Alright, English major moment: I love bookstores. I really do. I spent a majority of my weekends as a child holed up in the library perusing the youth fiction section, and I even worked in a bookstore for 2 years in high school. And if you’re thinking, “wow, this girl definitely likes books more than people,” you’re absolutely right and people like Caitlyn Liu do nothing but enable me with even more book recommendations.
Bookstores are like Target: you go in wanting one book and you come out not knowing what time or day it is with 15 novels in hand. As a college student, the UC Davis bookstore is now the place that I go to every 3 months when I need to buy new textbooks for the upcoming quarter, and maybe some bluebooks or a t-shirt.
It’s been a while since I’ve stepped into a bookstore just for the sheer pleasure of perusing the aisles for a good title. I still have a stack of books near my bed at home waiting to be pried open and studied extensively when I’m not in the middle of taking classes and juggling extracurriculars.
And yet I still managed (in a moment of panic, nonetheless) to make it downtown in the morning in search of a copy of Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea for one of my English classes. I had a reading due the next day and had mistakenly not visited the school bookstore earlier in the quarter during syllabus week to get all the books I needed for the course and was left to scramble the day before.
Walking into The Avid Reader after making a fast-paced trek down 2nd Street was one of the most beautiful feelings of calamity I’ve had in a long time. I was immediately drawn in by the stacks of books and assumed the natural position of walking backward with my head tilted to the side to read the titles right-side up. I even forgot about the book I had gone there for in the first place until an employee found me sitting on the floor with my face buried in Harper Lee’s Go Set A Watchman and asked if I needed any help.
Image source: Pexels
All Target jokes aside, bookstores really are the best place in which you can disappear. A new adventure is literally around any corner, no matter how crammed the shelf or incomprehensible the title font. So even if you’re not a self-declared bookworm (yet), I highly suggest a day trip to your local bookstore and pick up a good old paperback. Happy reading, Aggies!
Image source: Pexels