December 3, 2025

Pack of Cards

A recent trip to Bellwoods Books (specializing in vintage books by women) delivered the reward of a Penelope Lively book that I hadn’t read yet. (I didn’t even know that such a book existed!) Just look at that gorgeous edition! In a few weeks, I’ll be falling into holiday mode and only reading books that were published before Taylor Swift was born, this title among them.

Bellwoods Books, with its feminist focus, is the polar opposite of the secondhand bookstore in my forthcoming novel, DEFINITELY THRIVING, a place where books by women aren’t shelved under “literature,” but instead the second tier “women’s fiction.”

On her first visit, before she begins a crusade to change the cataloguing, Clemence manages to overcome her aversion to the place and its practices enough to purchase a small pile of books though. “A respectable haul, it is, and of course, all of the books are priced at just a dollar or two, which might be the upside of supporting a bookstore in which women are devalued. At least it’s a bargain?”