How many times can I say that I really, really like BookMooch? I know you are probably tired of hearing about it, but I can't help myself. Today Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading was waiting for me when I came home from work. Not only is it a guilt-free mooched book, but it is also a lovely hardcover chock full of interesting anecdotes about reading, and it is also illustrated! Perhaps this should be my next nonfiction read. However, I am still working on Lewis Buzbee's The Yellow Lighted Bookshop. While it is about books and reading, it is really more about bookstores. Here is a dscription of a bookstore Buzbee worked at (one I am very envious of):
"Even before we got inside the store, when Greta and I arrived for our first meeting (both booksellers had been wooed away from another bookstore...), we sensed that there was something different about Printers. Along the top of the store, spelled out in not very elegant white stick-on letters was a repeated border of words "Books, Bucher, Livres, Libros." Inside we found sections of foreign-language titles to back the boast. We also found 1,200 magazines from around the world; a Poetry section larger than Crow's fiction section; a Fiction section almost larger than Crow's entire stock: individual sections of Asian, Russian, and Middle Eastern histories, each one larger than Crow's History section, and American and European History sections that far outstripped the few shelves at Crow dedicated to these topics. Their Psychology section went far beyond Looking Out for Number One, and the Business section quite a bit was more sophisticated than The Power of Positive Thinking. There were long sections of specialized Chemistry, Biology, Mathematics, and Astronomy texts, most of them academic monographs and indecipherable to the common reader; and significantly, a section of technical computer-programming manuals at a time when few people owned computers."
At one time I worked in a wonderful (though much smaller) independent bookstore that was located in an historic part of Omaha. It had a lot of charisma (meaning it was small and family run). It was in an older building with massively high ceilings, little nooks and crannies and was chock full of books (lots of books that were "off the beaten track, too"). Much like many other independents here in town, it simply could not compete and finally went out of business (I had worked there ten years by that time!). Now we are left with Borders, Barnes and Noble, a few smaller and very specialized bookstores, one lone independent and some used bookstores (one very excellent one and still in the same historic part of town where I worked). I am jealous of people who have many, different kinds of bookstores to choose from. I am especially jealous of people who can shop at Powells, The Tattered Cover or The Strand. Are you lucky enough to have just such a bookstore where you live? Of course by now you have probably noticed I manage to find plenty of books irregardless of where I shop locally!