by Ronald Rice
And so Explore endures, great as it ever was, catering to tourists and locals, and making the town worth living in. My advice: If you’re ever asked to move to a new town, ask one simple question. Does it have a great bookstore?
SCOTT LASSER is the author of four novels, including Say Nice Things About Detroit. He currently lives in Aspen, Colorado, and Los Angeles California.
Ann Haywood Leal
Bank Square Books, MYSTIC, CONNECTICUT
He joined my classroom several weeks into the school year. The other first graders had long ago pushed aside the memories and excitement of their first days of school, but Raymond was having yet another first day. Five is a lot of schools when you’re only in first grade. I found out from his caseworker that this was to be a special one for him. It was a no-more-foster-home first day. He was going to be living with a relative, and everyone hoped it would be different. Not another stopover, but a place where he might have his own pillow.
I brought him to the reading nook in the back of the room. He sat down across from me and scooted up to the table, his eyes wide and curious. When I set the book in front of him, he grabbed it roughly and rapped it on the table in a sharp, nervous rhythm, not bothering to open it.
“We’ll read it together,” I said. “You tap me when it’s my turn.”
He reached out and tapped me immediately, warm, sticky fingertips on the back of my hand. “You read.” He pushed the book toward me, tipping back in his chair.
He wandered among the children later that morning during free reading time, hesitant to take a book down from a shelf, rummaging quickly through the colorful plastic bins, as if he were searching for something else in there. A stray Lego, maybe. Anything but books.
The other kids watched him warily as they settled in with their choices at their desks or on their bellies on the rug.
That was around when Raymond decided that free reading time wasn’t on his agenda for the day. And he started to perform. He did his own spinning and tumbling version of break dancing on the carpet, wild, spindly legs catching a few kids in the process, trying to get them to pay attention to anything but their books.
The ever-helpful Jack decided to step in. “You can bring your own book from home if you want.” He proudly held up his own copy of Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Raymond paused for a brief second, considering. He seemed suspicious of Jack, as if he was trying to give out the wrong rules for the game.
Jack narrowed his eyes at Raymond and marched over to me, followed by three or four other kids. Tattling is a team sport in first grade.
“He doesn’t have one.” Jack clutched his own book reverently in front of him. “The new kid doesn’t have a book.” His backup group nodded in agreement.
It turned out Raymond had never had one. None that actually belonged to him, anyway. He was used to light travel. When he left for the next foster home, his clothes had always needed to be packed first. There wouldn’t be room for much of anything else in the plastic garbage bag.
I offered Raymond twenty different books, but he barely glanced at them. I needed to step up my game.
So after school I went to where I always go when I want to be swept away by a new story. I went across the bridge to Mystic, Connecticut, to Bank Square Books. I knew that Annie, Patience, and Leon would know how to find the perfect book for Raymond’s hands.
Stepping through the front door of Bank Square Books always makes me feel as if I’m climbing down into the pages of a favorite story. Their Staff Picks are like carefully chosen guests at a lively party where everyone is interesting and gets along.
The owners and staff all share an expression. It’s an understanding of sorts that each wears like an underground smile that emerges when someone loves something as much as they do. It’s a silently stated recognition: You’re one of us.
I spotted Leon Archibald in the Children’s Section. He listened carefully to Raymond’s story, nodding quietly. “Let’s look,” he said.
We wound slowly through the shelves, with Leon pausing and considering. Ten Apples Up on Top and some I Can Read books. With each book he pulled from the shelves, he was creating a connection for Raymond to another world, allowing him to add chapters to what he carried in his plastic garbage bag.
I planned on giving Raymond one book every week, and I decided to start the next morning with Ten Apples Up on Top.
“This is yours to keep.” I held it out to him.
He gave me his whaddaya mean look, complete with narrow, suspicious eyebrows, as if I was trying to trick him into doing something wrong.
“It’s yours,” I said again. “It belongs to you now.”
The book never went home. Each afternoon he stashed it away safely, inside his desk, among the wrappers from the special snacks that the teaching assistant, Linda, was always sneaking him. Then he brought it out again first thing each morning where it sat, reverently, in the upper right-hand corner of his desk. He opened it and read it constantly, his mouth moving slowly around each new sound, his body becoming more relaxed as the words became more familiar.
After he’d had the book for a couple of weeks, it started getting sticky from his snacks, taking on that worn favorite-teddy-bear look that all things get when they are fiercely loved.
I was searching for something on my desk one morning when I sensed someone at my side.
“I need to read this to you.” Raymond was supposed to be at his desk, finishing his morning writing. But he stood next to me, his book clutched tightly in his hands. “I need to practice.” His eyes nervously glanced from the book to me, and back again. “I’m going to read this to my mom.” His breath caught on the way out. “It’s going to be her favorite.”
Raymond didn’t get to see his mom often. She had never heard him read, and I knew this was important to him. So we practiced that book over and over again.
He nervously packed it into his backpack that afternoon, his eyes darting sideways at the other kids in the coat closet, as if he was mentally warning them not to touch his book.
He never did get to read the book to his mom that day. I hadn’t realized that he wouldn’t be able to bring it into the correctional facility where she was incarcerated. But he “read” it to her anyway, because my bookstore had found the perfect book for Raymond, and the words had made their way into his heart.
Finding a book a home in someone’s heart is a talent. They may not know it, but Annie Philbrick, Patience Banister, Leon Archibald, and the staff of Bank Square Books are in the business of matchmaking.
ANN HAYWOOD LEAL is the author of two novels, Also Known as Harper and A Finders-Keepers Place. Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Ann now writes and teaches elementary school and writing workshops in southeastern Connecticut. Also Known as Harper was chosen by the Chicago Public Library for its Best of the Best 2009–2010 list and was an ABC Good Morning America Summer Reading Choice for 2009. It is currently on the Arkansas Charlie May Simon Master List, the Iowa Children’s Choice Award Master List, and the South Carolina Children’s Book Award Master List, and is a finalist for the William Allen White Children’s Book Award.
Caroline Leavitt
McNally Jackson Books, NEW YORK, NEW YORK
For many years I lived in the heart of Manhattan, which really meant I lived in its bookstores. But when I fell in love, got married, and began yearning for a child, unfriendly Manhattan real estate made the price of the four-bedroom we needed (two home offices, a bedroom for us, and one for our child) as likely as a Martian appearing on 57th Street. So we were nudged to Hoboken, a seven-minute PATH ride away, a place where we could get a three-story 1865 brickstone for the price of a Manhattan studio, and where there were three indie bookstores just blocks away from our home!
Of course, Barnes & Noble came and gobbled the indie stores up.Of course Barnes & Noble then left a few years later, leaving Hoboken with just one used-books store, which wasn’t enough. So we began to spend even more and more time in the city boo
kstores. When McNally Jackson (then McNally Robinson) opened in 2004 in Soho, I never wanted to leave. Splashed with light, filled with books (two stories!), it also had a café with a menu that had literary quotes right by the yogurt and banana entrée. I spent hours roaming the aisles, often with my son in tow. Part of the pleasure was browsing, never knowing what I’d find—but a larger part was watching my son become an expert and excited browser as well. McNally Robinson became my Valium when I was stressed (what’s more calming than a great new read?), my pick-me-up when I was tired (people-watching is as much fun as book-browsing), and my inspiration.
But loving a bookstore as a reader is one thing (certainly a big thing), and loving it as an author is another. You notice different things. The whole bookstore feels and smells and looks like a different animal when you approach it as a writer. I’ve walked into McNally Jackson desperately worried about a manuscript or even my career, wondering if I’d have to give up writing and go to dental school instead, but seeing all the other novels made me more determined.
For a writer, readings are our way to connect with our readers and, hopefully, to sell books, but what writer hasn’t had the experience of going to a reading only to find two people sitting there, and one of them came in just because he heard there was going to be free wine and cookies? McNally Jackson was my launch for my ninth novel, Pictures of You, and when they said, “We want to do something different,” I perked right up. They organized a conversation between me and the wonderful novelist Jennifer Gilmore, the two of us perched on stools, kicking back, laughing. The week before the reading, I had found the Twitter handles of a variety of A-list celebrities, and for fun, I invited them all. “It’s at McNally Jackson,” I wrote, because the name ramped up the cool factor. Tim Hutton didn’t show up. Neither did Cher or Moby or Yoko Ono (I had high hopes for her), but a full house of readers did, and what I most remember is how even the air seemed charged that night.
McNally Jackson loves writers. All writers, in an equal-opportunity way. When a friend of ours couldn’t get his book about world music published traditionally, he refused to give up and self-published it. Usually self-published books have a harder time getting shelf space and readings, but McNally Jackson gave him both, and two of the staff came down to listen to him read and even asked questions.
You want a sense of humor in a person, but it’s even better when it’s in a bookstore. McNally Jackson has a hilarious Twitter account and website. Plus, they have a great events coordinator.
Of course, McNally Jackson is a terrific bookstore. Of course, I want to be there in that store, among all the books, their covers like beacons. What more could I ask for?
Well, I’d really love a branch in Hoboken.
CAROLINE LEAVITT is the New York Times best-selling author of Pictures of You, which was on the 2011 Best Books of the Year list from the San Francisco Chronicle, The Providence Journal, Bookmarks magazine, and Kirkus Reviews. Her tenth novel, Is It Tomorrow, will be published by Algonquin Books in spring 2013. A book critic for People and The Boston Globe and a book columnist for Shoptopia online, she is also a senior writing instructor at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program online. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Fellowship and a Goldenberg Prize for Fiction Honorable Mention, as well as a Nickelodeon Writing Fellowship finalist and a Sundance Screenwriting Lab Fellowship first-round winner, she can be reached at www.carolineleavitt.com.
Mike Leonard
The Book Stall at Chestnut Court, WINNETKA, ILLINOIS
A Note to Roberta Rubin, owner of The Book Stall in Winnetka, Illinois:
I’m sorry, Roberta.
You asked me to write a simple essay about my thirty-year relationship with your wonderful bookstore, and I agreed.
That was a mistake.
I’m in over my head.
There wouldn’t be a problem if I were writing about a hardware store. People interested in hammers or lawn sprinklers or mops usually don’t come unglued over comma splices (whatever they are). But you’re not peddling gardening tools or toilet brushes; you’re in the brilliance business, with dozens of reminders on every shelf.
Tolstoy. Austen. Melville. Woolf. Rushdie.
How am I supposed to conjure up a clever phrase or a thought-provoking observation with The Bard staring me in the eye? And it’s not just him. It’s every name on every book jacket. Every novelist, memoirist, poet, and politician. Every celebrity chef, washed-up athlete, pop psychologist, and faded rock star. All intimidators overflowing with words. Words of wisdom. Words to live by. Beautiful words. Insightful words. Evocative words.
Crap!
I don’t have those words.
Your bookstore is the heartbeat of our community—a gathering of great thinkers, a mindful meeting place. I stop in at least once a week, often just to wander the aisles or share a few words with your fine and funny staff. And I always leave with something. A new book. A shot of inspiration. A good feeling.
Emotional attachments, however, are difficult to put into words.
So, I found another way.
:-)
[Disclosure: This is my first experience typing a smiley-face emoticon. Upon completion of this essay, I vow never to type it again… or use the word emoticon.]
Perhaps an explanation would be helpful.
Go back to 1982, and your purchase of an existing but tired bookstore on a tree-lined street just three blocks from my Winnetka, Illinois, home. From day one, you were a sight to behold, scooting joyously down the cramped aisles, a tilting pile of books in the crook of one arm, the other waving with televangelistic fervor about the importance of literature and the grand plans for your little store, renamed The Book Stall.
Meanwhile, 450 miles to the east, danger lurked.
Tap, tap, tap.
Big-time threats are often delivered in barely audible tones, like the dampened belly-growl of a seriously ticked-off dog.
Scott Fahlman, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, was neither ticked-off nor in any kind of threatening mood when he quietly tapped out his seemingly benign three-stroke message, a moment now viewed by some as the crucial first volley in what has become a grinding war of attrition against thoughtful, nuanced writing.
It was September 19, 1982, the same year you opened The Book Stall.
The message?
:-)
Scott Fahlman’s intent was pure. The Internet was still in its embryonic, geek-only, hybrid phase—peopled by people moving to the algorithm of a beat totally beyond the register of everyday folk. From those primordial pools of programming logic came a new language, bubbling up bit by bit (or byte by byte) to flood the early computer bulletin boards with invented words, strange-looking acronyms, and weird symbols. There was humor, too. Or at least an attempt at humor.
Q: What’s a Freudian virus?
A: Your computer becomes obsessed with marrying its own motherboard.
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
If a programmer’s joke fell flat on a computer scientist’s bulletin board, and nobody even noticed that it was a joke, did it really fall flat?
That, in short, was the issue Scott Fahlman was trying to address with the sideways smiley face.
It was a warning sign of sorts.
Beware—Joke Ahead!
Humor, sarcastic remarks, or ironic statements often go whistling past the intended mark, especially if the mark happens to be one of those laser-focused but worldly, oblivious, nose-to-the-ground Elmer Fudd types who, sadly, follow the rabbit tracks right off a cliff.
:-(
(Scott Fahlman came up with the frowny-face symbol as well.)
That was thirty years ago.
Since then, the birth of the Internet has given rise to email, which has morphed into text messaging, which has spawned a whole new vocabulary of computer-influenced shorthand designed to grease the whirling wheels of communication. Speed is the name of the game now. And simplification.
RU w me? RU perplexed?
I’ll show you perplexed.
:-/
But doesn’t the loss of nuance and subtlety diminish our standards of writing?
<:-)
(symbol for dumb question)
Sorry, Roberta. I’m wandering all over the place.
Maybe it’s the ADD kicking in, or maybe it’s something more basic like a lack of good old-fashioned, clear-thinking smarts. I do have a history of that. Five years of high school. Big trouble getting into college. A long list of menial jobs until a lucky break at the age of 30 got me going as a journalist. It’s always been a struggle.
The slow thinker.
The late bloomer.
The 59-year-old debut author.
When my book came out five years ago, you put it in the front display window, organized a number of well-attended signing events, and talked me up to whomever would listen. It was a humbling experience, and something I thought would fade with time.
It hasn’t because you won’t let it.
You keep pushing, praising, promoting—day by day, book by book. Not being a numbers guy, I never thought of asking for a sales tally. Then last month, while doing research for this essay, I was astonished to learn that you have sold nearly 2,000 copies of my book.
One store.
Two thousand copies sold.
And you’re not finished.
Since 1982, The Book Stall has more than doubled in size, the inventory growing to roughly 48,000 titles, the number of authors hosted and hailed somewhere in the tens of thousands. Impressive figures to be sure, but not the full measure of your value. And that’s where the challenge lies for me—finding suitable words of praise for the stuff that can’t be measured.
Your respect and compassion for my elderly, talkative father in the final years of his life.
Your genuine, eyes-to-eyes, on-bended-knee interest in the mumbled requests of my 4-year-old grandson.
