Read something else.

Literally anything, by anyone, else.

Many years ago, your friendly Bookseller was on the dating apps. And there was a handsome fellow on the apps, eager to meet up at a charming local coffee shops. He was a tall, pale, floppy-haired fellow who always had a book in his back pocket, and who spoke slowly, with a faint but undefinable accent. Maybe British? Maybe Hollywood. Vaguely transatlantic, fancy but not pretentious.

At that first coffee shop meeting, he leaned over, said her name, then sat down at her table and said “I’m so glad I guessed right; you’re the prettiest person in here. Not that it matters!” An adorkable beginning; the best kind.

And so the Bookseller and the handsome floppy-haired fellow sat for a bit with their rapidly cooling teas, then ambled down the street to wander the stacks of the library. They made plans to meet up again, maybe for a vegan dinner in his illegal squat; he was committed to social justice and to philosophy and to books. They were both freshly divorced, and he mentioned that he was spending his 40th year reading only female authors. He had a paperback Bronte in the back pocket of his threadbare jeans.

He was catching up on women’s writing, which seemed both sensible and problematic. He’d rarely been assigned women’s writing in high school, and then he majored in math. But then again, your friendly Bookseller had rarely been assigned women’s writing in high school, and she hadn’t waited four decades to catch up.

Point of fact, your friendly Bookseller arrived in college well read from white writers of all genders, and when she discovered the first giant hole in her reading, she sat down on the floor of the PS section and tore through the entire womanist fiction shelf in one semester.

A year reading only women was a good beginning. For a man at midlife, recovering from a broken marriage, figuring out what to do next. It would be a good way to find out what he’d been missing. It would be a good way to get a second date with a friendly Bookseller!

And it would be a good way to avoid the experience that so many Readers have had over the past few days, reading the latest unshocking updates to the horrible, familiar, boringly bad behavior of a tall pale famous floppy-haired dude whose accent and talent won so many hearts, and whose poor choices broke them.

If you do read the books of the other writers, the ones who aren’t men, the ones who aren’t white, the ones who are disabled or queer or somehow, in some other way, different from the bestselling mainstream: you are not promised an end to heartbreak. Anyone can disappoint their fans; all our idols have feet of the same crumbling clay.

But at the very least, if you do read these other writers, you can expect new and different disappointments. You’ll find fewer con creeps pinching bottoms and leering at cosplayers and making off-color remarks to the press, and also: you’ll find good stories. Different stories.

Turn off the endless reruns of Gunsmoke (But In Space!) and you’ll find new stories that explore new worlds in new ways. Stories that ask What If….? but continue to assume women matter, children matter, people with disabilities matter, BIPOC matter, queer folks matter, poor folks matter, everyone matters and the one thing that will stop mattering so much is the terrible behavior of rich straight white dudes you stopped reading in 2009.

You’ll hear about yet another long streak of alleged crimes and you’ll think, “Oh what a shame. Sex pests are so tedious; that sounds truly horrible for the survivors involved. I do hope he’s successfully prosecuted.”

But you won’t have to agonize over finishing your TBR because he won’t be on it. There will be no room. It will be too full.

And so will your life and your mind and your heart: full of stories by someone else. Literally anyone else. Here’s a place to start.