By Elizabeth Harper

This is a three-part series. Read Part I here and Part II here.

I went home, charged my phone, ate something. I was determined to make it to see Dana Jerman  read at the Myopic Books Poetry Series, curated by Larry Sawyer at 7 pm. Could I make it to one more bookstore in the passport as well?

I took the #151 Sheridan bus to Diversey and got on the #76 Diversey to go to Logan Square. Time was tight, but I managed to get to City Lit Books. I found Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. A year or so ago I read On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry by Willam Gass on Kindle, so the idea of reading on that theme appealed to me. I also got a special free bonus surprise book for Independent Bookstore Day, Unbury Carol by Josh Malerman. I wasn’t the only one there getting their passport stamped either. In the end, I made it to seven, not the 10 or 15 needed to get a discount for the whole year. But I had a blast and got books that I’m really excited about.

I jumped on the Blue Line at Logan Square to go to Damen and from there I walked to Myopic and made it to the reading on time. I got to see my friend Dana and the other poet, Jodie Hollander who was touring with her book My Dark Horses. Her reading of her poems piqued my interest, especially the ones about family relationships, so after the reading we chatted and I got a copy of her book.

Then I walked as fast as I could south on Milwaukee to Division to go to see Kosi, on tour from New York, performing at Phyllis’ Musical Inn. I had been watching her videos on YouTube and was really looking forward to seeing her in person. She’s a mesmerizing performer with a unique style and original songs. I bought her CDs. I still like to have some music in physical form in case the internet goes out. And also I want to support performers when they’re on tour. After that, local bands Deadly Bungalows and Van Go played. The last band of the night was Trita on tour from Minneapolis. Trita, who describe themselves as “Post-rock/Post-Metal/Post-Hardcore/Pre-Death” were aggressively loud, which I love, but they warned the audience beforehand and even brought earplugs for everybody. I got a CD and a t-shirt.

So that was my day. I would have hit different bookstores if I had traveled south on Halsted, but I had been at the Open Books on Lake Street the week before and binged-shopped there. I swear I do not binge-shop all the time. But in a sense it’s a good thing, because it means I found a lot of books that were interesting to me. It’s good to be interested in something. Also, they have super good deals and discounts at Open Books. And their sales support their literacy programs. And now that I’m thinking about it, I did some shopping at Kibbitznest when I was there for Lauren Huffman’s TenX9 storytelling show.

The next day was The Poetry Bomb. I was going to stay home and read poetry with my dolls, but then I decided to go to Uncharted Books, where I had shopped recently, and where they also sell my books, and read poetry with Dana. It was a good place to do it because we could read poems from the chapbooks by local poets on the rack.

More recently, I was at Volumes Bookcafe for a Revolving Door fundraiser. Volumes Bookcafe has lots of events. I saw many books that looked interesting to me, and some poetry books that are on my wish list, including Tara Bett’s Break the Habit and Jennifer Scappettone’s The Republic of Exit 43. I didn’t binge-shop, thinking I’m in that neighborhood enough I could come back another day and maybe just buy one at a time. I did get a chapbook from Revolving Door Press.