Bonus Dispatch: Bookstores, an appreciation

Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of access to libraries. Most of the time if I was going to get books, it would be mass market paperbacks from the B. Dalton or Waldenbooks when we went to the mall on weekends.

One Summer in my teenage years, I can still recall the long, agonizing wait for the Barnes and Noble to open just down the road from the apartment I lived in. Unlike my local library, I could walk there without crossing any major roads.

The first time I walked into this Barnes and Noble the soft classical music and strong smell of brewing coffee washed over me like a wave. The (fake) wood paneling on the walls and the (real) wooden bookshelves looked so sophisticated that I was convinced that this was the first ‘serious’ bookstore I’d ever been to. For several years afterward, that store became a home away from home and a refuge against the turbulence of being a weird kid—my fortress of imagination, ideas, and expensive coffee.

Barnes and Noble once prided themselves on being people’s “library of choice” and boy did I ever use it like one. I’d sit on the floor in the aisles and read fantasies and sometimes non-fiction (histories mostly). Pretty much anything that had “Dragonlance” or “Forgotten Realms” on it would get my $7.95 (when I had it), but I discovered Stephen King and Ursula K. Le Guin on that floor.

I didn’t discover indie bookstores until I could seek them out on my own in my early 20s. One store in particular, Jim Reed Books, blew me away with the time-tossed treasures it had within its walls. I found my first banged up Michael Moorcock hardcover there for the first time (Elric, of course). Seriously, if you’re ever in Birmingham, go see Jim!

I don’t know when Barnes will finally head to the Gray Havens and pass into the West, but I will be sad when it does. And Jim is getting quite up there now, and I imagine one day soon he’ll have to either close the shop or hand it down to another book-mad hoarder of stories. But if I had to bet on it, I think the indie bookstores will not only survive, but thrive in the current publishing environment. Indies build community in a way the big box stores can’t really emulate even when they try. They’re vital centers of community, particularly for marginalized voices, and we need those now more than ever.

My old B&N has long since shuttered and become a PetSmart. The mall bookstores are (mostly – see the picture) gone. But every indie bookstore from my hometown is still open, most of them for over 20 years. Despite ebooks, despite COVID, despite all the calamities of our current moment. Print book sales continue to do well, and with the rise of prestige editions of books, I think small booksellers can continue to thrive in the days to come.

PS: A couple of weeks ago, I performed in a medieval sword fighting demonstration at an indoor ren faire inside a mall here in Orlando (that's another story). While walking to the place where our HEMA club would set up our booth, I passed by a B. DALTON BOOKSELLER! I later found out that it was pretty much a B&N operating in a small-box retail space, but for a moment I felt like Sam Neill looking at live dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. Later on as I was headed to the stage for my first exhibition match, I caught the strong smell of bookstore coffee. I breathed it in deep. :)