Reading Around Town: Meaghan Foran
For our second Reading Around Town recommendation, I knew the perfect person to ask: Meaghan Foran of Alexandria & Company. I worked with her and her husband Tim to design my husband's wedding ring (and unbeknownst to me, he did the same for mine). Shortly after I started working at Old Town Books, Meaghan stopped by and we chatted about our mutual love of books, the struggles of operating a tiny storefront safely during a pandemic, and the importance of shopping small local businesses. Alexandria & Company has been donating 10% of retail sales to the ACT for Alexandria COVID-19 Response Fund - so if you're in need of jewelry, check them out! -Laura (Bookseller)
My name is Meaghan Foran and I own and operate the local jewelry atelier Alexandria & Company with my husband, Tim Shaheen. I'll be totally honest; I was thrilled when I was asked to provide my thoughts on reading for Old Town Books because I am a complete fangirl of this shop and am so thrilled to have them in our town.
Reading has always had an integral role in my life: growing up, I was definitely a bookworm and was constantly working to read as much as I could all the time. I truly love the experience of reading and the complete absorption that it allows. I cannot remember a time in my life when I wasn't reading at least one novel, even when I was in college and graduate school with hundreds of pages of research articles and philosophical treatises to work through each week.
Reading relaxes me and allows me to get out of my own head. If you are an anxious type-A like I am, you know that this is a very good (and rare) experience. I cannot fall asleep unless I read at least a page of whatever book I am reading at the time, and more often than not I read many, many pages before going to sleep. I make time for it in my evening routine and no matter how late (or how many glasses of wine I have had), I always pick up my book before trying to sleep. If I try to skip it because I'm too tired, inevitably I end up in that awful middle-sleep where I'm unable to really drift off but I also really don't want to turn the light back on and burn my eyeballs. The worst.
Reading has kept me sane during COVID, no exaggeration. Escaping this new reality is imperative, even for a short while, and gaining perspective from other lives lived is the very best way to keep your cool when things seem bad. Tim and I have spent the vast majority of the last eight months at our cabin in the Shenandoah area and we have no TV nor speedy internet there - meaning streaming TV shows is out of the question. We chose this in order to give our four-year-old son as much freedom from lockdown as possible and to give ourselves a little more space than our tiny Old Town home allowed, and I don't regret the lack of TV entertainment at all. My son reads all the time and I think so much of this has to do with the fact that he sees me reading all the time instead of watching tv or working on a tablet. Nothing makes me prouder than when he pulls out a book and starts reading quietly on his own. He is completely obsessed with Roald Dahl and his creativity in rhyming and making up stories is remarkable, and I credit this 100% to reading. Honestly from a selfish point of view, it is so much more entertaining to have him quoting from James and the Giant Peach than from some mindless cartoon, so this works out well for everyone!
Currently, I am reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and There There by Tommy Orange. I just finished Three Women and before that, I read two book recommendations from Laura Rose that I blew through, they were both great. I have probably read close to twenty-five books since March, all from Old Town Books (I'm not going to ask if that's insane). My tactic at Old Town Books is pretty haphazard: I basically order a selection of 8-10 books at a time based on silly considerations like what the cover looks like as well as picks provided by the staff at the shop. I keep my genres wide open. If I don't like a book (and I sometimes don't!), it's not the end of the world. I actively enjoy giving these books a chance and I'm always curious to see what else there is. Time spent reading is never wasted, in my opinion!
Thank you to Meaghan for reporting into the blog from the beautiful Shenandoah area! Who will be our next Reading Around Town guest? It might be you! If you’re a member of our community who is interested in being featured on the blog, please email us at hello@oldtownbooks.com. We look forward to sharing perspectives from all aspects of our diverse and wonderful city.
Blog contribution by Laura Rose Schwartz and Meaghan Foran. Photos contributed by Meaghan Foran. Edited by Shannon McCarthy.