Wednesday, March 18, 2015 // The Statement 3B

Becoming a Townie: How to read in Ann Arbor

A

nn Arborites know how to
read, but for newbies to the
city, perfecting this takes

some time.

Moving to a new city is like get-

ting a new credit card — you’ve got
to think about every area of your
life in which this personal infor-
mation is recorded and update it.
You don’t realize the full impact
until Netflix is randomly can-
celed in the middle of your House
of Cards episode, until you end
up spending unnecessary time
changing your Amazon informa-
tion, until you can’t Venmo a friend
on a Friday or until your new com-
pany cancels the card when they
see an “unusual charge” in another
state that your old company knew
you visited every month.

Moving
means
unexpected

changes, unforeseen costs and
unnecessarily spent time trying
to figure it out. Once you’re done
changing your mailing address,
finding a new doctor in the area
and whatever else comes up,
you’re eventually going to have to
find your reading nook — everyone
must have a good reading nook!

Luckily for us, Ann Arbor’s full

of them, and the day will
come as you are settling
in to your new community
that, if you’re anything like
me, you’ll want to get away
from it all in exchange for
your fictional world, but
this isn’t so easy.

With a roommate and

a rowdy hall, I remem-
ber moving to Ann Arbor
and reading in the UGLi,
which is completely laugh-
able now. Sure, I knew how
to read, but in this city, I
didn’t really know how to
read. Immersive reading is
all about letting your novel
consume you, but trying to
immersive yourself in the
wrong location can inter-
rupt your thought process,
detract from your reading
experience and just gen-
erally violate the author’s
intention for how their
work was to be read.

To read immersively, I

highly suggest you get the
heck off campus, espe-
cially if it’s a Saturday in
the fall.

It wasn’t until I spent my first

summer here that I realized just
how vast the reading culture
extends, and all of the prime read-
ing real estate I had been ignor-
ing. If you go far enough north of
central campus, before actually
making it to what I consider north
campus, you will find two parks
adjacent to one another that I have
now discovered are called Broad-
way and Riverside parks, respec-
tively.

These are really just a couple

patches of open space and a few
trees, but they are settled on either
side of the Huron River, making
for an ideal summer spot. With-
out walking all the way to the Arb,
having to deal with parking or the
crowds that, at least for me, were
a little distracting on summer
weekends, you can sit nestled next
to the river and trees with a good
book for hours here.

When Ann Arbor started to get

a little chilly — and then when Ann
Arbor became utterly unbearable
— going to Literati to peruse books
and then taking them over to
TeaHaus became a regular routine
for me. I’ve also checked out the

Dawn Treader, which I don’t think
is great to read in, but it’s a pretty
good, cheap Literati alternative.
There’s also Kaleidoscope Books
and Collectibles, if you’re into that
sort of thing, which is conveniently
next to my second favorite winter
reading location, the Food Co-op
in Kerrytown. (Although, as a fair
warning, this place also gets a little
too loud on weekends!)

Practicing these patterns of

good reading is the only way I have
ever been able to hold myself to
reading all of the lovely, perspec-
tive-shaking,
thought-inducing

novels I’ve read during my time
at college. Spending my free time
engulfed in the thoughts of Maya
Angelou, Arthur Golden, Albert
Camus, and George Eliot has a
way of providing clarity to every-
thing else, but being distracted by
phones, roommates, and perpetu-
al chatter has a way of ruining the
experience. Go out into the world
and find yourself a nook: it’ll do
you and your mind some good, and
you can explore the weird little
corners Ann Arbor hides at the
same time.

T H E T H O U G H T B U B B L E

“St. Patrick’s Day means being out and about. It’s

the camaraderie, the high-spiritedness in the air —

it’s all the good vibes.”

–Washtenaw Community College student GAVIN HANERT

B Y E M M A K E R R
#FORTHEKIDS
ON THE
RECORD

“There are no words to describe how these college kids

impact our family.”

–WENDY MUZZARELLI, whose daughter receives therapy

treatment at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, and who benefitted

from the fundraising efforts of this year’s Dance Marathon.

LUNA ARCHEY/DAILY

GRANT HARDY/DAILY

ILLUSTRATION BY MAGGIE MILLER