Chapter Six: The Art of the Bookstore Browse
And how my relationship with bookstores has changed
Hi hello Substack friends, it’s been a minute!
When I first started Bookish Ramblings in 2024, I had grand plans of sharing posts twice a month, but diving in headfirst proved difficult to maintain (see: me not posting here since August). Admittedly, I got overwhelmed by the incredible content and writing that I found here, and I struggled to keep up with reading all of the amazing Substacks I subscribe to and finding a realistic cadence for my own writing.
As I often need to remind myself, I created this Substack first and foremost as a space to practice using my writing muscle, and I never want this outlet to feel like a chore or obligation. But I also want to gently push myself to find a more consistent writing routine because I’m much happier when I can get the jumbled thoughts out of my head and onto the page.
While I don’t want to commit myself to a specific posting schedule just yet, once a month seems like a good place to start, so you can expect to see me back in your inboxes in 2025. Now without further ado, let’s jump back into rambling about books! Today I’m talking about my relationship with bookstore browsing and how it’s shifted and evolved over the years. I’d love to hear about your own bookstore experiences and if you resonate with anything I discuss!
I’m going to start this post with a bit of a hot take, but I promise I’ll explain it. So here it goes:
Being on Bookstagram and working in publishing ruined my relationship with casually browsing in bookstores.
I know, I know, this sounds very aggressive, and I’m sure you’re asking, Wouldn’t your life only get better when you’re surrounded by more books?
To answer this question, I’m first going to back up to my earliest recollections of bookstores.
My Love for Bookstores Begins
Some of my fondest childhood memories are of going to Barnes & Noble with my dad. Once we got there, we’d split up for 30 minutes to browse our respective sections (me: YA and, later, fiction; him: sports and magazines) before meeting up in the café for coffee to share what we found. Even then, my dad knew the value of letting me browse by myself and the joy that comes from exploring the stacks without interruption or pressure.
I could spend hours just slowly walking through the fiction section, pulling out books that looked interesting and reading the first few pages to see if they piqued my interest. At the time, everything on the shelves was new and exciting. I had the freedom to grab whatever books I wanted, and as a young adult, I was only just beginning my literary journey.
I will always have a special place in my heart for the Myrtle Beach and Greensboro Barnes & Noble locations because they first introduced me to the magical space of bookstores, and my dad is still the first person I tell when I buy a book on sale or find something unique in a bookstore.
College and My Introduction to Publishing
When I moved to New York City for college, my exposure to bookstore grew exponentially. Now I had dozens of indie bookstores to explore! I recognized more books on the shelves, and I slowly started to build a list of my favorite authors.
Starting my sophomore year, I got internships at various literary agencies around the city, which introduced me to the world of publishing and all of the career options I could actually have as an English major. Suddenly, I was thinking about books as a business, not just a leisurely hobby.
My senior year of college, I started working at Barnes & Noble (shout out to the Upper West Side location), which fulfilled my childhood dream of working with books all day. But it wasn’t quite what I expected. While working at the customer service desk, I quickly learned which books were popular. It was the year of Becoming by Michelle Obama and Circe by Madeline Miller, and customers asked daily about the upcoming release of Fear by Bob Woodward. Instead of sharing books I might personally recommend, I needed to know which books were part of the larger cultural conversation, the books people felt like they should be reading right now.
Around this time, I also started a more intensive publishing internship program, where I learned about the financials of the publishing industry and all of the departments that keep it running. I purchased a Book of the Month subscription so I would be up-to-date on the latest releases and “big books.” I needed to have at least some knowledge of an imprint’s latest releases when I was applying for publishing jobs, so I focused on acquainting myself with lists of new releases. My understanding of books and bookstores was now fully wrapped up in the business of publishing. I do think this business-focused mentality helped me get my current job in publishing, but in the process, I also lost the wonder and awe that I had previously associated with bookstores.
My Bookstagram Era
When I joined Bookstagram in 2021, I was introduced to a new corner of the book world, with so many more books and authors I hadn’t heard of before. To its credit, Bookstagram introduced me to some of my now-favorite authors (like Fredrik Backman) and internet friends who have since become real friends.
It was incredible in this new world, but I quickly learned that Bookstagram tends to cycle through the same “trendy” books or the most popular authors, the books with the big marketing budgets or picked by the big celebrity book clubs. I was met with an influx of reviews on the same few books, and I noticed it starting to dictate the books I gravitated towards or avoided.
When I went to bookstores, now I recognized most of the books on display or in the new releases section. “Oh yeah, I recognize that one from work,” I would tell my husband. Or “That was a Book of the Month pick.” Rather than taking the time to look at the books myself, I was making snap decisions and judgments based on what I had seen online. Going to a bookstore no longer felt like an adventure—it felt like bored recognition as I just checked off all the books I knew or had only vaguely heard of. Worst of all, I wrote books off based on the opinions of others, saying things like, “I saw X post about that one on Bookstagram and she didn’t like it. Since we have the same reading preferences, I’m probably not going to pick it up now.”
I didn’t trust my own judgment or taste any more, and I worried that my relationship with browsing bookstores was ruined forever. Would I ever be able to go into a bookstore again to casually pick up a book I was interested in and just buy it? Or would I always have to check the Goodreads rating first and reassure myself that other people had considered it a “good book” to feel confident in buying it? Luckily a trip to Maine restored my faith in the casual bookstore browse.
Turning It Around
Every year, my high school best friend and I plan a girls trip to a new place over Labor Day weekend, and this past year, we visited Portland, Maine. As my best friend, she knows that I can’t go on a trip without visiting local bookstores so we made our rounds through about four or five bookstores (without me buying anything).
On our last day there, we stumbled across Nonesuch Books tucked inside a strip mall in South Portland, and while there, I happened upon a bookseller recommendation for The Moorings of Mackerel Sky by MZ. The author was local, and I had never heard of the book before, but it sounded right up my alley with a small town cast of connected characters and hints of magical realism. I had no Bookstagram review to justify my purchase, no book club stamp on the cover, but when I went to buy it, the cashier told me that at least 5 booksellers at the store had all read and loved it, even though they have wildly different tastes. And that was enough for me.
As expected, it was my kind of book, and it ended up being one of my favorite books of 2024. I never would have even heard about this book if I hadn’t entered that bookstore, and I think that’s a magical thing.
This one experience didn’t completely change my outlook on books and bookstores, but it did remind me of the childlike joy that I had lost over the years. If you’re feeling similarly to me—that your reading list is so heavily dictated by the opinions of others and larger publishing trends—my advice is twofold:
Allow yourself the pleasure of casually browsing in a bookstore. You don’t need to point out every single book you’ve ever heard of or read, just lose yourself in the act of browsing and enjoying the space. I challenge you to go into a bookstore and find a book you don’t recognize—the results might surprise you!
Learn (or re-learn) how to trust your gut and your taste. If you consider yourself a reader, you probably have some inclination about what you like and don’t like to read. It’s great to get recommendations from a variety of sources (Bookstagram, online reviews, bookseller recommendations, celebrity book clubs, etc.), but at the end of the day, you can still enjoy a book even if it hasn’t been endorsed or praised by someone else.
To see these steps in action, check out my recent reel about my timed shopping spree at Books Are Magic. I didn’t recognize (or knew very little about) the books I picked up, but they are all reflections of my reading taste in different ways.
Little by little, I am rediscovering my love for bookstores and losing myself in the stacks again. Thank you for the space to ramble about it!
Wishing you all the five-star reads,
Katherine
As a former bookseller I must say the sentiment of disenchantment is very real, especially when you feel like you should be reading some things rather than others for the job (which I very much did and got anxious about what I was reading). And there’s of course the discount which is a blessing but makes other bookstores become less of an oasis and more of a place to look out for titles to them order from the bookstore you work at 😅 which is a very privileged “complaint”
Thanks so much for sharing! While I've never worked so closely with books, I was fed a lot of the bookstagram and booktok recommendations that led me down a path of needing to make sure what I was buying was what others deemed "good". This of course lead me down a path of learning more about what I don't like rather than what I do hahaha. But I do hope to learn how to actually browse again, I recently went shopping for books and I only checked content warnings for books I was considering rather than their ratings!