Philes gonna phile

Don't read this if you don't like to read

Did you know that Montana has the most independent bookstores per capita of any state? To promote our awesome booksellers, we have this cool thing called the Montana Bookstore Trail. The idea is to visit as many (or all?!?) the bookstores on the map, which you can see on their website here. You pick up a passport and get stamps everywhere you go. Since I’ve been on the road so much this summer, I’ve had the chance to visit many of these locales and, well, you don’t just run in there and demand a stamp! You buy something.¹ And this is a newsletter about the books I’m buying.

About six months ago I wrote another newsletter about the difficulty I was having with reading fiction, a difficulty I’ve somewhat resolved. (Substack just suggested that I embed my former newsletter rather than link it, so here it is all huge below, and I’m not sure how I feel about it…)

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Anyway, I’ve recently read some decent fiction, including some audiobook selections. James by Percival Everett was read by a superb Dominic Hoffman. Julia Whelan’s narration of The Women equaled others I’ve heard from her.² This isn’t meant as a compendium, just to say I’ve somewhat found my groove again.³

Been carrying it around all summer. You never know when you’re going to find yourself in Townsend or Red Lodge!

When I enter these bookstores, I always look at the new books, the Native American section, any regional books, and then the nature writing and poetry sections. This here is the nearly-complete⁴ stack of books I’ve wrangled into my car this summer, mostly from the indie bookshops I’ve visited, some from other locales. Okay, check it out, you know you want to, and then we can talk!

The Grass Dancer is one of my all-time favorites and one I used to teach, spotted it on a discount shelf in a small-town museum store. Everything else is new to my shelves.

Everything is connected, right? So I’m reading Pushed. In it, Spagna⁵ describes a nearby massacre of some White missionaries that affected the Cayuse for decades if not until now. Today, a banner day in which I attempted⁶ to visit no fewer than six shops on my way home from Billings, I spotted that Murder at the Mission book in three places. It’s a book about the very same Whitman missionary massacre. Weird, huh? Obviously I had to buy it.

And earlier this summer when Our History is the Future radicalized me,⁷ Nick Estes kept citing Zitkala-Ša. That book lived in my classroom collection way back when I taught at Two Eagle, but I never read it then. Now I will. Same with the two McNickle books — you may know I doggedly taught Wind from an Enemy Sky to countless hostile teens and even co-wrote an OPI unit to teach it, but I’ve not read his treatises, which are also cited by Estes and others.

The Shipstead came highly recommended by a proprietor. In fact some of my conversations with the booksellers became the highlight of the bookstore trail. Most enjoy a good chat, and they appreciate the passport. One told me mine was the most complete she’d seen. “Commitment,” I told her. All the proprietors have been knowledgeable, some quiet, most quirky.

And the stores themselves reflect each owner and define variety: one converted home with carefully designed nooks to evoke an idea or feeling, and the books beautifully displayed throughout; another, a kind of warehouse of used books with humorous details sprinkled all over, including one table crowned by a sign reading “I don’t remember the name, but it was green…” and a stack of green books underneath; a used bookstore so cavernous, with precarious shelves and boxes of donated books absolutely everywhere, I thought to myself someone could be buried in an avalanche of books in this place and nobody would notice for weeks.

I bet there’s a word for being smothered by an avalanche of books. I know there’s allegedly a Japanese word⁸ for the phenomenon of buying books and not reading them: Tsundoku. I’d like this summer’s stack to not contribute to this phenomenon, whatever its moniker, but I might have to quit my job to achieve it. Commitment.

I’d love to have a book conversation in the comments. If you’re so inclined, you know what to do.

1. I’ve found myself in a shop or two that didn’t carry anything I wanted to read, such as the crystals-and-spirituality place that wants to call itself an independent bookstore. I bought a greeting card there, though I could easily have gone with a sandalwood candle.

2. Such as Educated by Tara Westover and Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone

3. However, I have now taken on Backlash which is like 24 hours if you don’t speed it up and holy goats, it is a beast.

4. I know I bought an Ada Limon but I don’t know where I put it

5. A phenomenal writer! I also recommend her Uplake.

6. two were closed

7. I dodged the embed option this time. You’re not the boss of me, Substack!

8. I say “allegedly” because reading it on wikipedia doesn’t count, as mass media is a self-perpetuating monster of disinformation and I won’t assume this is true until a knowledgeable human being says it to me