How
appropriate that I bought a book about bookstores from a nice indie bookstore
in Woodstock, New York, a town that has memorialized the 1960s like no other
place can. The book came with a bookmark from the store, the Golden Note Book, that offered a quote from Doris
Lessing:
“There
is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking
up books that attract you. Reading only
those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag – and
never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part
of a trend or a movement.
The
book that I purchased, My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to
Browse Read, and Shop, edited by Ronald Rice and Booksellers Across North
America, takes a terrific approach to talking about books and the stores that sell them.
We hear from scores of established and successful writers, from New York Times best-selling authors to award-winning writers, including Ann Patchett, John Grisham, Pete Hamill, Paolo Mancuso, Nancy Thayer and Fannie Flagg. They talk about their positive experiences in going to indie bookstores.
I’ve been to a number of them and can attest to their unique qualities, including Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store, Carol Gables Books & Books, Mystic’s Bank Square Books, Cambridge’s Harvard Book Store, Vineyard Haven’s Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, Portland’s Powell’s City of Books, Austin’s Book People, NYC’s Strand Bookstore, McNally Jackson Books, Millerton’s Oblong Books & Music, and so many others.
We hear from scores of established and successful writers, from New York Times best-selling authors to award-winning writers, including Ann Patchett, John Grisham, Pete Hamill, Paolo Mancuso, Nancy Thayer and Fannie Flagg. They talk about their positive experiences in going to indie bookstores.
I’ve been to a number of them and can attest to their unique qualities, including Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store, Carol Gables Books & Books, Mystic’s Bank Square Books, Cambridge’s Harvard Book Store, Vineyard Haven’s Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, Portland’s Powell’s City of Books, Austin’s Book People, NYC’s Strand Bookstore, McNally Jackson Books, Millerton’s Oblong Books & Music, and so many others.
The
authors write glowingly of particular bookstores:
“places
of genuine wonder.”
“physical
manifestation of the wide world’s longest, best, most thrilling conversation.”
“the
cultural soul of a large community.”
“bookshop
as both a community center and a tabernacle of ideas.”
“is
the hub of everything good and wise”
“kind
of a sanctuary”
Author
Jan Clinch wrote of Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT:
“The
main thing was that the instant you stepped inside the door you knew that this
was a place where books were honored.
There was a kind of respectful intelligence behind everything, and to
make your way down the aisles was to engage in a conversation with whoever it
was who’d arranged them.”
I
conclude with words from Wendell Berry, who wrote of his beloved Louisville
Store, Carmichaels Bookstore:
“Sometimes
I go to buy a certain book. Sometimes I
go with no purpose but to see what books may be there and to visit a little
while with the people who work there.
The place has the quietness, the friendliness, the smell and the
tangibility that a bookstore ought to have. It is a fair incarnation of the
manifold life of books. To go there and
find a book I didn’t expect or didn’t expect to want, to decide I want it, to
buy it as a treasure to take home, to conduct the whole transaction in a
passage or friendly conversation –that is to every way a pleasure. A part of my economic life thus becomes a
part of my social life.”
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