Island Books

As we close the book on 2020, we want to thank our community and our customers for their steadfast support, patience and understanding throughout this challenging year. In addition, we want to thank our amazing staff who have been unwavering in their commitment to Island Books, our community, and our customers throughout this trying year. THANK YOU! We will be closing the store from Friday, January 1st – Wednesday, January 6th to give ourselves and the Island Books staff a chance to renew and refresh after a long and difficult year. We look forward to seeing you in the new year!

As with many households, our television watching has increased during the pandemic. We’ve really enjoyed binge watching The Queen's Gambit, The Last Dance and all six seasons of  Schitt's Creek among others. Last weekend, we really enjoyed the HBO documentary The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend A Broken Heart thanks to the recommendation of our very close friend T.J.M. It was a great trip down memory lane. It’s easy to think of the Bee Gees as that disco band from the mid-late 1970’s from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. However, that thinking ignores the fact that the Bee Gees had a career that spanned four decades from the 1960’s with a sound that was similar to the Beatles, to their ballads of the late 1960’s and early 1970s, followed by disco sound in the mid to late 1970s and then becoming award winning songwriters in the 1980s and 1990s in response to the disco backlash. Watching the documentary, we were reminded that the Bee Gees were constantly reinventing themselves to adapt to the ever-changing environment of the music business. And so it has been with Island Books as well. Our relationship with the year 2020, is complicated. The year 2020 has forced us to reinvent ourselves and find new and different ways to serve our community and customers. It is not the first time that Island Books has had to adapt to a changing environment, nor will it be the last. At times, it has been difficult, frustrating, challenging, and messy because change always is. However, we believe that we have come out of this year stronger and better equipped to face the challenges in the years ahead. As we bid farewell to 2020, we mourn the pain, suffering and loss that it has brought to everyone in our family, in our community and in our country. At the same time, we are thankful for the lessons and the opportunities that 2020 has brought to us.

Readers, it’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? It’s hard to believe we’re even ready to talk about our favorite fiction and nonfiction books of the year. Many of us, and many of you, have found books to be a welcome escape, reading our way through all this year has thrown at us. Traditionally the staff compiles a list of the ten fiction and ten nonfiction titles from the year - the books that reminded us why we love to read so much and show us the power of the written word. Here I offer you a little appetizer to whet your appetite:

I’ll start by briefly mentioning my own personal favorite of 2020, The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett. I wrote about this back in June, and haven’t read or listened to anything since that I’ve found to be so surprising, immersive and thought-provoking. I’m not alone, it’s also a best of the year pick from Nancy and Laurie, as well as a New York Times Bestseller, a Good Morning America Book Club pick, and long listed for the National Book Award.

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We’re in the last three months of the year. I’ve noticed the light changing and the leaves falling and all I want to do is read books that make me happy. Here’s a collection of books that have been a pleasure to read! 

Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center

This is a reissue of an earlier Katherine Center title after the success of her last three books, How to Walk Away, Things You Save In a Fire, and What You Wish For. Sometimes in earlier books you can tell that an author hasn’t quite hit their stride yet, but I found Happiness for Beginners a totally satisfying reading experience. And her protagonist, Helen, though recovering from a divorce, wasn’t paralyzed in the hospital or suffering from seizures, so she is already starting ahead. Helen signs up for a wilderness survival course in the backcountry of Wyoming in an attempt to find herself again a year after divorcing her husband. Never mind that the course she’s chosen to do is regularly reviewed as being dangerous and the participants prone to injury. Or that her brother’s friend, Jake, has also enrolled in the same course. Or that when Helen actually gets there she realizes she’s the oldest person on the program. Helen is determined to make the most of her experience and no matter how much she struggles to find her footing, sometimes literally, she keeps going. Even though there’s a delicious thread of romance throughout, what I enjoyed just as much was how Helen is brave enough to keep uncovering and admitting to herself who she is and what she wants. For anyone who wants a truly happy read, the clue is in the title.

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