Finding good new books by good new writers, while living in the Kootenays, has always been a challenge for me. The internet hasn’t actually made this easier because I like real books. Yes, I read on the internet all the time and yes, I use it to order books, but that hasn’t solved the problem – just made it bigger.
I like new ideas. There isn’t a lot of them around anymore. Actually, that is my problem. I’ve read so much that finding something genuinely new and exciting often feels hard. Science reading is occasionally a good place to play but those scientists tend to dress theories up in technical language so they can only play with each other.
I like reading history and I do that a lot but it drips depression into my coffee sometimes. Reading about politics is even worse. It’s like banging my head against a dull axe.
And the internet can also be interminably dull. Facebook can be particularly dull, except when there is some kind of crisis going on. During this winter’s snowstorm, in February, many of us were playing something like “Kootenay Survivor,” on Facebook. It was great. As long as the power and internet were still on, we could keep in touch with each other, post updates on whose driveway had finally gotten plowed, who was okay and who needed help. And when the power and the internet went away, well, there was Scrabble by candlelight and soup on the woodstove.
For artists, living rurally has both great benefits and great challenges. All that beautiful nature, all that peace and quiet and walking entices words and ideas into my creative mind. But an artist needs a community as well, needs to hear new ideas, get new information, keep pace with whatever craft they are drawing from. And that sometimes necessitates trips to find fellow writers with whom to go for long afternoon teas.
Me, I need books. I am incredibly fortunate in Creston to have Joe and Kingfisher Books to draw on – incredibly fortunate as well to have a good library. But I’m a serious book junkie. This has been a problem for me since I learned to read.
When I go to Vancouver, I always do a bookstore crawl. This is less fun than it used to be since there aren’t many bookstores left into which to crawl. When the Duthie’s bookstore on Robson street was two floors full of amazing books, I would browse there for a couple of hours. Then I trotted over to the Art Gallery restaurant, sat on the terrace drank a lot of tea, and leafed through my new treasures.
But on my most recent trip to Vancouver, I went to a Chapters ‘book’store, and had to fight my way through tea cups and draperies to find any real books. I did buy a book and some magazines but most of the books I wanted were certainly not in that kind of bookstore. Does anyone ever buy those teacups?
There is a great bookstore in Nelson for which I am grateful. I do bookstores really well. I know what I want and where to look for it. I read a lot of book reviews – I love casing bookstores, handling books, reading bits and pieces, finding hidden treasures on the sale shelf. I need to be alone and I need to take my time.
And I am very grateful for the internet. I do social media well. Mostly. My son finally made me get a smart phone and I am grateful for it too. Now, after a year with this phone, I have no idea how I ever got anywhere without it. How did we used to meet for lunch? How did I ever know what time it was or what the weather was doing.?
I like Facebook and Instagram a lot. But none of this is reading. There isn’t much real reading on the internet. There are jagged small pieces of information, some more interesting than others. Reading on the internet only makes me want more books. It raises my attention to certain ideas or issues and from there, I want some in-depth reading and can usually only find that in a book.
This is not a lament for any golden time when there were more books. Finding good books has always been an issue for me since I was six and learned to read in the beautiful one room school house beside Duck Lake. But perhaps it’s a tiny lament for the great loss of bookstores and magazine shops.
And in the meantime, there is ordering books, downloading books, borrowing the library, talking to friends about books and perhaps even writing a few more of my own.
But what I really miss is the ease with which I used to travel. I still like to travel but my heart doesn’t. So my scramble for books and ways to find them still continue. Some things just never change. I’ll always be a Kootenay girl, happy to be here, but some part of me still yearning for giant libraries, huge bookstores, and endless browsing in the dim light of a rainy afternoon.