Found in a Bookshop

by Stephanie Butland

You know that books are safety and escape and wisdom and peace and the things that get you through.

she might just have RBF, which Kelly thought, at first, might be a disease. Google told her that it meant ‘resting bitch face’;

Take a breath. The next time you are fifty pages into something and rather than pick it up, you’re scrolling through your phone . . . you can stop reading that particular story. You can donate or pass on that book, and you can start something else.

The books you choose for yourself should never, ever feel like a punishment or a chore.

The Magic Cottage by James Herbert

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood.

Reader, whatever you do, you are right. You must be. It says so, here, in a book.