What kind of books will you have?

I love to read just about anything.

My specialities are nineteenth century literature (I have to use that MA somehow!) and Los Angeles literature (you can check out my book Read Me, Los Angeles for lots of lists and insight), with a strong dash of Madeleine L’Engle thrown in (and a Substack newsletter about her books to boot). That doesn’t mean it’s all I know or care about!

In the midst of the pandemic, I’ve hunkered down with a lot of what I call “comfort reading,” spending most of my evenings with a romance novel, a YA novel, or fantasy. Of course, many of the books I’m reading combine all three.

I am passionate about young readers for a lot of reasons. I think reading is a transformative act, showing us who we are and who we could be and illuminating the humanity of others. While I mostly read fiction, I find plenty of that in poetry and nonfiction as well. When readers, young or old, find characters who have essential things in common with them, it can reveal new possibilities; and when readers read about those who are different from them in those same essential ways, it shows that despite many external differences, the beating heart of another is not so different after all.

While I will carry books for all ages and stages of readers, and will work to have offerings in other languages than English (all depending on publisher availability), I will especially focus on kids’ books. Studies show that kids who have books in the home are at an educational advantage, and I want to help bring access to books to neighborhoods that don’t have their own bookstore, to help make that easier.