Ugh. Inflation.

I'm so sick of living this inflation life. I made the arduous sojourn to Ikea last week because I needed more hook-thingys for the peg board that holds all of our beautiful gifts at The Literary and I was shocked to my bones! One bag of 2 little metal hooks cost $5! FIVE DOLLARS! I was aghast. I thought, $1.50 at MOST, but no. It was five entire dollars.

I cut back on the extra "just in case" hooks, stuck to the list, and came home using cruise control as much as possible.

It's not news that things are crazy expensive these days, but it still hurts. It hurts at the grocery store, at Target, in my imaginary shopping cart where the Jimmy Choos live. But it doesn't hurt at The Literary.

No matter how much prices increase in every other aspect of your life, books cost basically the same amount this year as they did last year. That's because for some reason, publishers print the price of the book right on the back which means bookstores can't raise their prices when times get tough. Bookstores are not gas pumps! They're not even Ikeas.

House of Spirits by Isabel Allende (SO GOOD, btw) costs $18.00 right now, it cost $18.00 last year, and it will (probably) cost $18.00 next year too. Books are always there for you, always waiting for you to pick them up so they can take you away on an adventure or teach you something new. And this year, they're one of the few gifts within reach financially too, especially considering that even milk isn't as accessible as it once was.

It's definitely gotten expensive for us to run The Literary (thanks inflation). Our energy costs are insane and supply prices have gone up, just like everywhere else. But we're not passing those costs on to your book cart. Your dollar will go just as far at The Literary as it did last year* (and would have the year before that, and that, and that...).

We love that The Literary is the one store where your holiday shopping can be done with a glass of something sparkly in hand and with a lot less pain in the wallet than anywhere else.

Did we mention how much we love being your bookstore? Because we do.

*to be totally transparent, books have gone up less than 1% (0.64%) since last year. Doesn't seem like much when everything else has gone up at least 8%