"The book is still the highest delight."

Left: Carolina Book Rack, Greenville, SC.


After my library preachment last Monday, an email pointedly asks me WHAT do I have against Barnes & Noble? Other than the fact that they drive out independent bookstores, not a thing.

The fact is: I've spent many hours huddled up in used bookstore-corners, perusing stacks of true crime, scifi, fantasy, mindless celebrity-bios, forgotten literary classics and wonky political paperbacks. There is something thoroughly magic about used bookstores; that musty-page smell lets you know you're in for shelves of fun. I'll buy a biography of Roger Vadim for a buck, but I won't buy it new. (I guess it's like waiting for movies to come out on DVD!)

Some of my sentimental favorites:

Jackson Street Books - Athens, GA. A landmark in Bulldog country! An autographed poster lets you know that REM shops here, but I've never seen them.

Open Book - Greenville, SC. Your humble narrator's first job in the upstate was for this Greenville institution. New and used books share space with countless chronicles of the Old South.

Downtown Books and News - Asheville, NC. Trendier sister bookstore Malaprops gets all the attention and the hotshot writers (with accompanying Big Events), but funky DB&N is dusty, musty, plays old soul music, offers abandoned copies of socialist newspapers for free, and has old strips of theatre seats you can sit in while you read. After looking at clean new books at well-scrubbed, hardwood-floors Malaprops, walk a few blocks over to DB&N and join the truly cool.

The mother lode was Atlanta's Oxford Books, now sadly defunct. May it rest in peace. Like Malaprops/DB&N, there was a well-scrubbed upscale version, and a funky used incarnation called Oxford Too, at Peachtree-Battle. A day at the double-Oxfords was a Christmas pilgrimage for me and Mr Daisy, a gift we always gave ourselves. The demise of the store(s) pained us greatly.

Politics and Prose - Washington, DC. Almost as wonderful as the old Atlanta Oxfords, but too far away for me to visit regularly. Harumph, harumph.

I'd love to hear about your favorites, and add a link if possible!

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Listening to: The Jesus and Mary Chain - The Living End
via FoxyTunes

Save the libraries!

Left: Graphic by Aaron Louie.

From Mountain Xpress, here is Ileana Grams-Moog, discussing an ongoing, national issue--the continuous, rapid depletion of public library collections. She is describing the process in Asheville (NC) but it could just as easily have been anywhere:

From my time working as a librarian, I know that all libraries cull their collections on an ongoing basis. But what’s happening now is apparently a permanent downsizing. Nor is it only fiction that is disappearing. Science, history, biography, psychology, cooking, gardening, crafts: Every area is being depleted. Many—indeed, most—of the books being sold are out of print and therefore not easily available elsewhere, if at all. This is especially deplorable in areas where old books contain information not available in new ones. In cooking, gardening, crafts, yoga, poetry, history and even in science, in fields such as animal behavior and paleontology, old books contain detailed, lively information that’s no longer covered in more recent ones. To get rid of these books is the equivalent of deliberate, collective amnesia.

I was told that the criterion used is how recently the book last circulated. I just bought, for $2, a book that I took out about a year ago (and that cost the library more than $30 when acquired).

The other issue is storing the books, if they are not discarded. The public appears willing to pay for libraries, but not usually willing to spend tax money to build warehouses for old books that no longer circulate. (What's to become of the thousands of old, dated books, if indeed they are kept?) There are thousands of volumes discarded every year, everywhere. Most municipalities have periodic book-sales, and if you have ever been to one of these, you know some really fantastic, unique books are culled from local collections, constantly.

And what about the user-atmosphere of the libraries themselves? In larger cities (and increasingly, in small ones, too) homeless people sleep in libraries during the day, use the restrooms, panhandle when security guards aren't looking, etc. Have Borders and Barnes & Noble become the new 'library'--as educated, suburban readers prefer not to deal with the riff-raff that is the general public?

For an entertaining and informative take on the library biz, check out Blogging Librarian.

And I can only add, with considerable vehemence, SAVE THE LIBRARIES!!!!!!
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Listening to: The Volebeats - Radio Flyer
via FoxyTunes