30 Nov News from Experienced Goods December 2022

I am going to let my politics show a little bit this month.  Nothing too partisan, but with enough passion behind it to take a clear stand.  This month I want to talk about books.  I never imagined in our modern age that books would become a divisive political issue, but when I think about it, they always have been.  Throughout history, the written word has sparked debate and sometimes even revolution.  Books have been banned. Books have been burned.  We are in the middle of a political era when those horrors could repeat themselves.

Recently I was listening to a National Public Radio story about the National Book Awards, the focus of which was books on topics that have currently become threatened by book banning in schools in several states.  Topics like the Holocaust, LGBTQ life, abortion, white privilege, racism. Some of those books are classics that have been a part of school curriculums for decades, like To Kill a Mockingbird or Lord of the Flies.  It seems impossible that these and hundreds of other books could be removed from school library shelves now, in 2022, when freedom of information is tantamount and book banning should be ancient history. The news story featured quotes from librarians attending the awards ceremony, and one of them said, and I’m paraphrasing, “Libraries are not good or bad, they just are.  They are containers for ideas and information that is available to everyone and serve the purpose of expanding thinking.” Those words made me cry.  As an introverted kid who loved to read, the school library was my safe place, where books about fascinating people and places awaited my imagination and my library card was my passport, where I could go when other kids were screaming around the playground and all I wanted to do was immerse myself in a story. It’s where I learned what good writing is and how it wakes up the soul. It’s also where I learned that there are many sides to a subject and myriad viewpoints to consider.  My life as a school child would have been much harder and so much lonelier without the library and how it validated me.

What does this have to do with Experienced Goods, you may ask.  For starters, we have a very fine book section, especially well organized and curated in the new store by Assistant Store Manager Eric Cutler.  Eric makes a point of stocking the shelves with a wide variety of books on many topics from vastly different points of view.  He is interested in the rediscovery of lost knowledge, like blacksmithing or cabin building or food preservation, and among the rows of contemporary fiction and biographies you might find old, odd, quirky books with yellowed pages and that wonderful smell of slightly decaying paper.  You might find a book you read in school that has been out of print for decades but that feels like an old friend. Or maybe a book on how to do macrame, which you’ve secretly always wanted to learn, or poetry that speaks to your heart.  Of course, there are plenty of contemporary books as well, and at $3 each you can take a chance on a new work of fiction by an author you’ve never heard of just because the first two pages pulled you in, or buy that cookbook with the gorgeous cake on the front because during the pandemic you discovered you like to bake.  And the children’s books! Twenty-five cents each means you can buy a stack and maybe spark in a child a lifelong love of reading.  Brattleboro is rich in independently owned bookstores, and Eric says that even those venerable booksellers have told him that we are the best bookstore in town. 

And need I mention how visually appealing the book section is?  From the beautiful new bookshelves (thank you, Peter) to the artfully displayed greeting cards and browse-friendly lighting, it’s a place you want to linger and decompress. Even though our increasingly digital reality would seem to be a threat to physical books and bookstores, I’m betting on the pleasure people take from losing themselves in the titles on the shelves, pulling something down, paging through it, putting it back, breathing deeply, slowing down.  Censorship and book banning cannot take that from us, because even in the darkest historical times people who love books found ways to procure them and pass them around, sharing information and ideas. I feel like our little bookstore within a thrift store is a part of that honorable tradition, a place that stands up for diversity, curiosity and inclusiveness.

~Jennie Reichman