Season’s Greetings! ⛄

Welcome to the 10th edition of The CoSee Edit!

CoSee is an eco-minded, values-led community fostering unexpected and new relationships through sustainable living. We are building something unique – digital and physical spaces and events where people can pause, share ideas, and support what matters.

As we reflect on 2025 and get ready for 2026, we want to bring you a little bit of joy and inspiration to close out the year. This week, we are sharing:

Ready? Here we go! 🚀

We’re halfway through Chanukah, moving swiftly toward Christmas and Kwanzaa, with New Year’s resolutions already tapping at the door. There’s a beautiful way to celebrate without feeding the beast of consumerism: give stories, support causes, and build community—all while keeping sustainability at the heart of your gifts. Here are holiday book-centric ideas from us to you!🌿📚✨

📚 1. Book Subscriptions with Purpose

Dive into the Icelandic holiday ritual Jólabókaflóð (The Christmas Book Flood) – a tradition where loved ones exchange books on Christmas Eve and spend the night reading them together with hot chocolate. It’s a gift experience rooted in slowing down and savoring stories, not stuff. We like the idea that this can be done any night, with anyone!

This tradition is profoundly about connection and reflection – perfect for values-led holiday gift giving.

If giving a physical book doesn’t fit someone’s lifestyle, consider:

Let’s focus on experiences and access over accumulating items.

Coffee shops have become offices (entry fee: one latte). Bars double as first dates. Living rooms spill into public space.

So where does that leave the library?

In today’s world of Wi-Fi passwords and oat-milk matcha lattes, libraries are often compared to cafés: quiet places to work, meet, or pass time. But that comparison misses something essential. Libraries aren’t trying to compete with third spaces — they’re quietly doing something far more radical.

Libraries are one of the last truly public spaces left.

Unlike cafés or coworking spaces, libraries:

Funded through public systems and protected by civic mandates, libraries exist to serve people — not profit. They prioritize access to information, privacy, lifelong learning, and community wellbeing. That makes them covertly sustainable: shared resources, low waste, high impact.

Yes, libraries host classes, workshops, story hours, and civic gatherings. This isn’t mission drift — it’s mission deepening. Libraries have always reduced barriers: to knowledge, to opportunity, to connection.

The formats change, but the purpose doesn’t. While the internet offers information, libraries offer context, care, and trust. While coffee shops offer ambiance, libraries offer belonging without obligation.

Cafés are wonderful third spaces, but they’re transactional. You rent your seat with a purchase. Libraries ask only one thing: be here. 📍 They’re one of the few places where you can linger without guilt, learn without being sold to, and exist without performing productivity.

Use them. Borrow one book. Attend an event. Advocate and/or vote for funding. Bring a friend. Libraries remind us that community doesn’t need a checkout counter. As third spaces multiply, let’s protect the ones that ask nothing in return — and quietly offer just about anything.

Inspired by libraries — places that invite us to linger, share, and belong — CoSee is launching a new way for local readers to connect, starting with the books they already love and the stories they’ve been waiting to find. CoSee Corner is our small attempt to echo what libraries have always done best: create friendly, accessible, non-transactional spaces where people can pause, share ideas, and reconnect — without pressure to consume.

This January 2026, we’re kicking things off with a small pilot, designed to bring together book lovers across the tri-state area. Participants will showcase favorite reads, discover new ones through neighbors, and connect with others nearby — no algorithms, no pressure to buy, just shared stories.

This is the first in a series of experiments that will evolve how readers:

Each phase builds toward something bigger. We’ll host an IRL community gathering to bring the experience to life — because stories are often better when they’re shared face-to-face.

We’re looking for 50+ tri-state area readers to help shape this journey from the ground up.

If you’re curious, care deeply about books, and want to be part of something thoughtful and new, we’d love to have you.

🖋️ Sign up to join the first wave — and pass it along to someone you’d read with. (It takes less than 2 minutes.)

Questions? Reach us at [email protected].

Thank you for being here. Forward this to a friend, reply to let us know what you’re reading or drinking, follow us on Instagram, reach out to [email protected] for partnership opportunities, or just stay tuned.

✨ Wishing you all a happy and healthy 2026! May the year ahead bring all that you need and want. ✨

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