Aurora Bookshop Is Open

My first day student teaching, a child brought a gun to our school. It was a school built off the plans of a California prison, so the classrooms did not have windows; the only windows were in the hallways. Thus, during lockdown we were sealed in a cinder block room with no egress for hours. This is how my teaching career began.

When a colleague recently learned this story, she marveled, "I can't believe you're still teaching."

Until she said this, it hadn't occurred to me how painful that experience had been because unfortunately so much of this has all become routine.

That day we were lucky. The police had excellent hostage negotiators who talked the child out of harming themself or others. By seventh period, the day was back to normal.

But this isn't the normal I want to live in and yet we don't get to live outside the culture we're in.

Books have always given me strength because they help me grapple with uncertainty, provide escape, and help me better understand the histories that connect us.

(Book were also the literal solution offered to us by well meaning, but equally clueless educational safety consultants, who suggested that we armor ourselves with the thick literary anthology textbooks the next time this kind of thing happens.)

In short, books, whether reading them or listening to them, can provide peace and joy, particularly when times are hard. Therefore, I'm delighted to share my new venture, Aurora Bookshop by Gina Sipley with you. Here's a coupon for 20% off your first book order - feel free to share with your friends.

I'm starting off my store with five shelves that reflect my quirky interests and each month I'll add more books and shelves, sometimes sharing more in depth recommendations within the newsletter.

If my tastes are not your interest, no worries! You can still support local independent bookstores and profit share with author affiliates.

Any book you want, this includes audio books, piano books, cookbooks, kids books, etc, can be purchased through my store. Just go to the search bar at the top of the page to place an order:https://bookshop.org/shop/ginasipley

I can also curate private shelves for your book clubs and events.

Here are my inaugural shelves...

Remarkable Memoirs

Ordinary People Whose Stories Shake You In The Best Possible Way

Women Writers of Internet Culture

Smart People Explain How The Internet Works

(elder) Millennial Nostalgia

Remembering A Childhood In Analog and An Adolescence In Digital

Hope In Surreal Times

How To Be Present When You Want To Escape

$ Money $

How To Get It and How To Not Let It Consume You

I finally finished my second major draft of my book proposal. It's by far the most difficult writing project I've ever completed. There's something very strange about spending so much time on a genre that has such a narrow and specific audience. For example, if a publisher does not buy my proposal, there's not really an audience for reading a failed 100 page book proposal. I could, of course, endeavor to complete the book and self publish, etc., but the proposal itself is not the thing people want to read and yet it has consumed almost a year of my writing life.

Still it's good to be able to at least share my news with you.

Thanks for walking beside me,

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