Helen and I connected over Instagram due to our mutual love for books. She is originally from the UK and lives in Quito, Ecuador, where she co-owns and runs a used bookstore. She also works in English language education.
Like all previous 2019 in books posts, remember that Helen’s words are in italics and since this is a bookish discussion, all book links open in a new tab so that you can refer to them afterwards.
Welcome to Armed with A Book, Helen. 🙂 Tell me a little bit about your love for books.
Thank you. I have always loved reading. I have been an avid reader since childhood, and some of my earliest memories are of my parents, especially my Dad, reading to me when I was little. Now, I read in English and in Spanish, and I especially enjoy fiction and poetry. I also read to my daughter. Since becoming a parent, I have enjoyed sharing some of my own childhood favourites, as well as discovering some more recently published children’s books.
I love meeting other people who love books. What made you decide to start a book blog?
I started my website, Armed with A Book, during my teaching degree and I loved writing about teaching, learning, books related to education on there. But when I graduated and decided not to take a teaching job, I was concerned what was going to happen to my blog, since a primary reason for writing on it was no longer there. At the same time, I had also been looking for ways to promote the blog. I came across a website called the book blogger list which made me consider writing about all books. This gave me direction and people on twitter gave me some feedback and opportunities to expand. Here we are now!
Interesting. I am a teacher of English as a Foreign Language by training, and before I had the bookstore I worked full time in education. Over the years I´ve read a lot about teaching, learning, and second language acquisiton. I did some writing on those subjects as well, but mostly for academic study. I haven’t published. I started teaching in 2000, before the internet was what it is today, and it never occurred to me to start an education or a book blog. By the time that might have been a possibility, I didn’t have the time! Anyway, I feel like I’m moving away from the focus of the question a bit here. What do you do when you are not reading / blogging?
A lot of what I do in my free time is related to bookblogging – reading, writing, staging books for instagram, connecting with authors, and talking about books and bookish things with my friends. My cat, Fiona, is my constant companion, and if I am not doing bookblogging things then I am playing with her or playing videogames.
Apart from reading, what are your guilty pleasures?
I love cats! We have 3! All of them were rescued from the street. I can relate to spending time playing cats. I also enjoy brushing ours.
Apart from reading, I also do yoga regularly, and I enjoy swimming and cycling when I have time. I like visiting parks, museums, and new places with my daughter.
You work for an independent bookstore, is that right? What is that like (I’ve always wanted to work at a bookstore!)
Yes. I actually co-own and run it with my husband. We sell used books, mainly in English. We first discovered the store as customers, and I think, in common with a lot of readers and book lovers, having a bookstore was a kind of fantasy. We were very fortunate to have the opportunity to take it over from the previous owner after our daughter was born. A bookstore is a great place to raise a child! Probably the part of the job I enjoy most is meeting other readers and discussing books. I love spending my work days surrounded by books. I sometimes read on the job, although I don’t always have much time to read in the store. I spend quite a lot of time on admin, and doing fairly mundane things like cleaning, organizing and pricing new acquisitions, and shelving.
Do you participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge or set reading goals for yourself? If yes, how do you usually chose this goal and what was your goal for this year?
I do participate in the Goodreads Reading Challenge, although I have mixed feelings about it. This year, I set my goal at 50 books, and at the time of writing (in mid-November) I’ve read 49. I imagine I’ll be 1-5 books over my goal by the end of the year. I set my goal based on the number of books I read the previous year. In the past five years, I’ve read anywhere from 30 – 60 books each year. I log all my pleasure reading, and the books I read aloud to my daughter. I do like to set myself goals, but not necessarily to read ever increasing numbers of books. How many books I read depends on how long they are and how busy I am. Sometimes when I read, I get to a certain point in a book, and I like to pause to process and think about what I’ve read so far.
Personally, I find goals involving reading about something I know nothing about to be more rewarding than simply aiming to read a high number of books. Although I find Goodreads to be a wonderful app for keeping track of my reading, meeting other readers, and finding out about new books, I am sometimes concerned that the Reading Challenge encourages readers to think in terms of quantity rather than quality.
I think goodreads takes a very simplistic approach to setting Reading Challenges, just going by the sheer number of books. There have been months this year when I was one away from 10 books that month and found a quick 50-pager that helped me reach the monthly goal. But everytime I do something like this, read to reach a number, it doesn’t bring the same satisfaction as enjoying the reading itself. Number of pages in a book, the style of writing (reading Pride and Prejudice is very different from PS I love you), the messages tackled in the book are all aspects that could easily be considered to get a holistic view of reading that year, but would be too much work to translate into a number.
I would completely agree with you on that. For me, reading is more of a qualitative than a quantative process.
In the first years after we took over the bookstore, I set myself the goal of broadening my reading, and I tried to read at least one book from every section in the store. I read a lot more non – fiction that I otherwise would have, and also read some types of fiction, such as horror, science fiction, and detective stories, which I would not necessarily have chosen if I hadn’t been consciously trying to read a broader range of books.
What kind of books do you most like to read?
That’s such an amazing idea to read a book from each section! I would love to do something similar from my local bookstore for next year! I love reading literary and historical fiction but in the past couple months have read a lot of scific, fantasy and dystopia. I’m still learning about the various genres and styles, and tried out noir fiction this year as well.
Growing up, Papa used to send me many thrillers and mystery novels, but in the last couple years, I have not been very good about choosing them myself. I also loved reading horror as a teenager and steer clear of it nowadays. I think that might have something to do with sometimes living on my own, as compared to when I was younger and always had someone else in the house with me.
How do you choose your books to read?
It depends. Sometimes I choose books after they have come up in conversation with customers or in an online discussion. In our store we trade used books, so sometimes I go through our arrivals and choose some books to read before we shelf them. Sometimes I see a new release that I know I am interested in, and then I wait eagerly for second hand copies to make their way on to the market here. Sometimes I just take a walk around the store and browse the shelves until something catches my eye. Occasionally I actually buy new books retail like a normal person!
I have always wondered if people who own book stores usually read the books they get. Considering you are selling second-hand books, most of these books would already be read by someone. Do you find people take good care of their books? Have people been sad when selling books to you?
The condition of the books we get varies a lot. Some of our books are really old, and have had more than one owner. Those are the ones with the most character. In terms of newer paperbacks, sometimes we get them looking as if they’ve never been read. Other times, they’ve been backpacked all over South America, rain soaked, dog earred, and so on. It varies.
Sometimes people are sad about selling their books. Other times they are excited to use store credit to get new ones. We’ve bought collections from surviving family members after a reader has died, and we’ve bought books from people who are leaving the country and can’t take all their books with them. In those situations parting with the books can be hard. In other cases, regular customers trade as they go, and buy a couple of books, read them, and then bring them back for credit towards the next two or three. I don’t think they ever build up a very big collection of books, or get too sentimentally attached to the ones they’ve already read.
You’ve told me about what you like to read, what about what you don’t like? Is there any specific feature which can turn you off a book?
I have realized this more with reviewing that two things that truly turn me off a book are repetition of phrases and spelling errors. I have only found one such book so far. No matter how unengaging a story might be, I will finish it, but these two things drive me crazy. If the book is a 250+ pager, chances are likely I won’t finish it. Is there something that turns you off a certain book too?
I will honestly read most things! I agree that spelling errors and poor writing and / or editing in general turn me off. I also get frustrated with stories that just stop without really drawing the story to an end and resolving all the threads of the plot. I think that even a book is part of a series, each volume should come to its own conclusion. I also get turned off by poorly researched books, or books that contain factual inconsistencies. I usually finish books I start though. Even if I don’t enjoy a book, I can probably sell it to someone who will enjoy it more than I did !
About the books this year
Were there any books this year that challenged your thinking or you learned a lot from?
I recently read Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan. It’s based on a true story, and I learned a lot about what life in Italy was like during World War 2. That aspect of the war was largely absent from the history I was taught in the UK. Although I learned about Mussolini, I think that reading this book was the first time I had ever read anything about what life was like for Italian civilians.
I also read Peony in Love by Lisa See earlier in the year. I have read a number of her books, and always learned a lot about Chinese history and culture from them. This book was no exception. This particular book made me think a lot about women’s lives, roles, and choices. Reading about historical Chinese characters made me question some of my modern, Western assumptions.
Did you read any books that had practical strategies to apply to life?
I occasionally read the kind of non fiction books which overtly present strategies which can be applied to various areas of life. I recently read How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber. It has some really useful ideas applicable to parenting and teaching. In less overt ways, I feel that I learn and grow from reading almost anything. By putting myself in the place of various characters, and trying to understand their perspective, reading helps me to consider all kinds of situations, which although fictional, may actually come up in real life.
What do you look for in a book?
I believe stories have so much to offer. So many books are promoted nowadays with big words like ‘feminism’, ‘freedom’, ‘equality’! I look for themes and lessons in the stories, fiction, non-fiction I read but I am looking for the more mundane things, not the big movements. I look for examples of strength, resilience, ways in which the characters (and with memoirs, real people) have faced obstacles and grown. I am originally from India so if I come across India in a book, like in The Braid, I am after new pieces of information and perspectives. Using the stories, I am hoping to gain experience in my second-hand way.
I feel every story has something to offer. The reader may not see it but there is so much research that goes into any book. Do you look for something in books too, Helen?
Yes, absolutely! For me, part of the joy of reading is finding out what each book I read has to offer. There is a lot of human truth to be found in fiction, and I enjoy finding it. It’s often small details that stay with me.
I know it is hard to give recommendations, especially when we read so many books in a year! If you had to choose, tell me about four books that I should check out and why.
It IS hard to give recommendations! The fact that I enjoyed or didn’t enjoy a book doesn’t necessarily mean that you will. Book preferences are incredibly personal, and the best recommendations are personalized.
I absolutely agree!
With that disclaimer, my choices obviously reveal a lot about me as a reader. Here are my 4. I would love to know what you think of them as well.
This is one of my all time favourite books. It is a little gem of wisdom. I read it for the first time many years ago, and I read it cover to cover. I have since gone back and re-read specific sections which have spoken to me at different times. It’s a book I often give as a gift. I recommend that you check it out. If you do, I hope that you will go back to it again and again.
My mother gifted me this book after my daughter was born. It’s a collection of poetry and journal style anecdotes about becoming a mother. I laughed and cried when I read it. I love the raw honesty with which it is written, and I would recommend it to any mother, especially a recent first – time mother.
This is one of the most famous books about the political and economic history of Latin America. If you want to understand the dynamics of development and under-devlopment in the region, it is a must read. I chose it because I have lived most of my adult life in Latin America. I learned a lot from it myself, and, although now dated, it continues to sell steadily.
This one is a book that I loved as a child, but hadn’t thought of for many years before becoming a parent. I have really enjoyed re-discovering it through reading it to my daughter, who also loves it.
Which 4 books do YOU recommend and why? 😉
I think you would love The Braid by Laetitia Colombani. I hope I have a daughter one day and I’m keeping that book for her. 🙂 It is a beautiful story of three women separated in place, and yet united in the pursuit of their dreams and the strength they possess [this is my standard spiel so sorry who has read it already!]. There are three very strong characters in this story – Smita is an untouchable who wants her daughter, Lalita, to have a better life. She does not like the destiny that has been imposed on her, so for her daughter’s sake, she decides to be the mother she never had – she decides to educate her little girl, inspite of all the odds. I am from India and it exposed another side of the country, which I knew about, but isn’t much talked about.
That does sound like an interesting read. I’ll keep an eye out for it, and I’ll definitely read it when I get the chance.
I recently finished reading The Farm by Joanne Ramos and it was an amazing book, tackling issues of surrogacy as a business, through the eyes of immigrants who become Hosts to support themselves and their families, sacrificing time with them in this way. I posted about it last week (might have spoilers though). I read it with a friend and we had a really good discussion about it.
You know how sometimes you read a book about a topic and then find another one about the same topic but a different perspective? Mother of Pearl by Angela Savage was my first book about surrogacy. It is well researched and talks about surrogates in Thailand. The Farm made me think a lot about it. If you end up reading either of these books, do let me know! I am not a mother yet (hope to be one day!) and I think you would be able to provide some great insights to them.
Very interesting choices. I’ve not read either, but I will let you know if I do.
One more to go! The Rose that blooms in the night by Allie Michelle was a beautiful collection of poems. I liked the way that Allie conveyed the sentiments around love, passion and learning to be oneself. Allie has expressed powerful ideas in beautiful verses. I particularly liked her interpretation of being alone and the ‘nostalgia for now’.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Helen! Please let us know what you think and share with your circles! Connect with Helen in the following ways:
Next up, on the 29th, I’ll have Varun, one of my school friends from India. I buddy read The Book of M with him. See you next time! 🙂
Thanks for reading! ❤️
Special thanks to Helen for providing pictures from her Instagram feed.
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