As I'm writing this, it is Independent Bookstore Day, which is quite frankly my marathon/Super Bowl/whatever you want to call it. This day is heavily loved by the bookish community because it allows everyone to come together for their love of books and celebrate all of the wonderful stories that are constantly being published by beloved authors and people everywhere. I am grateful to have the privilege and opportunity to support my favorite local bookstores, and I hope you find some time to do so today too.
For me personally, reading is one of my longest-enduring hobbies. I remember being 6 or 7 years old and being so proud of the day that I read Charlotte's Web by myself for the first time. I discovered my love for The Boxcar Children in second grade when my mom staged an intervention for me to read more than the Baby Mouse graphic novels I kept checking out of my school library (I really don't know what this was about, but they're iconic). Reading Twilight and finding a missing comma was a defining moment for my childhood because it's when I decided I wanted to be an editor when I grew up, and it's a goal I have achieved and am living everyday, but I know the path doesn't end here.
Books, for me, and the different stories they hold have been a safe space for me as long as I can remember. I preferred to read on a bench under a tree during recess, and I have always loved that I could travel to faraway places without leaving my couch. Even though I had a brief hiatus from reading for pleasure in high school because of my hectic schedule, I found a community of friends in college who share my reading taste and helped me rediscover my love for reading. We buddy read books together, and I stay in touch with some of my sorority sisters through our book club that currently spans three states. These people are those who I keep close to me and are some of my dearest friends. Reading also helped me get through the lockdown of 2020 and some of the hardest, most challenging parts of my life.
I applied to the Columbia Publishing Course a few months ago, and one of the essay prompts was to write a two-page book recommendation for a book that you love. I chose to write mine on Emily Henry's Book Lovers (pictured) because of how much I resonated with it, and I wanted to share it with you to 1) encourage you to read Book Lovers and 2) share how much it helped me learn more about myself. This essay reminds me of how powerful books can be, and I hope it inspires you to pick up a book to enjoy. Here it is:
"Book Lovers by Emily Henry is the perfect book for anyone who loves books, is grieving, or struggling to pursue their own dreams for fear of disappointing the people around them. A love letter to all of the eldest daughters in the world, Book Lovers, while a contemporary romance, challenges the traditional conventions of the genre and provides a story that more than romance readers will enjoy.
One of the reasons I love Book Lovers so much is because it resonated more deeply with me than most books within the romance genre do. Nora is a go-getter literary agent and prefers her life to be in order at all times, but underneath her organization and dedication to her job, she is a hopeless romantic wanting her fairytale ending like her deceased mother desired. I felt like I identified heavily with Nora with always trying to be the “strong” person and the person who has it all together. As the book goes on, Nora learns to let go and realize that she doesn’t have to take care of her younger sister; she can finally free herself from the cages of these expectations she has placed on herself and go after her dream job as an editor. When I read this book for the first time, I reflected on the expectations I had been placing on myself and what those limiting beliefs were teaching me about myself. Not only did Nora and I realize we could have a happy ending with the man of our dreams, but we can also find happiness with the love we give to ourselves by following our dreams.
As the name entails, Book Lovers is about people who love books, but it is also a love letter to readers everywhere. Nora and Charlie are professional book people and understand books in a way that only agents and editors can thoroughly appreciate and enjoy as people within the publishing industry. I have been an aspiring editor since I was 10 years old, so seeing an inside glimpse of a career in publishing was something I enjoyed and made Book Lovers stand out to me as a reader. Nora and Charlie are book lovers in every sense of the world, but I felt that this title also applies to the reader, in a sense, because it reminds the reader of why they love books, which is a journey Nora also takes on through the book. The aesthetic bookshop scenes, both in New York City and at Goode Books in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, create the bookish atmosphere that every reader, including myself, loves and delights in. The appreciation and care for local bookstores and everything that the people who hold up these institutions, readership, and books in general are depicted so highly that I felt like a reader of any kind, whether they read 10 books a year or 100 books a year, will find joy in the diverse ways that books touch our hearts and those of the people around us.
Romances are typically light and airy, and I typically read them for escape reasons because they almost always have a happy ending. However, I love that Emily Henry’s romance books have more depth to them and discuss the hard parts. In Book Lovers, this arises in how Nora and her sister grieve after their mom’s death years before the book begins. I have not lost a parent, so this is not something I can personally relate to, but I found that seeing the different ways people grieve not only death but also missed opportunities, relationships that didn’t work out, or dreams that we didn’t pursue was comforting to me. In the past year, I grieved friendships unexpectedly ending, a relationship that didn’t work out, the death of my grandpa, and the “perfect” life I imagined myself after graduating college, which consisted of a full-time job and moving seamlessly into the next chapter of my life. This book spoke to me in ways that I didn’t have the language to articulate until I read it, and I think that Book Lovers can resonate with anyone who is grieving something or someone. Seeing Nora understand her grieving process allowed me, and allows any reader, to begin the process of understanding their own grieving and create new opportunities for themselves."
I am proud to be someone who loves books. I love that there is something new for me to discover and read, even though I won't get to read everything I want to in my lifetime. Reading has been one of the few constants in my life, and I don't know where I would be without it or the independent bookstores that make reading an even more joyful experience. If you read this far, I appreciate you so much, and I hope you have something like my love for reading that keeps you happy and excited about life.
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