Kevin In the world of holidays and observances, both official and unofficial, this one comes to us from Australia, and it’s Love Your Bookshop Day 2024! Even though this is an Australian observance, and I’m just some rando from the Midwest U. S., I still feel like this deserves a shout-out. Love Your Bookshop Day 2024 falls on a Saturday, so I’m writing about it now instead.
I’ve probably mentioned this a time or two in the past, but here, I’m all about small businesses on general principle, and independently owned bookstores are no exception. Even if I end up leaving w/o buying anything on a trip, I love to support small businesses all the same.
According to the official website for Love Your Bookshop Day, the theme for 2024 is “Giving the Gift of Imagination.” Reading is so important, and it’s emphasized in schools. Reading isn’t just for fun, it’s for learning, and it’s essentially a lifeline.
Book stores and libraries make reading accessible to everyone who’s interested. This post provides a historiography on reading, where it’s mentioned that when reading shifted from oratory and handwritten works to printed materials w/ the advent of the printing press, ppl throughout Western Europe started thinking more for themselves instead of what whoever Powers that Be told them to think.
When colonists came to Turtle Island, the locals saw the colonists w/ books. Sequoyah, a silversmith of the Cherokee Nation and the creator of the Cherokee syllabary, called those books “talking leaves.” This is the perfect name for books, talking leaves.
Since books are crucial to skill building, knowledge, personal growth, and entertainment, it’s damaging on so many levels when books fall victim to censorship. We saw this play out in Germany during the Third Reich, when the Nazis did the book burning not long after they came to power. They burned those books all over some sick, twisted, hateful ideology, destroying so many works by authors who put their hearts and souls into those creations.
They destroyed those talking leaves, all for their stupid, fucked up cause.
Bookshops, or bookstores, are important to society as a whole. They’re providing access to knowledge, wisdom, and entertainment. However, it’s also important to note that there are books out there that claim to be factual, when the truth is, they’re either misleading or sus AF. Or worse yet, both. In this instance, books quit being talking leaves, and become lying leaves.
So how can we tell the difference between a book that purports to be based on fact, but something feels off about it? Start by looking at the sources listed. Are they from reputable sources, or industry or cultural insiders? Yes? Great, no worries here! No? Next! Maybe so? Proceed w/ caution!
Even though this post and this one also is geared towards digital literacy, I believe that a lot of what’s talked about can also apply to books that claim to speak for everyone, when they’re only speaking for a super-tiny, yet extremely loud and vocal fringe group.
It’s sad when books are used as propaganda tools to further someone’s stupid agenda, and b/c of this, it’s so easy to lose sight of the joy that books can give us. On top of knowledge, books can give us a ticket to Imaginationland. Just think of the worlds authors created, and their lasting legacy.
For instance, there’s Stoneybrook from the Baby Sitters’ Club and Baby Sitter’s Little Sister series, as well as their spinoff, The Kids in Miss Colman’s Class. There’s other spinoff series, but the setting is somewhere else. Stoneybrook is a fictional town in Connecticut, and at one point in one of the BSC books, there’s talk about the history of the town. One of the MC’s comes across something spelling Stoneybrook as “Stoneybrooke,” but the jury’s out as to when the ‘e’ was dropped in the spelling.
I often wondered what it would be like to live there, tbh. In fact, going back to the theme of stoking imaginations, I used to wonder how it would be to live in that world, and I used to make up stories in my head about it. Of course, these stories never made it to paper, haha.
One story did, starting when I was in high school. I based it on the premise of a group of friends, but living in a different fictional town of my own creation. They weren’t babysitters, though.
Books don’t have to take us to fictional towns, like Stephen King’s fictional towns mainly on the East Coast, or Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga taking us to Middle Earth. They can also take us on a journey through time, w/ historical fiction. We see this w/ The Scarlet Letter, and its’ predecessor, Rachel Dyer, both of which take place during the Salem Witch Trials.
Since the actual date of Love Your Bookshop Day falls on a weekend, I’ll be going to one of the local bookshops in town, but I haven’t decided which one yet. No worries, though. I got all week to decide in the meantime.
Over to you, readers. How are you gonna celebrate Love Your Bookshop Day? Got a favorite book to talk about? It doesn’t have to be historical fiction. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be fiction, for that matter. Either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts and takeaways, so drop it all like it’s hot, and let’s talk!
