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

