I was lucky enough to have spent the past weekend in the Little Traverse Bay area of Lake Michigan with my husband. We were in town for a Charlevoix wedding (book-themed!), and stayed in Petoskey, one of our favorite Up North towns. We discovered it last year on our Hemingway-themed vacation (more on that another day), and really fell in love. The weather is always perfect and we can guiltlessly gorge ourselves on our favorite Michigan treats like white fish sandwiches and sweet cherries, and we can stock up on libations to get us through the long, cold Detroit winters (hard apple cider, local honey, maple syrup).
Because our weekend revolved around the wedding festivities, we didn't spend a lot of time exploring, but we did manage to carve out a morning trip to one of my favorite independent book stores, McLean & Eakin. When you were a pre-teen, watching Gilmore Girls and imagining your future life working in a small-town book shop, this is the type of place you imagined. Everyone who works there is unbelievably friendly, knowledgeable, and passionate about books. They have a terrific "Staff Picks" section, which is a metric I use to evaluate the quality of any book store I visit-- not only should there be a "Staff Picks" section, but the picks should elicit my respect in some way. McLean & Eakin is so clearly a book store run by people who love to read, and not in that "I love to read, I've read all the Harry Potter books," kind of way. (No disrespect, I love Harry Potter books and re-read them semi-annually, but you know what I mean. That's not all I read).
One of my favorite features is there local book club section, where they house books selected by different local book clubs each month. They had a representation from maybe ten or so clubs, and they all seemed to be reading really excellent, quality literature, which I appreciated. My book club is really important to me and I hate people who talk about women's book clubs with derision, like we're all just drinking Yellow Tail and reading Jodi Picoult (but if we did, would that be the worst thing?). I ended up snagging a book from this section, so thank you local Petoskey-area book club for reading The Snow Child. It was on my radar, and then I forgot about it and had a very disturbing data loss when I bought a new iPhone (my beloved To Be Read list one my notepad app is gone forever), so I was happy to be reminded of it. I was initially drawn to its beautiful cover design, but when I flipped it over and saw that the author was from Alaska, I knew I had to read it. I grew up there and have always been disappointed with its literary output, so a legit piece of contemporary literary fiction from Alaska is such a treat. As I carried it around the shop with me, several employees commented on how great it was, so I think I made a good choice.
The other book I picked up was a Jim Harrison novel. McLean & Eakin has a huge Hemingway area because of the Hemingway tourism in Petoskey, but they also have a pretty decent Michigan section. Since I bought way too many Hemingway books last year, I decided to give Harrison a try this time around. I've never read his stuff before, and I'll definitely wait until 2015 to dive into it, but last year I read an incredible essay/interview on Jim Harrison in an essay collection that I can't recall (which is making me crazy), and it made his work sound so compelling. It might be weird to read something that is so decidedly a "Man Book" after #ReadWomen2014, but I'm not ready for Cormac McCarthy or Philip Roth, so Jim Harrison seems like a good segue.