I spent my birthday at the bookstore and this is what I got.

In the 90s, our library didn't carry the chaptered English books I wanted to read and purchasing books can be costly. There was, however, a little store called "Rent A Book" which is what it was: you can rent the books. It was marginally cheaper I suppose because my dad would take me there every Saturday and as a voracious reader, I would finish all 10 books by Thursday. As a kid, he had taught himself English from Beatles lyrics and whatever scarce books he could find. So, he loved this habit of mine because they were English books and to him it was an achievement of sorts. When my dad passed during pre-vaccine Covid, I found out about it while I was in the middle of reading Emily Henry's Beach Read. The book was meant to be a lockdown distraction because the cover was cute. It was actually not cute. I ended up grieving along with the main character who had also lost her dad. The dynamic of the relationship was different, the MC was finding out secrets about her dad that made her…