Thanksgiving should be a time of gratitude and coming together, and your friendly neighborhood Island Books staff is getting into the spirit. As we planned our pie recipes and anticipated one of our favorite holidays of the year, we felt moved to infuse some extra community love into the atmosphere.
There were two recent pieces of news that inspired us. The first one is an older local story from the summer, about the Mercer Island Rocks movement. In case you missed it, the Ronald family began painting hundreds of rocks and hiding them around the island for others to find and pass on. “The idea is to spread little gems of happiness around the island — to create and share creations celebrating our wonderful community,” Rich Ronald wrote on the Mercer Island Rocks! Facebook page. “And maybe even get folks hunting for objects that don’t require an app to be seen (though we love Pokemon Go as much as the next family!).”
The other story was about the actress, U.N. Women Goodwill Ambassador, and real-life Hermione Granger, Emma Watson, who recently hid books by Maya Angelou around the London tube and the New York City subway.
With those uplifting ideas in mind, we hand-picked some books we’ve personally enjoyed from around the store, wrapped them up with a personal note, and drove around the island to hide our own gems of happiness. Read our note below and then see if you can figure out the local haunts where we hid our gifts. The books we included were The House at Riverton by Kate Morton, The Rent Collector by Camron Wright, The Wild Robot by Peter Brown, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, The Public Library and Other Stories by Ali Smith, Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald, Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.
If you find one of our packages, let us know via Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram or just email us at [email protected] We’d love to hear what you think of the books.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving and happy reading from all of us!
–Miriam
See the whole story at the Island Books blog. You won’t want to miss any of the photos of Laurie and Miriam making their deliveries.
Happy Holidays!
