A Lie
Listen, we love paying taxes. As a member of the community, it’s our privilege to participate in the community and we only get a nice place to live and work if we all pitch in our fair share.
But it’s nice to get a little break once in a while, right?
This year the sales tax holiday falls on the weekend of August 13-14 — an annual August event we’ve only recently discovered is actually ensconced in Massachusetts law. The legislature included it in a larger economic bill that passed in 2018, with the idea that a reprieve from the usual 6.25 percent sales tax boosts sales during a historically slow time of year.
Here at the Book Shop, we’ve decided that it’s the perfect weekend to also hold our annual summer sale. In addition to paying no sales tax, everything in the store will also be 20 percent (or more) off. As we inch toward September, a month that publishers have always used to release the biggest books of the year — ahead of award season and with enough time to establish the books for holiday sales — August is a good time for us to clear off the shelves and make room for fall arrivals.
But the tax holiday also seems like a good opportunity to give back and to support a cause we believe in.
So, this year we’re also launching a garage sale on the same weekend. Out of our garage on Oak Street, we’ll be selling used and damaged books, as well as advance reading copies, at a steep discount — from between $1 and $10. And every single dollar collected at the garage sale will be donated to the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund. (Credit cards will be accepted, but cash is preferable so we don’t lose the 3 percent credit card fee.) Used book donations are welcome and they can be dropped off during opening hours at the store any day before August 12.
We might not all believe in the same causes, but that’s our privilege, too, and one of the reasons we love this country.
We know abortion elicits complicated and emotional responses. In such situations, we often turn to books to help us sort out our feelings and solidify our beliefs. On the topic at hand, we have recently read and enjoyed the novels Mercy Street by Jennifer Haigh and A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies for their complicated and nuanced portrayals of the topic. The Family Roe by Joshua Prager is a new, thoroughly researched and well-reported history of the woman who was “Jane Roe,” her complex life and the other characters around her involved in the case and her activism. Jane Against the World by Karen Blumenthal is another history, one that traces abortion rights in America up to and through the Roe v. Wade decision.
If you feel like you’ve got a good grip on your opinions about abortion, I’d encourage you to read one or two of these and see if you don’t find some nuance you haven’t already considered.
We, personally, would never tell you what to do with your body, but we’re happy to make recommendations for great books to read — and the sales tax holiday seems like a great time to bring your body down to the Book Shop and see what you might like to read next.
Hannah Harlow is owner of The Book Shop, an independent bookstore in Beverly Farms. Harlow writes biweekly recommendations for us. See more of what she recommends reading at thecricket.com.
