was moving to California and leaving her behind?

"She had always told me my color was turquoise."

I found out exactly what color I had become the next afternoon when I stopped by her house. She was supposed to be at work at three o’clock in the afternoon, not at home. But there she was, painting her room silver. Silver was a color I had only seen once. It was the day her mother told her she was getting remarried. I remember it looking like tin foil when she was done. Tin foil’s significance in a crisis, I was unsure of. 

 “Wow, this is a pretty metal room,” I snickered, “Get it? Silver, metal…” 

 She stared at me with a ‘wtf’ look. 

 “Ok, so, California. I’m moving to California, Jones.”

 “Really? I had no idea. Don’t get too many sun rays out there; I hear they are bad for the skin.”

I took a long hard look around the room that was decreasing in size before my very eyes. The silver hurt my eyes the more wall it covered. It was too harsh. It made my eyes squint. I thought about all the time I had spent in this room, watching my best friend try to make it through her daily life. Now, I wouldn’t be here to see it. She’d have to go it alone. And so would I.

“Seriously, just think about it. You could come with me. You have some money saved up. Just go, find a job when you get there,” I said, knowing she would never take my bait. I knew if I didn’t get her out of there now, she’d never leave. 

 “No. This is where I belong and all that bullshit.” 

 “Right. In a room that gets smaller with each paint coat and a town where a boyfriend that treats you like garbage spends his nights drinking, smoking and hitting on dirty whores. Ok Jones, I get it. You don’t want to go. But you will still be my best friend even if I can’t come over and watch you relieve your angst. You know that, right?” She dropped her paint brush on the plastic sheet covering the floor, walked over to me and hugged me.

“Of course I know that. I’ll be ok.”

“It’s not you that I’m worried about as much as I am your room. This color is horrific.” I pulled away from her hug slowly and smiled. She took a look around and shook her head up and down, “Yea, I was a little drunk when I bought this color. Wal-Mart run?” I put my arm around her shoulder and we left. I would catch glimpses of Jones, the way she used to be, before her dad’s death, and know that someday the painting would stop and she’d be whole again. Until then, I just had to be her friend and tell her when a color needed to be painted over.  

My Bookshelf Tells My Story

By Kristin Bivens

Snippets from my bookshelves

I wasn’t always a reader. It’s true. When I was younger, I would try to read books but would often leave them unfinished, the bookmark stuck between the pages forever. Books assigned in school were just that, an assignment. 

But in college, something changed. I started reading all the time. It became a bedtime ritual. It became something I even started doing during the day. I took a summer class in college that was based on reading five contemporary American books throughout the summer. And I loved every minute of it. I started reading so much that I could finish two or three books in a week. I was a maniac. I signed up for a Border’s membership (miss you!) and made the twenty minute drive there almost two or three times a week (they had great coupons). My bookshelf grew. I bought a new bookshelf. I added shelves to that book shelf. 

I read a lot of different types of books. I try to read books that make me look cool. (Except for that one time when I decided I couldn’t resist reading Twilight anymore and took it to every class at Roosevelt I could. I tried my best to hide it from my classmates.) But I often can be found reading a young adult book. I think those are the best.

But what I really take pride in is my bookshelves, the combination of all those bits and pieces of me. My shelves are organized by type of book. I have one dedicated strictly to nonfiction. It is slightly smaller than the fiction. It is organized by subject. I have comedic essays, history books, royalty books, psychology/OCD books. My fiction shelf is divided by series and authors, young adult books and the great classic books.

My bookshelf is bright and vibrant, full of life and quirky titles. The entire set-up is a reflection of me. Only the coolest, non-embarrassing books are allowed. (Except for Twilight, did I mention I have the entire Twilight series?) I judge books by their cover, simply because I need my shelf to look inviting, eclectic and always cool. I will pay more for a better looking copy of a book. I will buy a book with a hipster title because I want people to ask, “What’s this book?”

But it is not just books that line my shelves. It is my life. I’ve always adorned my book shelves with little trinkets people have gifted me or made for me. I have pictures of my father, who died when I was young(er). I have a special frame for my grandma, who died several years back. I have a picture of my sweet puppy dog. There’s a stuffed animal of Sleepy the dwarf that my dad gave me one year for Valentine’s Day. My shelves hold memories, and they hold adventures.

But most of all, they hold me and my interests, my dreams, my likes, my dislikes, my hopes for the future. It shows that I enjoy imagination, and the need for happiness in human life. I like fun and fantasy, the lives of those different from me, and those that are similar. I enjoy the past and the present. I, from the looks of one shelf, hope to really better myself going forward. And apparently, I’m a big fan of Harry Potter.

Do you know what your bookshelf says about you?

Series 2, Post 4: Remembering the Little Guy

By Liz Brossard

I have worked in a lot of places; a lot of restaurants and some retail sprinkled in here and there. However, for the last four years, I have been in a small business environment and I have learned a lot about what drives business and what keeps a company going in such a rough market.

Image courtesy of bplanet / FreeDigitalPhotos.ne

Comparing corporations to small business seems almost silly because they are so vastly different, yet one exists because of the other. In the last blog, the writer discussed small book stores versus corporate ones. I do not have a lot of experience with high-volume bookstore, although I did work in one for a Christmas season during college. It was the largest Borders in Chicago, right off of the Magnificent Mile. 

It has since closed, like most book stores. It was, by far, the worst job I have ever had.  I bring up my past job experience so that I can parallel how vastly different the industries of small versus big business can be. I don’t work in a bookstore, but I work in a small manufacturing company in the suburbs of Chicago doing administrative work, while I still try to start up my Journalism career.

Corporate companies are not always the worst, - other than pushing around the little guy - but in the situation regarding Borders, it was the worst. I have worked in other big corporations, but for some reason Borders took the cake. I can blame most of the nastiness on the customers and the fact that it was during the holiday season, but I probably had ten managers. I didn’t know half their names, but it seemed like every day I had a different manager. Out of said managers, I don’t think one of them actually cared about books; I think they just cared about strategic marketing and selling. 

Now, I am sure that is because upper management pushed to have books sold. My problem was that no one seemed to care about the products, just pushing them out the door. 

Now, as I said, a lot of my hatred came from the customers. You would think that during the holiday season people would be pleasant, but if you have ever worked in retail you know the opposite to be true. People were cranky, pushy and just downright rude. I would stand on my feet for eight hours at a time at a cash register where people bought books, DVDs and the like.

I took away one essential thing from my three months at Borders: People are impatient and they like everything to be easy, cheap and familiar. That is why so many small businesses seem to struggle. Not because they don’t have quality products, but because they can not come anywhere near the price, ease and familiarity that corporations offer.

Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with corporations. In theory, they are the product of the hard work and perseverance of individuals who want to live the American dream. But at what cost?

For the last four years, I have watched my company struggle and fight an uphill battle. But I will say this; we have loyalty that those companies will never find. We have the ability to do special things for customers and the ability to give them something as simple as a discount on a large order, just to make them happy. We may have to pinch pennies in other places, but the customer is, and always will be, the most important part of what we do.

We, at one point, held a very large account with a large manufacturing distribution company in Chicago. We lost that account about seven years ago and we have been fighting ever since. We couldn’t lower our costs enough for them anymore, just so that they could up-sell another 60 percent.

When you buy things for that cheap you are paying for what you get. Quality has gone out the window; that is the biggest thing with small business. Most times you know that you may pay $1 more, but you won’t have to replace that item in six months.

But that isn’t what we care about as consumers, right? We think about what something is going to cost us right now, not what it is going to cost us in the long run.

Our grandparent’s generation understood this, they spent a little more on appliances or the like and guess what, they still have those same appliances and they are still working. I guess my point is that you pay for what you get. At some point, I hope to see the little company fighting back again, and I think that is starting to occur.

Many people, when given the option, will try to support local stores, but when a conglomerate comes in and takes over what other options do you have?

As a small business you can’t compete with the marketing and the prices… it doesn’t matter if your product is superior. I guess my point in all of this was just to say that small businesses need to be supported, without them we wouldn’t even have corporations. Just be mindful of where you are buying things from and take into account whose pockets you are lining. That is my public service announcement for the day.

The Goodwill Series: The Postmistress

By Kristin Bivens

I, once again, found myself at Goodwill a month or so ago for a half off sale and picked up a book called, The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake.

Though the book's cover does it little justice and appears more to me to be a romance novel, it was not. And it was better than I had expected it to be.

I'm extremely interested in the era of World War II and all that it implies. I'm especially interested in women and their role in the war. The Postmistress focuses on three women, all touched by the war, two that live in Franklin, Massachusetts and one that is covering the war in Europe. The books cover the time before the United States joined the war efforts. But, everyone can feel the inevitability of the U.S. joining. 

Iris James is the Postmistress of the Franklin Post Office. She knows Emma Finch, who is married to the town doctor, though to begin with they are not friends. Emma begins simply as a patron of the post office, receiving letters from her husband who after a tragic patient death, leaves to help those in Europe. He meets our third character, Frankie Bard, while there. She's a reporter who has joined Edward Murrow in the difficult job of reporting from the front.

There is a nice mix of personalities between the three women, which I really appreciate. My previous Goodwill book, One Fifth Avenue, had a bit of an issue with that. 

Iris is older, single and courting a man in the village. She is shy and not overtly sexual. Emma is married and pregnant, with her husband away. Frankie is the tough journalist, out to seek the next big story, taking it as far as hopping a train through Europe, looking for the story on the Jews. But she doesn't remain unemotional, like so many tough women do. She cries, she weeps and she struggles to understand the cruelty of the Nazis. She also is un-attached, and none of her focus in the book is on finding a man. 

When I first started reading the book, it took me a few chapters to get into it and know where I was in each chapter, as they switch between characters. But once the stories got going, and I started to get to know each woman separately, I became attached to them, wanting to know what happens next.

Frankie Bard is definitely the woman I was most interested in, as she has the most exciting and interesting story line. She's overseas; people are being bombed, killed. She's hiding out in bunkers and taking trains across countries. She's a very strong woman, but she also is shocked by the man that is short in front of her, and cries when a small child is taken away from his mother at the train station. I also like the way it brings a civilian living in a war zone to your attention.

The book really comes together in the end, which is my favorite part. Throughout the story, we see as all the women become connected in various ways that they aren't even aware of. They are all connected by the war, even though the country they live in isn't even "involved" yet. And when they all finally come together, it makes you realize just how close we are when at one time, we may have been far apart. 

Book vs. Movie: "Vampire Academy"

By Sara E Thompto

I started off buying "Vampire Academy" on a whim. I saw the trailer for the movie, and quite honestly was not impressed. But, I wanted a quick, easy read and tend to like books that become movies so I thought “why not” and gave it a go.

What happened next? Well, it certainly didn’t fit my expectations and, although it was a fairly easy read, it wasn’t as quick as I had wanted. I fell into the rabbit hole; into the world where magic and vampires live, which author, Richelle Mead, painted quite beautifully. I came out on the other side, seven days later, having consumed all six books in the "Vampire Academy" series stunned at the world I had just experienced.

The Book

The first "Vampire Academy" book follows Rose Hathaway, dhampire (half vampire, half human) who is a novice guardian for the Moroi (magical “good” vampires). Particularly she is the guardian-in-training for her friend, Lissa, otherwise known as Princess Vasilisa Dragomir, the last vampire of her bloodline, which happens to be one of 12 royal bloodlines in their vampire world.

The book starts as they come back to St. Vladimir's Academy, an academy for Vampires, after two years on the run. St. Vladimir's not only trains novice guardians in combat and moroi in honing their magic, but also offers protection from the third type of Vampire, the evil Vampire species known as the Strigoi. Everyone wants to know why the two girls would run off the in first place, since St. Vladimir's is meant to keep them safe from the outside world. But, that’s just one of the mysteries that center around the girls in the first book.

Not to mention, Rose and Lissa have to deal with trying to hide a secret magic no one else seems to possess but Lissa, or the fact Rose can't seem to hold back from any fight, whether vocal or physical. Plus, in the end, these two girls are teenagers, which can be a real struggle in and of itself.

For me personally this was the first storyline I read with a strong female lead where it presented her as completely competent and able to handle herself, both physically and mentally. Rose is another Katniss Everdeen, but in another world where she also gets to be a teenage girl. It’s not all about “trying to get the guy” though there is definitely a romantic storyline in the series that grows as the series continues. This first book, however, mainly focuses on friendship, self control, and Rose learning to become a bad-ass guardian-in-training.

After finishing the entire series I could hardly wait to watch the movie, no matter how unimpressive the movie trailer was.

Unfortunately, the unimpressive trailer was a fairly accurate depiction of what to expect from the movie.

Here is why…

The Movie

The first major flaw in this movie was the awful casting. The only character who was spot on was Rose (Zoey Duetch), while almost every other character in the movie didn’t fit the description in the book what-so-ever. At times the poor acting and bad casting choices were so distracting it took away from the plot, which is disappointing since the intricate plot was not so intricate in the movie.

Yes, the movie did follow the same storyline, for the most part, but not a single storyline was fully explored as it was in the book. This left each of the side stories and even the main mystery needing more substance. It’s almost as though one needs to read the books in order to get the full meaning of what is going on. I understand that sometimes scenes in movies need to be skated over, or that bits and pieces need to be cut out all together so the production can fit into a 2 hour time slot. However, some of the most important scenes in this movie were so rushed, they just became confusing or hard to watch. Or, worse, not memorable enough to help connect the pieces later in the movie.

The one thing the movie did do right was keep Rose as independent and strong, though not quite to the point as the book depicted.  

Although I do wish the best for the "Vampire Academy" franchise and hope the movies continue (and hopefully improve with better acting, better special effects, and perhaps better directing along the way) I can’t say I would recommend this movie to anyone right now. I would suggest waiting for it to appear in redbox, and use the rest of your money to run out and buy the book (or all six). Because the books are definitely worth your time and money. The movie - not so much.

Series 2, Post 3: Growing Up and Growing Independent

By Sara E Thompto

There tends to be a common debate - what is better: small independently owned bookstores or big box bookstores. More and more people are slamming large bookstores (or large stores, overall) because large stores can buy in such large quantity that their prices are able to be much lower and can put smaller stores out of business. When you add online stores such as Amazon into the mix where used books can sell for as cheap as a penny, people get even more boisterous with their opinions.


Big Box Stores

Barnes and Nobel, Rochester, MN - Photo by jessicaburkhart.blogspot.com/

When I was young I lived in a small town in Northern Iowa called Northwood. There wasn’t a bookstore in town and the closest place to buy a book was the Walmart or Target, about 30 minutes away in Mason City. I used to love that small section of books. But one day I entered a Barnes and Noble in Rochester, MN and my literary world exploded wide open.

See… this wasn’t any Barnes and Noble… this was magical. The ceiling was a deep blue and lights twinkled all round me, engulfing me in a starry night sky. There was a castle and it was grand. This is the first bookstore I fell in love with. Big box? Yes. But I didn’t care - I was little, it was the 90’s, and I didn’t even know what a big box store was. This was the end all, be all, of bookstores.

After moving to Cedar Rapids my love of Barnes and Noble carried on. Especially throughout middle school and high school where my idea of a good time consisted of curling up on the couch with a good book. I could spend hours sifting through their bookshelves. Barnes and Noble was the catalyst for my love of books.

But then I moved to Chicago for college and my love for Barnes and Noble came to a screeching hault. Because, if there's one thing missing from downtown Chicago it is a decent Barnes and Noble.

Through as act of desperation I “cheated” on Barnes and Noble and stepped foot into a Borders For the first time. The Borders that once existed on State Street in Chicago was my new found infatuation. I could choose a book and people watch from their second or third story windows for hours at a time. The windows were so deep you could curl up next to the glass, book in hand, and be comfortable for hours.

However, as it goes, I was a typical college student and lacked great amounts of money. And if there is one thing Borders lacked, it was decent prices, which lead me to discovering Amazon.

The World of Online Shopping

I never shopped online until college. But, a friend, Sarah, was always receiving packages from Amazon and I became intrigued. I decided “why not” and gave it a go. What I found? Amazon was a brilliant place where I could buy a book for a cheap as a penny! Well… plus shipping and handling of course. As someone who consumed books steadily and always seemed to need a ready supply on demand, Amazon was a God send. Especially during my poor college student phase.

However, just as Borders had their pros and cons, so did Amazon. I missed the smell of a good book store. I missed the atmosphere of roaming around the isles endlessly, lost in a world of people and print. I couldn’t get this with the digital wonderland that is Amazon. No way, no how.

On the other hand, I was growing up and I no longer needed a store I could get lost in. I wanted my bookstore experience to be more authentic. I wanted to be somewhere I could get to know people, and develop more of an experience. This lead me to my next bookstore experience.

Independently Owned Bookstores

After college I moved back to Iowa City, Iowa where the best bookstore around is Prairie Lights; a small, intimate bookstore with a cute cafe included! It was easy to pop in for a book with it being small and conveniently located. It was local, I knew some of the employees, and it just was a “good fit.”

Since experiencing Prairie Lights, I’ve pretty much stayed loyal to independent and locally owned bookstores.

Although I still visit Barnes and Noble from time to time, and occasionally look for a better deal on Amazon (if I really want something I couldn’t otherwise afford)… my main place of book purchases today still happen at small bookstores owned by locals. Not only is it more fun, for myself, to discover little gems that pack small bookstore and boutiques, it also is a nice feeling knowing exactly to whom your money is going.

About a 20 minute drive from my apartment in sacramento is a small bookstore with used and new books call Beatnik Books. Not only are there books, but also small trinkets and old furniture to purchase. Dimple books, another Sacramento area bookstore, has inexpensive books, both used and new. The store is new to Sac. but the owners have been here for years. These type of bookstores not only offer great reads, but also cultivate a sense of community - something I like and appreciate more today.

What I’ve Learned

When it comes down to it, people should be getting their hands on books however it’s possible for them. I started my love of literature with big box stores, was able to afford to continue it with help from online stores like Amazon, and am enjoying it in a whole new way today through independent and locally owned bookstores.

But that’s just my personal journey.

No matter what your arguments are for your preference, the choice is simple: whatever brings you connection with books, is what’s right for you.