Summer Reading

Getting Beyond the Algorithm

When does summer reading season start? I certainly won’t be waiting until the summer solstice (June 21). May is one of the biggest months for new releases, and my to-be-read list is already bulging. I could start right now. The final day of the spring semester was this past Friday. Although I continue to work throughout the summer, my schedule is a little more flexible. Work is less likely to spill into evenings and weekends, leaving more time to sink into a book. But honestly, planning summer reading is almost as much fun as doing it. I started dreaming about summer reading on Independent Bookstore Day.

Independent Bookstore Day takes place on the last Saturday in April. This year, Mike and I were in Des Moines with our friends Laura and Brad on Independent Bookstore Day. Des Moines has an interesting bookstore ecosystem. There are lots of neighborhood bookstores scattered around the city, each with its own character. We visited three - Reading in Public, Storyhouse Bookpub, and Nos Books.

All of these stores have small footprints, but they are beautifully curated. Nestled beside bestsellers are books I’ve never heard of. In a new bookstore, I head straight for the staff recommendations shelf. This is one way the store tells me who it is. Does the store specialize in current fiction, romance, or underrepresented authors? Is there a mix of current and classic picks? When the staff recommendations shelf includes some of my favorite books alongside new discoveries, I know I’ve found my home.

I also get a sense of a bookstore’s identity by reading the “shelf talkers,” a brief description of a book written by a staff member who loved it. Compared to the dust jacket copy, a shelf talker spends less time on what the book is about and more on what happens when you read the book. A handwritten note tells you what you can expect from the reading experience. When we visited Reading in Public, a shelf talker led me to My Broken Language, a memoir by Quiara Alegria Hudes. As I paid for the book, a staff member commented that she loved everything Hudes has written. “Have you read her fiction?” she asked.

“No,” I responded, “I chose this because of the shelf talker.”

“If you like that one, read her fiction,” she advised.

This is the beauty of an independent bookstore. The staff members are readers. They understand the reading experience in a way that, I believe, will never be captured by an algorithm. One year, when Christmas shopping for my mom at Prairie Lights, a long-time bookseller asked me, “Can I help you?”

Usually, I politely decline, but that day I decided to give it a try. “My mom loves Olive Kitteridge, The Good Lord Bird, and Louise Penny,” I told him. “What do you recommend?” I could see his synapses firing. He moved nimbly through the fiction section, putting three books in my hands, telling me why he had chosen them. I hadn’t heard of any of them. I bought all three with no reservations. (I wish I could remember now what they were.)

Just for fun, I asked Claude, a large language model, the same question to see how artificial intelligence handled the task. AI spit out a list of 14 books, all of which I have heard of, many of which I’ve read. The list included the sequel to Olive Kitteridge, a book called Olive Again, which is a rather obvious choice. Other books on the list are major bestsellers. I’m not surprised that the list included no surprises. Algorithms make recommendations based on data. They prize prediction, not discovery.

At our second stop, Storyhouse Bookpub, we encountered another staff member with book wisdom. Laura was looking for the book, Yesteryear, and we hadn’t seen it on the shelf. As I was checking out (after waiting in a delightfully long line of other readers!), I asked the bookseller if they had Yesteryear, a novel about a tradwife who is transported back in time to the 1800s (a time when many of the traditions highlighted on today’s social media originated).

“Noooooo,” she said mournfully. “It’s sold out. I’ve already read it twice. Well, I read it, and then I made my boyfriend listen to the audiobook on a road trip. It’s sooooooo good.” And then, to be sure that the whole store got the memo, she began chanting, “Yesteryear! Yesteryear!” (Although we did not find the book in Des Moines, I bought it on my Mother’s Day trip to Prairie Lights. I’ll let you know if it lives up to the hype.)

Our third stop was my favorite. Nos Books opened last year in the Drake University neighborhood. This was my first visit, and the selection of books by and about people who are underrepresented was immediately evident. I broke my “one book per store” rule, perusing all the shelves before circling back to cradle Woodworking, The Witch, and How to Live Free in a Dangerous World in my arms. I added my stack to Mike’s, and he headed to the cash register.

The small store was packed, and I was nearing the end of my energy. I found a small, uncrowded corner and paused to look around. I recognized a family that we’d seen at a previous store. The woman, who had a book-themed purse, was browsing the children’s section with her son. Three friends walked through the door and immediately began picking up books and asking each other, “Have you read this one?” I was breathing in the scene when Mike waved me over to the cash register.

“This guy doesn’t like your selections,” Mike said, nodding to the man behind the cash register, who we later learned was the owner. The man’s brow wrinkled briefly before breaking into a smile. (Not everyone gets Mike’s humor right away.)

“You’ve got some good ones here,” he said.

“It’s a beautiful store,” I replied, “Such a great selection.” He beamed, slipping a hand-painted bookmark into one of the books.

Some might think of summer reading as a solitary activity, but in independent bookstores and libraries, communities are built, connections are made, and the books you are meant to read will find you.