Booooo-ks!

because every book is fun size

My dog as a not-particularly-wicked witch.

I am not fond of Halloween.

I get why people love it. From what I can tell, it’s everyone’s favorite holiday.

Except mine.

For one thing, I don’t like being scared. I am a huge scaredy-cat about everything from gore to surprises to things that are icky. I prefer to stay away from things that give me an impending sense of dread. I don’t want to know what your insides look like when they’re not where they belong.

Also, I’m not so much a fan of something that societally requires my children to stay up late eating candy. I get why that’s fun, but the week-long aftermath is pretty terrible.

Also also, my dog doesn’t love when someone rings the doorbell one time mid-afternoon. He barks. He’s doing his job. It really throws him for a loop when the doorbell rings every four minutes during the time we are normally quietly reading on the couch. And then his agitation agitates me.

I do like creative costumes and tiny candy bars and spookiness. Playful fun size spookiness I’m good with. What I’m saying is that Halloween is my least favorite holiday, but I’m not about to leave the country to avoid it or anything. Some parts of it are ok.

So I’d like to thank my friend Margie Myers-Culver, who told me she gives books out to trick or treaters. Seven years ago, I decided to give it a try. And it was amazing.

I thought the kids might be confused, or disinterested (isn’t trick or treating all about the candy?), but they were into it. And they came back — I heard them outside the next year, talking about going in to get a book from the book lady. I was the book lady!

The 2019 book spread in my front foyer.

When a kid, trick or treating in a cat costume, has to quickly choose a book, so they can move on to their next candy stop, it’s so cool to watch what draws them to a book. A splashy cover? Glitter? Someone on the cover who looks like them? I love to watch when a group of teenagers, seeing if they can get away with getting free candy, are suddenly told they have to pick a free book. One will be excited, will know just what to pick. One will say, “ok, yeah” but then find something they’re excited about. There might be one who says, “I don’t need a book.” I tell them to go ahead. Pick one anyway. “You have to take a book,” I say. “Come on, pick one,” says a friend with an unsettling open wound painted onto their face. And then often the reluctant anti-book kid does find one they’re excited about. That’s cool.

I put them outside in boxes in 2020 to avoid breathing near anyone.

This is what has turned Halloween around for me. I still don’t love it (there’s no way I can love something that results in my children bringing home gummy severed thumbs) but I do love giving away books.

Yes, I give away candy too.

Yes, they can choose more than one book. Of course.

I get most of the books for free. I get them at the swap shop at the dump or from Little Free Libraries. Some I buy from the library sale or used bookstores or Goodwill. The last few years I’ve partnered with the amazing local independent bookstore, Print: A Bookstore, to pass on their excess galleys.

Handing a kid a book is saying “would you be interested in some people’s thoughts and ideas, made into this tangible flat object?” There are so many books and so many kids, and I really appreciate the hard work of teachers and librarians who figure out exactly what kind of books a kid reader might be into. There’s magic in that, especially when the kid doesn’t know themselves what they might want to read. I like Halloween now, because I get a tiny taste of that experience, and honestly, it’s amazing, to be able to say, “here, have another world with your chocolate-covered caramel.”

Ramona helping me organize the books last week.

The writing shed is now a full-on Halloween books staging area.

This is the box of books Ramona set aside to read before Halloween.

Thoughts and Links

• Rick the Rock of Room 214 was named one of the best books of 2022 by PW.

• I got so much out of this podcast interview with George Saunders that I’m tempted to listen to it every morning as motivation. It might be the inspiration I need to get off social media entirely. (I’m also excited about this new podcast, The Active Voice, in general.)

• I like Austin Kleon’s take on comfort work (like comfort food, but work).

• I love a burrito bowl, and this is one of the dump-it-all-in-the-instant-pot varieties, and was pretty tasty for the 12 seconds of effort on my part. A slightly more time consuming (though only slightly — ten minutes of prep, maybe) recipe that I’ve made every week since I first tried it a few weeks ago is this one for sheet pan chicken pitas. I make the also-very-easy flatbread recipe from King Arthur to go with it. (The theme here seems to be “I am no longer interested in spending more than 15 minutes on dinner prep.”)

Books I recently read and loved

Disclosure: book links in this newsletter are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, a site which supports independent bookshops.