Yesterday, I took the twins out shopping for used books. Even if they don’t find something that captures their fancy, they still enjoy the act of seeking for hidden treasures. And, while I try to keep engaged with these young tween women, there are very few activities that we can agree on being exclusively in the realm of “fun” to do together. Treasure hunting for books is one of them.
One didn’t find anything that attracted her interest, even having shopped two bigger stores. And she’s the more widely-read of the two, more willing to take risks in what she decides to read. The other has only really discovered a love of reading the past few years, after some eye therapy helped make reading easier for her (she has “lazy eye” and the one eye had a hard time maintaining focus until she learned how to strengthen it) — and while she reads quite a bit, she doesn’t read quite the same volumes of books as her twin. That one found a used copy of a favorite graphic novel in good shape and a Nintendo DS cartridge for a Zelda game that ended up being a corrupt cartridge that we’ll have to refund (I paid far too much to just let it wash, unfortunately).
Myself, I found two books to add to my read list. Both are books that I started at one point, but I was in my “can’t focus enough to enjoy reading” phase when I attempted them in the past. Because I have something on the order of 6500 pages (over 13 books) read in just under two months, I am in a better mindset when it comes to reading, so I decided to give both a whirl in the coming months. The one I started right away is actually a collection of three grimdark novels between two covers, the first three installments of Glen Cook’s Black Company series. I can say that I can see why the first chapter might have exhausted me: the cadence and language is a unfamiliar and it is hard to decipher just what is going on in the beginning. The second chapter smooths everything out and feels more familiar. I’m hoping that I find the rhythm, as the Black Company series has at least ten books to explore in the world Cook has created, and I like following longer series, provided they can stay compelling.
The other books is Robert Feist’s The Magician’s Apprentice, the first of a beloved series by the author that probably has more volumes than Black Company, but may be far too “high fantasy” for my liking. I’ve grown weary of the hero cycle, and it seems to me that there are other types of tales to tell than the nobody-to-hero tale that is a little overdone when it comes to high fantasy. But it was cheap and I wanted to give it another chance with my doomscrolling-to-fiction shift in reading. But that one is going on the back burner until I can finish at least five other books that rank higher on my list.
So, at least two of us found a few titles to stimulate the tariff economy by purchasing, but the best part wasn’t the shopping or the acquisitions. It was an unexpected event.
As I was browsing, I felt a couple of living figures near me and I prepared to move to let them pass, but they made no motion to do so. After a few moments, I glanced over and saw a pair of women’s feet and another pair of deep-set eyes that didn’t reach my hip.
”Hello,” said a young girl in a singsong voice with a big grin as she shyly leaned into her mother’s leg. She was all of about three, maybe a short four, with jet black hair and dark eyes, wearing black and looking more goth than older modern goths — without makeup or anything marking her as such. But she was very “Wednesday” in a much, much younger version of the character. And cute as a button. So I returned her hello. She giggled and hid behind her mother, who was not, as you might expect, goth at all — but you could see who she inherited the black hair from. I nodded to mom and went back to browsing.
”Hello,” she sang again. Her mother muttered an apology and guided her away, “Not a problem, she’s a cutie,” was my response. Which made her mother blush. I didn’t think much more of it, but kept browsing. Every once in a while the girl would peek around the corner and giggle or offer up another “hello” for me. My own twins saw it a few times and agreed that it was cute as hell.
So, more than anything, finding books worth buying, or the general easy-going feel of the day, having a cute-as-hell goth/not-goth three year old stalk me in a used bookstore on a rainy morning was one of the best kinds of weekend events I couldn’t have planned had I tried.
I probably need to get out more. Right?
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