Baker & Taylor And All Those Popular Books We Want
It’s been a long time since I’ve bought a hot book. No, not that kind of hot book. (🔥) And not in an Amish Romance kind of way either, although I do enjoy shelving those at the Habitat ReStore. I just mean the types of highly anticipated, much-publicized novels that, say, Jenna Bush Hager often selects. I usually reserve those for the library. Literally. I reserve them and am often like number 350 on the waitlist.
I’ve had this NYT article tucked aside for weeks. The online headline is different (per ush) and reads: “Waiting for the Best Seller: Inside the Pipeline That Stocks the Stacks.” Baker & Taylor, one of the largest distributors of books to libraries, went bankrupt and now library systems — such as the Iowa City Public Library, as featured in this article — are having a tough time acquiring all these books that people so desperately want.
Why do we all feel so compelled to read these things RIGHT NOW!?!? Of course the obvious explanation is that humans have a desire to be in the thick of it all. Watercooler conversation and all that. Getting to a book first is not quite the same as being on the front end of the Cabbage Patch trend (shout out to my preemie Faith Quimby 👶), but it’s the same sort of desperate compulsion. See: Yesteryear. (I fell for it too, and I hate that for me.)
But, truly, what does that get us?
A couple of years ago I read a book called The Neighbor’s Secret by L. Alison Heller. It’s a bit thriller-y and beach-read-ish, but I thought the satire about suburban parenthood with a particular focus on mommy book clubs was sharp and good. (Much better than YY’s purported humor. OK, I’m done! [maybe!])
“The real currency at the Cottonwood Book Club wasn’t literature, it was sameness. And Jen craved this feeling of belonging even as she hated what it confirmed: there was safety in numbers…And danger in being an outlier.”
Well, like I said, that’s a bit dramatic and hokey. But be an outlier. It might help ease pressure on your library system too! And btw, my library system has literally millions of materials. Millions! (These materials aren’t all books, but still…)
originally published on instagram