A Map of a Reading Life: Bookstores I Have Loved
There are places where we feel as if we have stepped through the back of the wardrobe with the Percival children into our own personal Narnias. My magic world is any bookstore I visit. Though I understand forces of evil exist to make a plot more compelling, bookshops are mercifully without villains unless expense counts as the evil I futlely attempt to subdue!
While I love libraries, with their musty smell of old paper, the solid color book covers made of the book version of linoleum embossed with white letters on the spine, the Dewey Decimal number at the bottom, beckoning me, the hushed reverence of the reference section or the scholars busy at long tables, bookstores have a different seductive power over me. In them, Narnia meets Eden—magic meets paradise. They are full of temptation and the lustful lure of acquisition.
Library books must be returned, and I practically break out in hives if I discover a book is overdue—I’m too much of a goodie-goodie to break the librarian’s laws. But bookstore books are mine forever, despite lack of shelf space, despite a family that kindly suggests I have a problem akin to an addiction, despite lack of time to devour new titles as quickly as I wish. And, given Jeff Bezos and his schemes, I’m now even more of an independent bookstore book junkie—supporting an indie bookstore somehow assuages my pangs about buying MORE books. I eschew Barnes and Noble for the delights of Loganberry on Larchmere—painted purple on the outside and equipped with easy chairs and cats for an improved browsing experience! Too many bookstores I have loved are gone now, but they live in my memory.
As a little girl, trips to The Country Bookshop were for special occasions: birthdays or Christmas wish lists, a treat after a particularly painful operation on an ingrown toenail. While ordering from Scholastic was one of my favorite events at school and trips to Ludington Library occurred weekly, the Country Bookshop felt special. Up a short flight of stairs, the store, in my memory, was paneled in dark wood, the children’s books displayed at the front to the left. It was there I acquired a gorgeous hardback on the stories of the ballets. More than 50 years later, I can smell the wonderful combination of paper and ink, the perfume of the coiffed and suited ladies in pumps who helped me pick out titles, the thrill of being allowed to choose a hardback, so different from my typical Yearling paperbacks, replete with shiny covers and full color illustrations. I have never gotten over my love of picture books.
Coffee, French bread, books? Is there a better combination? Atticus on Chapel Street in New Haven opened when I was a junior in college and was a favorite destination. No one bothered you, no matter how long you sat, drinking French Press coffee, working (by hand) on a paper, reading a book. It smelled great and was a beacon of light and words on gray winter afternoons. When our son, Atticus, was born, he received a number of t-shirts from his namesake bookshop.
As a young schoolteacher, I would often drive from the campus of Northfield Mount Hermon fifteen minutes up I-91 just across the Vermont state line to Brattleboro. With shelves of blonde maple and many nooks with cozy chairs for reading, The Book Cellar—gone now--was a refuge for someone brand new to teaching, offering a quiet respite from a busy week and lots and lots of new titles to browse and buy.
Later, as a Master’s student at NYU, I haunted The Strand in the village in NYC looking for books about theatre, browsing the stacks, willing to be surprised and hoping what I discovered would be on a shelf I could reach with the help of a stepstool.
Still one of my favorite NYC destinations, The Corner Bookshop, like The Country Bookshop of my childhood, exudes refinement. Books are displayed on tables in the center of the store and on shelves around the store’s perimeter. The clerks are knowledgeable about books but never fuss; they answer questions with kindness and patience, cheerfully sending books to their regulars’ apartments. Oh, to be a regular and to be able to read first run fiction in hardback.
On the first floor of our dear friends’ building on the corner of 107 and Broadway, the Bank Street Bookshop beckoned me every time we went to see Marcia and Paul. My friend, Andy, managed it for a long time, so visits were doubly precious—smart people who really knew books helped me find the latest picture books that might resonate for the little girls in the school I lead—and there was always a chance I might run into Andy! That store’s closing made me weep.
When our grown daughters moved to the Upper West Side, expeditions to Book Culture were high on my list of weekend visit activities—bright and inviting with gorgeous displays and lots of other tempting items—finger puppets, purses, household goods, there was a rewards program—buy a certain number of books and get a free book.
Each summer, I take a trip to Otto’s in Williamsport, about 45 minutes from Eagles Mere. There, the booksellers fill my arms—the latest Louise Penny? Of course, it’s August, and her new volume about Armand Gamache has pride of place. Something to read at Convocation? Certainly. How many years have I visited Otto’s? I can’t remember, but it is a treat to savor. The day my beloved friend, Jane, died unexpectedly, I went to Otto’s, and Alissa and Nancy’s kindness comforted me. Alissa sent me home with a book she insisted I could not pay for: Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude. When the pandemic hit, Alissa and Nancy to the rescue. Quarantined in Shaker Heights, I longed for new books to hold. So, I phoned them and asked them to fill up a box and send it to me—when they asked what I wanted, I said, “You have never steered me wrong,” and when the box arrived, it was like Christmas in April. I rationed the titles because each one felt like a piece of Turkish Delight with which the Snow Queen assured Edmund’s devotion in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
There are more, of course. Shakespeare and Co. across from, Notre Dame, Joseph Banks, the bookshop that greeted me when we first moved to Cleveland, the used bookstore in Eagles Mere itself, the Owl Bookshop of Bryn Mawr College, down a steep flight of steps on the Upper East Side, bookshops in college towns—I love the Kenyon College bookshop where I bought my first Lamy fountain pen. And here on Larchmere, in Cleveland, there is Loganberry. Purple and delicious with armchairs and a cat, gifts and kind, wise clerks, it is a favorite weekend destination. We all have our Meccas. Bookstores are mine.
