Stress Relief, Part Two

Feat. Emily Mandel, a Chocolate Football, and a Missoni Bathrobe

Hi friends.

Thank you all for the amazing recommendations in the comments of my last post! I love to have a thriving comments section! It makes me feel like a recipe in the New York Times, or a sighting on Deux Moi! I very much appreciate your suggestions, and I added them straight to my list.

Things have escalated quickly in NYC, and while it’s usually nice to be on the cutting edge, not so much when it comes to lines at CityMD and general panic. To everyone out there who is dealing with major March 2020 PTSD, I feel you. Hard. But you don’t come to my goofy newsletter for panic! You come here for….books? Exclamation points? Here is what I have been doing to relieve my panic and anxiety, maybe it will help you, too.

-Eat more chocolate. This year, I sent boxes of chocolate to many, many people. Bookstore colleagues, friends, my in-laws. Who doesn’t like a box of chocolates? Or a two-pound chocolate football? These are made in Brooklyn and are extremely, extremely delicious, and if you go to their spot in Industry City, you can actually watch people make chocolate and have a whole little Willy Wonka fantasy moment, only without the enslavement and child murder. If you don’t like to eat chocolate but you like the way it smells, you can just stand outside the vent and breathe in the chocolate air.

-Order soft things. I also ordered many things from this company this year. Cuddly! Colorful! Verging on the ridiculous! These are the attributes that make me happy.

-Move your body. Ugh barf I know. I hate that this is true, but it really does help. All I want is to dance alone to music from when I was in the 7th grade, and my boy Ben always does the trick.

-Read books. When I posted my fave books of 2021, little did I know the delights I still had ahead of me this calendar year! Here are a few other great books I read in the last month or so: Fiona and Jane, by Jean Chen Ho, The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, Sleepwalk by Dan Chaon. Honestly, it’s a perfect assortment of books: Dan was my college professor (though describing him that way makes him sound much more tweedy and boring than he actually is) (how about this: Dan is dark as hell with a demented giggle that makes the heart soar) (or maybe this: Dan is one of the first people who I felt like really loved me and my dad both independently and together) and so reading his books always makes me happy. Jean’s book is the kind of debut that makes you say daaaaaaaaaamn and nod your head. Julie (as previously mentioned in this newsletter) was someone who I’d always meant to read but just hadn’t yet, and then Emily…..I could write a thousand words about Emily, and this book, and this moment. Let me just say this: as someone who is about to publish their second pandemic novel, it is truly soul-affirming to read a book in which a writer has a book tour in a pandemic. I won’t dare spoil a single moment more. Emily and I have known each other for a decade, our whole lives as professional writers, and she deserves every goddamn inch of the success she’s had, and will have. Lucky us.

-Donate. When thinking about March 2020 (oh, sorry, still spiraling!), and that spring and summer, I think about being stuck in my house with my kids, with Mike at the store and my parents out of reach, even though they were just a few blocks away. If our house hadn’t been filled with books, I don’t know what I would have done. With that in mind, these are a few places that could use your support this holiday season and all year round—Brooklyn Book Bodega works to get more books into kids’ homes, which is proven to have an enormous impact on future learning. A bit further north, publishing powerhouse Saraciea J. Fennell is crowdfunding to open a children’s bookstore in the Bronx. If you’re a literary New Yorker, or a reader who can close your eyes and picture the pages of your favorite picture books from when you were five, please consider donating. If your passion is bookstores, then consider donating to BINC, the Book Industry Charity Foundation, which supports booksellers in need.

-Lean in to yourself. I’m writing this from my in-laws’ house in Florida. The kids and I came this weekend, and my two first stops were Dune Dog, for my favorite fish sandwich, and my beloved consignment shop, Dina C.’s Fab and Funky. Dina has never once done me wrong. I feel both fab and funky. Over the years, I have bought some of my most treasured vintage things from Dina, and on this visit, under my KN95 mask, I bought an amazing Missoni coat, pictured above (photo credit: my 8 year old.) It’s giving bathrobe, it’s giving 1980s, it’s giving hard candy in grandma’s pocketbook. I love it, and it loves me. When I brought it out to show my children and mother-in-law when I got home, my MIL said, well, that’s you. It’s not for everyone. But it sure is me. Let’s all embrace our inner 1980s bathrobes in 2022.

-Actually celebrate good news. I am terrible at this. So much so that when my therapist asked me to make a list of intangible things I wanted to give and receive this year, I could only do the former. Oops! I am bad at getting presents, with apologies to my husband and my mother. (They already know.) I am also bad at celebrating enormous accomplishments such as, oh, publishing a book, having a bestseller, owning a successful bookstore, the list goes on! I don’t know whether it’s just wanting not to jinx myself, or wanting to be humble, but as hard as I work on doing well, I am truly allergic to applauding my own wins. So here is me trying—Books Are Magic has sold almost 204,000 books this year. That is so many books! So many books that now live on people’s shelves and nightstands, in their backpacks and back pockets, in their hearts and minds. The bookstore requires so much work, from so many of us, and I spend all my time stressing about whether we’re doing a good job. Thank you to everyone who bought a book from us this year, or came to a virtual event, or bought a t-shirt, or even just walked by and took a picture in front of the mural. I had no idea how much psychic space running a bookstore would occupy in my mind, and this is me trying to shove some of that worry aside to make room for some pride. Here is a photo of my beautiful, bald baby when we were building the store. He’ll be six in two weeks.

Pre-order This Time Tomorrow here, save an author an anxiety attack today!