Powell’s Bookstore: the Random Reading Refuge

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Powell’s bookstore in Portland has long been a lodestone in my life. Though I moved away from the city decades ago, Powell’s has always been a sanctuary. I first sought refuge in its halls when I graduated with an English degree from nearby Portland State. Next, when my three boys were little, I bought books like Where The Wild Things Are (in French and German because, why not?). When my baby sister was dying, I found books on death and dying to cope. After my mother passed, I got a hotel near Powell’s to lose myself in the stacks. Now I’m trying to decipher my own path, having just sent my manuscript (after five years!) off to an editor. Now what?

Such a question led me to Powell’s once again. I seem to find my way there whenever my path in a moment isn’t totally defined. I stayed in Portland for a month this past summer with the intention of spending most of it at my favorite brick-and-mortar.

My sister Mary joked about my “new job” at the bookstore starting on Monday. I took that indulgence to heart and gave myself the title of Random Reader, planning to spend the next 30 days with my nose in a book.

The City of Roses smells gorgeous on my first day as I walk the two miles across the sparkling Willamette River to the historic Pearl District. This location is called Powell’s City of Books because it takes up an entire city block, filled four levels high with more than one million titles. It’s the world’s largest independent bookstore. The same family has been providing a safe and welcoming community gathering space among the books for more than fifty years.

I enter through the back door. I try not to get distracted by the cookbook and food sections. I skim past books about raising chickens, cake decorating, and how to be more like Martha. I’m learning to avoid distraction. Books about food as history are more my style.

Recommendation: How to ADHD by Jessica McCabe
Recommendation: A Taste of Paris by David Downie
Recommendation: Tender at the Bone by by Ruth Reichl

…if you don’t know who you are, take a look at your bookshelves.

I don’t have the same books that I did 20 years ago. Grad school texts on Environment, Social Justice, and the Lakota people have given way to themes of history, travel and foreign affairs.

Recommendation: The Ends of the Earth by Robert Kaplan

My destination: the coffee shop. I thread my way through the overpopulated stacks of sci-fi and fantasy (nope!). Certain persnickety self-help books would suggest I get some nice herbal tea, but my favorite titles remind me that life is for living. I buy a chocolate croissant and reach for the shiny new notebook I purchased just to catalog my anticipated reading list. Another distraction: a Texas accent – a man, family in tow, whining: “I’m overwhelmed! Where do I start?” Since I’m extremely self-aware from all this reading, I can name schadenfreude when I feel it…

Decisions about actual purchases are made easier by other books. Soon, titles are holding conversations with one another; their histories amplified. They also lead me out into the world. The Kladstrup tale about wine-looting Nazis becomes the excuse for Mary and I to go wine tasting at the exquisite Domaine Drouhin – owned by one of those beleaguered French families who reestablished themselves in Oregon after the war. Sipping wine and laughing about old family stories, I also feel like getting real. The lessons from unpacking my own intergenerational trauma echo around me. There is healing in the pages of these books, and in talking about them.

Because I also write about ancestry, memory, and global history. I read that stuff, along with psychology, travel, photography, and anything else I feel like. As a writer, I often feel daunted by so much brilliance. Thank God, there are dumb books, too. Perhaps I’m lucky that my own ADHD leads me both out into nature and deeply into the literature that celebrates it. My favorite guru and former Portlander, Gary Snyder, authored a must-read if you’re ever trying to understand the connection between nature and culture.

Recommendation: The Practice of the Wild by Gary Snyder

This summer is a renewal. I visit all my nephews and nieces; I see old friends going way back. I get to re-meet my old Portland self. I am still bad at sitting. When antsy, I head out to the food trucks or other old haunts (Nordstrom’s!). There are more ambitious getaways too, like Bend, the Oregon coast, Sahalie Falls, and nearby Forest Park.

What have I learned from a month of reading? Nothing. …and everything! Maybe this is just the beginning of my list of ‘100 Books to Read Before You Die‘. I can only fathom such an inventory would come from wandering among the books: feeling them, smelling them, holding them in your own two hands. Dare I say it – wean yourself from Amazon.

Books deepen our perspectives and challenge our assumptions. Do I still think the world is one full catastrophe? Yup. Am I still writing a book about it? Yup. People we love and sometimes whole nations have disappeared from view. Climate change has claimed entire islands. But there’s grace and humor in the writing, whether your style is rich, dark, lovely, or lighthearted.

Recommendation: Fires in the Dark by Kay Redfield Jamison
Recommendation: Calypso by David Sedaris
Recommendation: After the Fall by Ben Rhodes

Above all, this: