What Happens in Vegas

Gets shared on Substack

Summer is officially here and with it comes air travel, road trips, beach days, pool time…in other words, tons of opportunities to read! We recently enjoyed a long weekend in Las Vegas and the night before our flight, I spent an extra hour (on top of my usual hour) reading the book I was about two-thirds of the way through in order to finish it before the trip. Since I read hardcovers and carry on my luggage, I never want to bring two books with me (too heavy), but of course, I don’t want to run out of book either (a scenario infinitely worse than heavy luggage).

In advance of the trip, I finished Mansion Beach by Meg Mitchell Moore (a delightful read, and a suitable replacement for the gaping beach read hole left by Elin Hilderbrand’s semi-retirement) and packed Anne Tyler’s Three Days In June for the three days in Vegas. Well, three hours in June is all it took for me to read that book, so I spent the last hour of our flight staring out the window, which was actually lovely - all that desert and canyon landscape stretching on into infinity.

When we landed, though, I was a bit panicky without a book. I knew we were going to want to spend at least part of our weekend at the hotel pool; in case you hadn’t heard, Vegas is hot in June and there’s only so much time I can spend in a casino (my husband, on the other hand…). Not to mention the entirety of the flight back!

Upon arriving at the hotel, we learned that our room wasn’t ready, so I suggested the only natural thing - go find a local bookstore! Surely, we can’t be the first people to land in Las Vegas and immediately hit up a bookstore. Right?

After a quick search on Google Maps and a 15-minute Uber ride, we arrived….at quite possibly one of the coolest bookstores I have ever been to. This was unexpected to say the least; clearly I had not given Sin City enough credit for being home to some serious fellow bibliophiles. Although now that I think about it, I should not have been so taken aback—Vegas does everything a little bigger and brighter than the rest.

The bookshop is called Writer’s Block, and its rather unassuming exterior—surrounded by not one but three wedding chapels, a pawn shop, and, fittingly, the Clark County, Nevada Marriage License Bureau—gave way to a magical interior within which I quite literally could have lived. A charming coffee shop takes up the lobby entrance (this would be key to my inhabitation), and just beyond that you are greeted by walls and walls of books, artfully arranged among whimsical decor.

As I mentioned, ordinarily I would have spent an entire day/week/lifetime in a shop such as this. But we were in the first hour of our Vegas Vacation, so in a return of goodwill to my significant other for even joining me on this boondoggle, I knew I better grab a book and go. Luckily, I always always have a running list of books in my head that I’ve heard about or seen somewhere, so even as I was first perusing the shelves, a number of titles instantly stood out to me.

I ended up selecting Catherine Newman’s Sandwich, which I knew would be a light(ish) read for the Vegas pool scene while also carrying some depth in the story (if you’ve read We All Want Impossible Things by the same author, you know she’s not the type to write “just” a frivolous, summer romp-read).

It ended up being a perfect choice for the pool and part of the flight home: a funny and touching family drama that takes place on Cape Cod (Sandwich being the name of a beach town there, but also, the family eats a lot of sandwiches in the story).

The Writer’s Block ended up being the first of many, many wonderful surprises during our three days in June in Las Vegas, but just as we were preparing to leave on Sunday, I got one more—the Harry Reid Airport Hudson News carries a rather substantial selection of novels. I had to buy one, of course, taking a chance on an author I had never heard of, and I’m so glad I did. More on that next time.