The Joy of Book Browsing

This weekend, a deep freeze has descended upon Chicago and much of the rest of the country. If you’re like me, you enjoy the warmth of the fireplace and hot chocolate or tea and a soft wool blanket wrapped around your legs. But if you’re like me, you also need to get out. After hours sitting still in the warmth of the indoors, getting outside is invigorating. The crisp dry cold air as it hits your lungs, a little tingle in the nostrils – it gives me a rush of energy, brings back the old vim and vigor.

A Perfect Winter Outing

Yesterday‘s outing was a brisk walk to the local bookstore. In my pocket, I carried the Christmas gift card bestowed upon me by my college-aged nephew. Here’s the great thing about this gift – it is really two gifts in one: the gift of reading, to be sure; but also the gift of book browsing, which is its own joyful adventure.

The Joy of Just Looking

When my children were young, we had a regular weekly outing to the bookstore. As we walked through the door to the shop, a feast of lively book covers invited us in. Drawing closer, we scanned the book titles, then opened the book jackets, tantalized by summaries of stories to be unspooled on the pages that followed. There were stories of princesses and wizards, school and home, times of adventure and others of quiet.

As a grownup, I still feel that same rush of book-browsing pleasure. Histories and chick-lit, page-turning mysteries and laugh-out-loud comedies. On my outing yesterday, I looked at a novel take on the underground railroad, a story of life as seen by a spunky millennial, and Bruce Springsteen’s look back at how he got to be him. I ended up choosing a couple of nonfiction looks at the world we live in, one a classic, the other contemporary.

Tomorrow, the reading will begin. But yesterday, the browsing was the bomb-diggity.

Share your favorite book titles!