I'm easy

I think we all know that I am congenitally unable to go somewhere and not visit a bookstore (or several if the place is lucky enough to have more than one). So far this summer I have been at the tiny indie bookstore by the cottage (Safe Harbor Books, which has no website to link to here), McLean and Eakin Booksellers in Michigan, and every bookstore I could find in downtown Asheville, NC (Malaprop's Bookstore, Downtown Books and News, The Captain's Bookshelf, and Battery Park Book Exchange Champagne Bar). I'm not done visiting bookstores in random places yet either.

And I'm not terribly likely to walk out of any bookstore without (many) new additions to my stash. So how do you best find books in new to you bookstores? Well, there are the always obvious ways of wandering around, dipping in and out of sections that interest you or scouring the usually treasure laden staff picks shelves. But if you're me on this most recent visit to Asheville, you will have driven up there listening to booky podcasts. In this case, I was listening to my appalling backlog of the wonderful The Readers, with Simon and Thomas who do tend to read things I enjoy. Mostly I can happily nod along with their banter and suggestions but occasionally they really pique my interest in something new or they remind me of an author I've enjoyed in the past. And on this trip, they did both. Better yet, when I poked around the used bookstores, I found everything I was looking for. The first excitement was Plant Dreaming Deep by May Sarton, signed by the author. I have long loved Sarton, first reading Kinds of Love way back when I was in high school back at the dawn of time, but I rarely think of getting more of her works. The second was The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters edited by Charlotte Mosley. I have Nancy Mitford's novels but I don't know that I knew there was a book of correspondence between the sisters so when this one was mentioned, I was immediately intrigued. And while I was poking around in this same state of mind, I also stumbled across Angela Thirkell's Tribute for Harriette. I have all of her Barsetshire Chronicles and adore them so this was a very pleasing find. If you want to see the titles of the rest of my new books, feel free to poke around on my LibraryThing bookshelf. Sadly, I can't blame anyone else for the others I brought home. They're all on me. I guess I'm just easy.

Do you listen to any podcasts? Do they ever inspire you to get books?