What to Read When You're Simply Vibing
Talking about the death of Amazon bookstores and the birth of my ever-expanding book collection
Welcome to Amateur Bibliotherapy, my newsletter about book-y things. Use this Google Form at any time to tell me about what you’re reading—you might be featured here or on my Bookstagram! I’m an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which means that I may make a small commission if you make a purchase through my affiliate links. That commission will be donated to Welcome To Chinatown.
Good morning. I hope you’ve found some joyous little things recently, much like my discovery of the burrata and limoncello ravioli from Mama Capri. Between that and watching Abbott Elementary, I’ve been having a banner old time, all things considering.
In the meantime, apparently Substack now has an app that you can use to view newsletters like this one!
With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my Substack and any others you subscribe to. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen in a long time that emulates my beloved Google Reader, so it can’t be too bad, right?
RIP Amazon Bookstores
You may have seen the recent news that Amazon is closing its 68 brick-and-mortar bookstores all over the country. My former office was just a short walk away from one in Columbus Circle, so I found myself in there when the store opened in the hopes of finding something fun. But I forgot that Amazon’s big problem is its pursuit of discoverability itself: people buy stuff on Amazon that they already know they want, rather than browsing to find something they’ll enjoy. As a result, Amazon bookstores were dumb as hell, as chronicled by The New Republic:
Everything in the store feels just a little bit off, and you’re constantly reminded that you’re interacting with the physical manifestation of an internet phenomenon. You’re told if books are put on lots of wish lists, or have 4.8 stars (as opposed to, say, 4.7), or are simply “hot on Amazon.” You read lots of reviews from people you don’t know, most of which are written in that weird variant of American English, online review-ese.
I remember asking a bookseller for recommendations, because that is normal bookstore etiquette. Instead of simply providing me with their own thoughts, I was directed to the “bestsellers” fiction section. I encountered the usual fare of 2017 bestsellers—remember when The Handmaid’s Tale TV show came out and the book got popular again?—and thought I’d found a silly hidden gem in the stacks, Off to Be the Wizard by Scott Meyer. What could suck about a dumb but enjoyable scifi adventure that follows a time-traveling American hacker posing as a wizard during the Middle Ages? Sure, I’d never heard of the book before, but it was nestled among lots of popular fiction titles and apparently great Amazon reviews. I took the bait and, after being told I had to use the Amazon app to check out, I finally bought the silly little book.
It was fine! I enjoyed it. But I was confused why I had never heard of it, and why I couldn’t seem to find its sequel in any of New York’s many independent bookstores. Surprise! That’s because it was published by 47North, a publishing arm of… AMAZON! To this day, I cannot find any indication it was a bestseller anywhere. I felt duped by the Amazon bookstore and vowed not to become its victim again.
And now I never will, because these strange retail laboratories that absolutely mined for consumer data are dead. Rot in pieces.
Recent Reads
I am in the teensiest bit of a reading slump at the moment, spurred on by the cloyingly sweet and disappointing Under The Whispering Door by TJ Klune. I am working through Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson and resumed reading There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura after a big break, so I hope to report back on those soon.
Recent Acquisitions
During a recent peekaboo spring day, I made some sensational acquisitions from Books Are Magic. I purchased In Sensorium: Notes for My People by writer, perfumer and mononym Tanäis. The memoir includes a “series of investigations into the origin and capture of notable scents throughout history” and connects those scents to Tanäis’s own identity. Sounds weird and neat!
Because I will continue to buy experimental Anne Carson books at the drop of a hat, I also picked up her latest creation titled The H of H Playbook. Described as “a cross between a dramaturge’s dream journal and a madman’s diary,” H of H transforms Euripedes’s “Herakles” into a strange array of paint smears, handwritten notes, and type blocks of Carson’s transmuted text. I later learned that Roxane Gay also picked up a copy that day from the same store, thus reaffirming my Carson-buying instincts.
To keep my kismet connection to Gay going, I also purchased a copy of her Audacious Book Club’s March selection, How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. It was one of my recent Tailored Book Recommendations and follows an array of characters who survive a future climate dystopia that changes the world, which will hopefully scratch my apocalypse-narrative itch.
Martin came home from a long-awaited trip to the WNYC office with a few acquisitions for our shelves. He brought me A Molecule Away from Madness by Sara Manning Peskin, a book that examines a series of patients facing neurological diseases caused by the same molecules that help the human brain function. I’m always looking for “medical detective” stories a la Oliver Sacks, House MD, or the NYT Diagnosis column, so I’m excited about this one.
He also grabbed a tiny copy of Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri, a book that is apparently very short and vaguely about magic, according to every review that says it’s basically all ethereal vibes and no plot. This particular edition will be available on March 15.
Finally, he grabbed Ain’t Burned All The Bright by Jason Reynolds, a “masterful collage of words and images about race and (in)justice in America.” Written in collaboration with artist Jason Griffin, the book includes just three sentences that get used across the book’s glossy 300 pages.
Okay, that’s all. Just remember that daylight savings is still a scam as you go about your business this week. Bye!