There was a time when I would, fairly frequently, go to see concerts alone. I lived more than an hour from Seattle then, but I would duck out of work early on a Friday and drive to see whoever was in town. I had just gone through the breakup of a long-term relationship, and was experiencing the very specific mix of scrutiny and isolation that comes, in the wake of such a thing, in a town still small enough somehow for people to know you.
Nothing keeps me saner than the long midday walks I go on in between staring at screens and the audiobooks I've been listening to while I meander. Sometimes story elements bleed into my walking path, and I get to notice a sweet verisimilitude and drift deeper into the narrative.
Christina and Michael are both big mystery readers and here have formed a dynamic duo to bring you some fresh recommendations! Maybe you have extra time to read these days - or maybe you need something wholly engaging to de-stress from another difficult day.
With our stores closed and the future of social gatherings uncertain, our booksellers have been talking a lot about what it means to be a Third Place in the time of quarantine.
Ready for a new read but not sure what it should be? Don't take our word for it. Check out what your neighbors are reading lately. They've got good taste!
Shopping for Mom is not always easy. And as we are all stuck at home, even harder. Here are 10 titles for all different kinds of Moms that are well suited to our present moment.
In this age of quarantine, we all have something in common. Until a few weeks ago, most of us had three separate and distinct “places” in our lives: our homes, our workplaces, and our third places – those places for, well, just about everything else. These third places are where we engage in essential social experiences, where we come together, where we meet friends, practice our hobbies, and express ourselves.
Three different activities, three different identities, built on a lifetime of habit. And for the last few weeks, they have all been reduced to one place: Our homes.
I have dabbled in reading the Tarot for the last 8 years or so. I was attracted to the images long before someone first gave me a reading, but I was afraid that my very practical community would ridicule me for believing in the unseen. It took a couple bad relationships for me to get to know myself and accept my witchy tendencies. It took a growing emptiness inside of me to realize that I needed to go deeper than "face value" with the cards.
As I process these internet orders for you, I miss the interactions that might have been. I miss my coworkers, all of them. I understand how privileged I am to be working from home at this juncture. And it's hard to grapple with the guilt of being one of the lucky ones, when we are on different sides of the same coin and nothing is perfect.
April is National Poetry Month, and it fell this year on a historic moment both for having time to read and a need for the consolation and guidance of politically engaged verse. We live in interesting times: with a pandemic threatening and taking the lives of people all across the world, when our leaders and institutions have never seemed less adequate or less legitimate, the future of society itself seems to be in doubt. Now is not the time for light, or gentle, or confessional poetry of individual feelings, but for witnesses to history.