How I’m Coping Without My Bookstore

 

My old girl, Sarah, in her younger days

“It’s only temporary!” Loretta (played by Cher) yells at her father when he asks to see her engagement ring and she shows him (as he points out) what is obviously a pinkie ring. 

 

“Everything is temporary”! he yells back.

 

“Moonstruck” is one of my favorite movies, one of those rare films with nary a clinker. Every scene and line is perfect. I think of it as I write this post today because, as you know, my bookstore in northern Michigan is closed while I take my annual seasonal (winter) retirement.

 

The daily “Shelf Awareness” newsletter has had a regularly occurring feature since sometime in 2020, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, called “How Bookstores Are Coping.” The feature tells stories from all over the United States about how supportive customers have been, online orders being received on store websites, tales of curbside delivery; etc. And every day when I read those stories, I feel like a deserter from the front lines, although Dog Ears Books is not closed for the winter because of the pandemic, but only so this aged bookseller can have a respite before taking a deep breath and plunging into another busy season as one of the “working aged” (as another of my still-working friends informs me we are identified). 

Resting on her laurels in old age

Open for business only four months last year when stay-at-home restrictions were eased, I was full of trepidation beforehand, but after another still-working friend helped me out with a professional deep cleaning and I got all my pandemic precautions in place, things went fine. In four months, only two people complained about. having to wear masks (one of them told how to wear it correctly, up over his nose, made a fast exit, and that was okay, too -- his choice). Everyone else was cheerful, and more than one person thanked me for requiring masks and hand sanitizing at the door. 

Sarah with me for her last bookstore season

 

Bookstore people! They are the best!

 

Out here in Arizona in the early winter of 2019-2020, I was happy to arrange a couple of very parttime volunteer gigs for myself. On Monday mornings, at the Friendly Bookstore in Willcox, a venture of the Friends of the Elsie S. Hogan Community Library, and on Wednesday mornings in a program that paired older volunteers with at-risk children in early grades at the local public school, reading with them and having them write stories. I loved that git – the first volunteer job of my life! The children were darling, and naturally I felt right at home in a bookstore. 

 

Then came the stay-at-home order, and everything came to a sliding stop – which is much faster than it sounds. No more reading with little kids at school. No more selling books and honey. No socializing with neighbors, either. 

 

Well, you all know. We were “all in it together,” we were told over and over. Now, almost a year later, we hope the end is in sight, but life is still not back to normal, and the stories of “coping” continue.

 

The first winter the Artist and I came out West, there were three independent bookstores in Benson, just 30-odd miles down the pike from Willcox. The one we frequented most often and always found stacks of books to buy closed when the bookseller decided 25 years in business was long enough. The second, which we belatedly discovered on a back street, was gone without explanation last year. And the owner of the third, way out in the country, on a ranch with donkeys (and yes, a little dog, too), died in late 2020 at the age of 90, after 46 years as a bookseller. 

 

From three indies to none in five years. 

 

So now, unless we want to drive down to Bisbee or all the way to Tucson (where I had discovered the wonderful Book Stop not long before shelter-in-place order hit), neither of which we’ve done so far this season, we’re thrown back on the pot luck of thrift shops and FOL bookstores, which are better than nothing -- and some very nice and friendly and COVID-aware -- but nothing like the curated collection of an indie. And the FOL place in Benson has been closed since the first of the year. 

 

I miss the indies and supporting my fellow indie booksellers, my colleagues. Who knows? Maybe before we leave for Michigan this spring we’ll make it back over to the Book Stop neighborhood in Tucson or down to Meridian Books in Bisbee. I hope so. Because I have not yet abandoned the front lines myself, and it’s important to me to support with my purchases – support that really counts -- others who are out there in this always-risky, always changing business called bookselling. 

 

We indie booksellers all need to make money to stay in business, but we didn’t go into this particular business to get rich. You know why we do it! You wouldn’t be reading “Books in Northport” if you didn’t love books!

Not there now, but I shall return!

Postscript Update, 3/13/2021: The Friends of the Library bookstore in Benson, closed January and February, re-opened March 3, and we made our first visit of the year on March 12. I was delighted to find the volunteer in charge none other than Lenore, retired from the the former Benson bookstore we visited so many times. She was able to tell us that Mary Ann, another of Benson’s booksellers, moved her shop to Apache Junction to be nearer her son. (Mary Ann's and Lenore's former Benson bookshops appear in this old post.) Also, that the heirs of the late Win Bundy, bookseller at Singing Winds bookstore (the one with the donkeys), are trying to figure out how they might re-open. That would be fantastic, as Win's inventory of books on the Southwest was nothing short of mind-boggling.

 

Hello and Goodby! Coming and Going!

 

And no, I do not mean presidents! Don't you want a break? I sure do, so while we're waiting for the count, I'm stealing some bookstore news -- "industry" news, it might be called in other lines of work -- from articles in today's “Shelf Awareness” newsletter. 

 

Countless events take place in the world without generating screaming headlines. Comings and goings of indie bookstores take place all the time across America, whether you see them happening or not. How many times have visitors from elsewhere come through my bookstore door exclaiming that there’s nothing like Dog Ears where they live – or, more often, bemoaning the disappearance of bookstores in general. And yet, while it’s true that somewhere a bookstore is always closing, it’s also true that somewhere else a new one is opening. Statistics for openings vs. closures would be interesting to see, but every story is particular, as every independent bookstore’s identity is individual and personal.

 

So here are a couple of stories, but keep in mind that every week there are more stories like these:

 

New kid on the block: I’d love to pop in for a visit at the new Beausoleil Books in Lafayette, Louisiana. The only time I was ever in that town, I was delighted to find it (much more than New Orleans) a true francophone community, so a bookstore in town stocking French books along with English titles seems long overdue. Among Lafayette’s other charms: how many universities do you know with an alligator pond behind the Student Union? ("Pond" not at all the word I want, but I'm drawing a blank here. Help!) And dancing, every evening, all ages, to live Cajun music between dinner and sensible early bedtime. Road trip, road trip! Beausoleil Books, we wish you un succès fou!

 

Veteran’s farewell: On a sad note, however, the Book Nook in Monroe, Michigan, is closing its doors forever after December holidays, the “heartbroken” owner writing sadly on her Facebook page that after 50 years of weathering challenges from the Internet in general, the Online Behemoth in particular, and a fire next door, she has finally made the tough decision not to go "further into debt.” She adds bluntly (speaking of presidents), “I don't think it is ‘smart’ to not pay my share of taxes or file bankruptcy or stiff local vendors. I wasn't raised that way.”

 

My heart goes out to honest, hardworking bookseller Janet Berns, who asks for patience from her customers at this time when her emotions “are running the gamut from sadness and despair to anger and frustration to nausea and grief.” I can imagine myself in her shoes, with that roiling stew of feelings, and I hope her next chapter will have the brightness and rewards she has certainly earned after a half-century in her bookstore!

 

And so it goes. They come, they go, and nothing is forever. 

Some booksellers, of course, look forward to retirement. Book Nook owner Janet, though, was clearly not ready, and that troubles my heart.

 

Remember Tinker Belle? If children no longer believed in fairies, she would die, but if enough believers clapped their hands, she would live?  With bookstores, clapping your hands and saying you love them isn't enough. Only sales pay the bills -- another case of actions showing much more convincingly than words what people believe in and value. So to all who have kept Dog Ears Books solvent for over 27 years, please know that I appreciate each and every single one of you and look forward to picking up again in the spring in Northport for what I hope will be a busy, happy, healthy 2021 season. 

Meanwhile, be safe, stay healthy, keep reading -- and remember to shop local with my literary colleagues at Leelanau Books in Leland, Bay Books in Suttons Bay, Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor, Horizon Books in Traverse City, and Landmark Books in Traverse City. And if you must shop online, try alternatives to the Online Behemoth. 

Thank you, all you reader customer friends, for your support! You keep us going!

 

The Trail Beckons

 

Fall, like spring and summer, is more continuous change than steady state. Maples and birches demand that we monitor their changes with our attention, it seems, while other trees and plants surprise us later, every year: deep carmine osiers, yellow asparagus, scarlet Virginia creeper, golden tamarack, and the buttered-toast-dripping-honey leaves of beeches. 

Colors shout in the sunshine and gleam in the rain before fading almost imperceptibly against the darkening skies and winds that tear foliage from branches to leave them bare against the clouds.

Does autumn bring forth your wanderlust or tempt you indoors with cocoa and blankets and books? Perhaps it does both, and that’s when books of other people’s travels are so welcome. Armchair travel, vicarious adventure! Where would we be without it? 

 

…Two brothers uprooting themselves to seek adventure or a better life together was a pretty typical Oregon Trail pairing, and our resemblance to the nineteenth-century pioneers was significant. Nick was an injured, unemployed construction worker in the midst of a deep recession in home building in Maine. As a print journalist I typified an American character type that had been familiar since the industrial revolution – the worker with redundant, antiquated skills displaced by technological change. We were going to see the elephant because there wasn’t much else going on for us at home. 

 

-      Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey

 

I’ll explain “seeing the elephant” in a minute.

First, though, I have to admit that when I picked this book up just after finishing Crazy Horse, by Mari Sandoz, I wasn’t sure I would find the story congenial. Not only does Buck open his story with some background on the Oregon Trail, but the map also showed me place names I’d encountered in the Sandoz book: Fort Kearney, Fort Laramie, Fort Fetterman. And reading of 400,000 pioneers, many of whom “would never have made it past Kansas” without the assistance of Native American guides, I thought of Crazy Horse and his friends, dismayed by disappearing game (disappearance that brought great hunger) but confident that the pioneers would keep moving, on their way to somewhere faraway. I also took exception to the author’s claim that this was the largest human migration in world history, having read so recently The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson, telling of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North, six million people migrating over the period 1916-1970.

 

Still, the story of two brothers setting out is a story of our time, not history, and such an unlikely and challenging modern journey that I set my doubts to one side and read on.

 

The phrase “seeing the elephant,” new to me, was apparently one 19^th-century pioneers used all the time. The “elephant” in letters and journals of the time seemed at first to refer to the hugeness of the plains, later to the dangers to life that crossing the plains involved, the great American adventure of its time captured and reduced poetically to its lowest terms in the malleable elephant cliché.

 

In the year 1958, while conventional suburban American children were gyrating with hula hoops in their backyards, Rinker Buck’s father took his family on an epic vacation. The author was only seven years old when the family set out on a 300-mile odyssey in a Mennonite wagon pulled by a team of draft horses, with a saddle horse tied on and following behind, traveling from an old New Jersey farm by way of old roads and historic sites of Pennsylvania and back home again, and that little seven-year-old boy was entrusted with the task of riding on ahead of the wagon in the late afternoon to locate a likely overnight campsite! What a dream! Who else but someone with this childhood memory would come up with a scheme to take a wagon and team of mules from Missouri to Oregon? And who else but a brother from that original trip would be so eager to sign on to such a crazy scheme?

 

So I know “where the story is going” geographically, but what may happen along the way I have no idea. Anyway, I’m hooked. Nothing like a wacky travel narrative for escape from the daily news cycle....

A busy bookstore is always gratifying to a bookseller, and my next-to-last Saturday in the bookstore was a busy one, but it’s a rare day that doesn’t allow dipping into some as-yet-unread book, and I’d had Michelle Obama’s Becoming set aside for several days. The very first pages of that book then hooked me, and a day later, having set aside the Oregon Trail for the First Lady, I was almost halfway through Michelle Obama’s story. What a refreshingly honest, down-to-earth, and yet thoughtful, absolutely elegant woman!

 

“They’re Chicago people,” the Artist reminded me (as if I might have forgotten). “They might very well walk into Dog Ears someday.” Wouldn’t that be something? 

 

But now it’s Sunday, and I’ve come to Dog Ears Books myself for a couple of afternoon hours, because next Saturday, Halloween, October 31, will be my last bookstore of the 2020 season! What a weird, strange year it has been, in the book business as in every other part of American life (as well as life beyond our own shores). Usually open on May 15, this year it was July 1 before the store was open to public browsing and buying for other than special order customers. We have all had to mask up for in-person meetings, with friends and strangers alike. Manufacturing and distribution chains for books were disrupted along with so many others; special summer events were cancelled; some authors had new book releases pushed off until 2021. And yet we persisted! We went forward with what we had, which was (as always) plenty of wonderful old books and lots of wonderful new ones, as well. Everyone behaved very well. It was a good season. 

 

Already I’ve had forward-thinking customers come in to stock up on winter reading, one man filling two whole grocery bags, others content with tall stacks of books. I welcome, wholeheartedly, all long-time and new customers this coming week! Many books here are calling out to go to new homes as holiday gifts (hint, hint). 

I will miss you all in my bookstore during my months of seasonal retirement, but I’ll remind you now that there are other bookstores here Up North, and while I’m gone I urge you to "shop my 'competition.'” Really? Yes, of course! One thing I have always absolutely loved about being an independent bookseller (one thing among many, of course) is that we booksellers – real indie types -- do not generally regard one another as competition. Customers sometimes make reference to “your competition down the road,” but in our small, fiercely independent shops -- shops that reflect our own personalities and interests as well as the region where we live and work – we see and treat each other as colleagues. It is a collegial line of work. If we don’t have something in stock, we send the customer for that book to someone else’s shop, sometimes even calling ahead to see if the book the customer wants is on hand – which I did only yesterday, in fact. We’re all on a cordial, first-name basis. We know each other, and we like each other. We are real people. And we all want all the others to succeed. 

 

So please buy new books from Leelanau Books in Leland, Bay Books in Suttons Bay, Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor, and Horizon Books in Traverse City. If you're a lover of old books, visit Landmark Books in Traverse City, and if Paul doesn’t have what you're looking for and you must shop online, here are some alternatives to the Online Behemoth.

 

Has the idea of an independent bookstore yet to become important to you? Take a look here. Community, curation, convenience. My place won’t be convenient while it's closed for the winter, but Dog Ears Books has always been about a curated collection, and our community commitment has only grown stronger over the years.

 

And we certainly expect to re-open Dog Ears Books in 2021 – I hope by May 15^th. One thing I can safely say, after over 27 years in business, is that I have lived up to the promise I made an earlier Northport landlord long ago: “I’m in it for the long haul.” And in retrospect 27 years have flown by. -- Someone the other day wished me another 27, which is rather more than I wish for myself, but I do hope and plan to be back in 2021. 

So come down to Waukazoo Street this week! We are here now! And really, isn’t that all that any of us can ever say with certainty?

It's Indie Bookstore Day

No balloons, no visiting authors, but Sarah and I will be on hand to greet you with a few little surprises, starting at 11 a.m. Come see us!

Reading Alice Munro on a Blustery Day

Freshly turned soil drew gulls on Monday

Imagine you are home alone with a big tin full to the brim of Oreo cookies. I don’t know if Oreo cookies were ever available in tins, but imagine that they were, and that you have a tinful. You also have a supply of more grownup treats – maybe rice crackers and rolled anchovies or fresh avocadoes and slabs of good bakery rye bread. Whatever you love that gives you a feeling of sybaritic luxury. Something exotic to drink, too, like a bottle of Calvados, taken in small, languorous sips. But those Oreo cookies, too, don’t forget, and no one else in the house. Maybe the wind is from the east, as it was on Monday, a cold, blustery wind driving everyone indoors who had a choice in the matter. Driving you indoors to cozy down with your factory-made cookies and high-status alcohol and upper-class foodie treats. No, I didn't have all those: it just felt like it, reading this book. Alone with adolescent dreams and adult memories -- that’s the atmosphere created by the stories of Alice Munro in Lives of Girls and Women.

It isn’t necessary to have grown up in Ontario. The American Midwest will do, or the South. Why not the Great Plains? The East or West Coast, no, probably not. This is fiction from the interior of the continent, recollected dreams of anticipation, from places young people dream of escaping, although the majority never do.

*   *   *

This coming Saturday is Independent Bookstore Day, but I’d rather think of a week, or at least part of one – beginning, let’s say, on Wednesday, so make that Wednesday through Saturday, this week. Come in any of those days, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and find new titles waiting for you, along with a number of newly arrived used books, some shelved with their subject companions, others – temporarily -- in the “Newly Arrived” section, simplifying browsing for frequent visitors. At Dog Ears Books, every day is potluck and a treasure hunt, to boot.

And now, meanwhile, and à propos of none of the foregoing, if you’re looking for a good movie, I recommend “Bridge of Spies,” starring Tom Hanks. Hanks plays Jim Donovan, an insurance lawyer asked to defend a Soviet spy because the Americans want to show that in the U.S., even a spy is allowed a defense in a court of law. (The Fifties were more than Ozzie and Harriet: they were also the Cold War.) The arrangement is more for show than anything else, but Donovan takes it seriously. That's the first complication. Meanwhile, the C.I.A. has hand-picked a group of pilots to fly the new U-2 planes and take photographs of Soviet ground installations. Also, Donovan's kids are shown a movie of the atom bomb in school. They learn about the kind of destruction of brings and get taught the "Duck and cover" routine. (The son, like Jim, takes things seriously: he comes home and fills the bathtub with water, telling his dad there wouldn't be time to do it if they were caught unprepared.) Donovan attracts public hatred for defending the spy, and his wife and children become targets. Then Gary Powers is shot down (and, coincidentally and close in time, a young university student gets caught on the wrong side of the new wall in Berlin), and Donovan is asked to go secretly to East Berlin – not even his family is to know he’s gone, and he has no official government role or protection -- to negotiate with the Soviets for a trade, Abel (the Soviet spy) for Powers. Period details are beautifully done, as is every other aspect of the film, but it's the character of Jim Donovan that carries the story.

And for Paris dreaming, here at last is a new offering on my kitchen blog.

I am not working outdoors today!

I Wish It Were Every Day and Every Week and Every Month

April is Poetry Month. Have you read your poem today? One of the Friends of the Leelanau Township Library, Ed Lefson, came around and, with my enthusiastic permission and support, chalked one on the sidewalk by the bookstore door. He was glad the snow had cleared off and that we have sunshine instead of rain but told me he had learned many lessons already about chalk on sidewalks. One has to do with colors. We observed his first transcription of “Risk,” by Anais Nin, and realized that the paler color of chalk made a stronger contrast against the cement and showed up better than the brighter color, so he came back and outlined the first letters in the second color.

This has been National Library Week, and local librarians and their Friends have been pulling out all the stops. I should have taken pictures in Leland, where cookies and other snacks greeted morning patrons. In Northport, the Leelanau Township Library began planning weeks in advance for their poetry month.

Saturday, April 30, will be the second annual Independent Bookstore Day. Dog Ears Books will definitely have books of poetry available, as we always do. We are also featuring the two last Jim Harrison books, Dead Man’s Float (poems) and The Ancient Minstrel (three novellas); the new book of Michigan-inspired fiction by L.E. Kimball, Seasonal Roads; and a selection of new titles your Northport bookseller thought worthy of attention.

You don’t have to wait until April 30 to come visit and shop our new book titles, and you’ll also want to check out our newly arrived used books section, too (see below). 

I wish every day were bookstore day, every week library week, and every month poetry month. Why not?

Bookseller Musings: Slipcases, Curating, and Fonts

Snug in Our Boxes

Sturdier than a jacket, covering all of a book but spine, a slipcase protects its inhabitant. No dust can collect on the slipcased book’s top edges. No hasty index finger can tear the binding at the top of the spine by careless removal of book from shelf. The slipcase demands respect for the book – and yet, there is nothing forbidding about it. Instead, it invites us in. Its presence lends anticipation to our reading experience before we remove the book from its shelter and carefully open to the pages within. 

We set the slipcase aside gently while reading the book. And when it comes time to return the volume to our shelves, there is again something magical and sweetly secretive about not only closing the book but slipping it into a neat box designed to fit that book and only that book.

In cold midwinter, when most of northern life is lived within doors, humans and pets snug in the “boxes” of homes and places of employment, a slipcased book has a special familiarity. In my bookstore, books in their cozy boxes are surrounded by the larger box that shelters us all.

Curatorial Publishing and Bookselling

Reading an interview with John Makinson, chairman of the recently merged Penguin Random House group and owner with his brother of a small bookshop in Norfolk, England, I came across a phrase that was new to me: curatorial publishing. When the interviewer asked about how Penguin Random House is negotiating the current [digital] environment, his answer began like this:

I wish I had some sort of cosmic message for you, but it is very difficult to divine the essence of curatorial publishing, the kind of publishing we do. That said, it’s about human relationship, a commitment to skill and craft. So the progress we make in any market is incremental.

How refreshing that someone in such a huge business can be content to make incremental progress! How heartening to read about commitment to skill and craft! Years back, an admirer of my bookstore referred to my curated collection. Now, reading Makinson’s phrase curatorial publishing, I was moved to get out a Webster’s unabridged dictionary.

Disappointment was my lot. 

The dictionary defined the verb ‘to curate’ as ‘to act as a curator,’ and ‘curator’ as ‘the person in charge of a museum, art collection, etc.’ or ‘a manager; superintendent.’ Is that all? I felt cheated. If ‘curatorial’ is nothing more than a management function, ‘curatorial publishing’ is simply a redundant phrase, the adjective contributing nothing. I’m not satisfied. I’m sure more is meant.

I conferred over lunch (homemade chicken soup with rice) with my artist husband. I told him I see a curator’s role primarily one of selection, ensuring quality, and I was happy to have him agree with me. Perhaps some readers take quality in selection as implied in managing or superintending. I don’t. It’s great when quality is one of a manager’s responsibilities, but whether or not it is seen that way will depend on others – chief officers, boards, even stockholders. Certainly, in business we’re talking about, management is generally first and foremost about sales and profits. The phrase ‘quality control’ is an add-on.

One of the ways booksellers have always survived has been (1) to sell products other than books along with books (e.g., greeting cards and non-book gift items) and (2) to stock large numbers of bestsellers by famous authors, fewer (if any) numbers of slower-moving, niche category books by unknown or forgotten writers. That is a perfectly legitimate management plan. It is not, however, the plan of a curatorial bookseller.

Any curated collection offered by any independent bookseller, whether or not augmented by items other than books, will reflect that bookseller’s interests and values, with selections made according to quality as determined by that bookseller. For example, someone once jokingly advised me that if I were to “get rid of all these science books, there would be more room for fiction.” I cannot envision a bookstore without fiction, but neither can I imagine one without books on the sciences. For me, that would be no bookstore at all.

Font Choice

I have abandoned (for some time now) Times New Roman on this blog for Bookman Old Style. Both have the serif, which I like for its generosity, but Bookman (besides sounding appropriate to a bookseller’s blog) has more readable spacing, to my eye, and a satisfying roundness. 

Again, I have made a selection that pleases my own eye. Comments? Like or dislike? Agree or disagree?

To Welcome YOU Back!

Saturday is Indie Bookstore Day across the country. For me here in Northport, it’s also the day of my Spring Re-Opening. December 31^st, my last open day at my bookshop, seems a very long time ago, and I have missed my loyal customer friends-- though I must confess I loved the freedom of not being bound to a schedule.

On Saturday, May 2, the schedule is 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and in honor of Indie Bookstore Day and to welcome you back to Dog Ears Books, I will be holding a special sale, that day only, 50% off on most new books in stock. (That is below my cost, so don’t expect this to happen again for a long, long time!) Come see Sarah again and take advantage of the sale offer (cash or check only, please) as a treat for yourself or a friend or family member.

Also on Saturday, while supplies last, I will have very nice (free) gifts (because if they weren’t free, they wouldn’t be gifts, would they?) for book purchasers. What kind of gifts? Come and be surprised! I look forward to seeing each and every one of you!

P.S. I will also have La Frontera here for anyone who would like to rent it for a week, and I'll also be taking advance orders for Ladislav Hanka's In Pursuit of Birds (my copy will be available so you can see how badly you're going to want your own).

Familiar Diversions in an Unfamiliar Land

Tuesday was bookstore expedition day. Our first stop was out on the range, where we visited a bookstore that occupies three rooms of the ranch house. We didn't go immediately into the bookstore, as we were initially waylaid by two charming donkeys and another customer's border collie, Cody. After Cody left, David took Sarah over to meet the donkeys and reported to me (I was in the bookstore by then) that she found them very interesting. Not as intimidating as cattle, it sounded like.

Cody watching donkeys

Such a lot of books! All new, as it turned out, every last one, none old or out-or-print or even gently used, but a huge and fascinating selection nonetheless. 

And despite the distraction of yet another charming dog, I managed to look at books and select a couple for purchase. I also took time to admire the homemade mesquite bookshelves. 

Then we went back into the town of Benson for our second visit to a wonderful gem of a bookstore we'd been tipped off to by a friend. The little pink building set back from the main street of the town is only the beginning of it, with another, larger building connected behind. The books go on and on and on!

The proprietor, Lenore, has a wonderful selection, both new and used books. Everything is very well organized and labeled (even the stacks on the floor are in front of the shelves where they would go, if only there were room for them), and her prices are great. As this was our second visit, David and I knew immediately where we wanted to head when we got inside. I was relieved that the book I'd held back on buying the last time was still there waiting for me. Such is not always the case, as I know from my experience as a bookseller. 

Do you wonder about the name of this charming establishment? Lenore calls it, very modestly, Paperback Recycler. It's her name, and she's had the bookstore for 25 years, so that's that. I do want to tell anyone visiting southeast Arizona, though, that this store has much, much more than recycled paperbacks! I can't think of a subject category that is not well represented in this bookstore, and there are a lot of hardcover books in every section.

So now, here are my purchases from our bookstore day. Can you guess which books I bought where?

Days are still short, sunset and dark coming quickly at the end of every day, but the lovely expanse of time is a great luxury we do not take for granted.