The Owl & Turtle

I see that Owl & Turtle, a small, superb bookstore in Camden, Maine, is up for sale.  The news saddened me.  I imagine it saddened many others as well.  I hope a buyer is found.  How difficult to maintain a bookstore in these assaultive times, I can hardly imagine.  But perhaps there is an affluent book lover, or a daring one, or both, who would be willing to come to the rescue.  I hope so. 

The Owl & Turtle has been serving Camden for fifty years.  I knew it through its most recent owners, Craig and Maggie White.  It was Maggie who I talked to when I went to The Owl & Turtle.  Craig was usually working the café to one side of the store.  I spent the last four summers in the Camden area, and I went to The Owl &Turtle as often as I could.  I loved going there. 

After you have experienced many bookstores in your life, you come to know, after a few minutes, when you explore a new one, if it’s the real thing.  If you have struck literary gold.  By that I mean that the books you see were chosen with learning and love.  That’s what I experienced after my first visit to the bookstore.  What book did I see in my initial walkabout in The Owl & Turtle that assured me I was dealing with the real thing?   It was A Fan’s Notes by Frederick Exley. Now, here’s someone who knows their books, I thought.  Published in 1968, the book was taken by many to be one of the first American memoirs.  It couldn’t have been a best seller at that point, because it had been all but forgotten.  Yet, there it was.  Because the owners felt it should be there.

Spending time is a fine bookstore is like strolling through a city you love.  You walk down aisles, pause and gaze, a bibliophilic tourist, encountering new titles by names you may or may not know.  It’s exciting.  I never emerged from The Owl & Turtle without having learned something,  So, I go to a bookstore to be surprised and delighted.  I also go to a good bookstore to be advised.  And that is what Maggie did on more than one occasion.  I asked her to recommend a book.  Now, the simple fact is that too many book recommendations fall flat for me.  I sometimes want to question my friendship after reading a book a friend recommended to me.  Looking about at that books that line the shelves of The Owl & Turtle, I immediately trusted Maggie’s judgment.  A good bookseller is a sommelier for your mind.  She recommended Notes on a Silencingby Lacy Crawford.  I read it.  I loved it. Trust, confirmed.

Now, her counsel will not be there when I come to Camden.  Nor will it be for those who live there and who visit.  I was thinking of how wonderful that bookstore that must have been in the winter months when its gets dark so early in Maine and when it’s cold and when a trip to The Owl & Turtle must have been so restorative.  I’m sure it was a refuge for many who live in or near Camden as they slogged through those winter days.  And what a way to introduce children to the mystical world of books and reading it must have been.  I’m sure there are many children who grew up there, literarily speaking.

It’s probably too late to implore Maggie and Craig not to sell The Owl & Turtle.  It probably came to that a while back now.  I can’t imagine how difficult it was to make that decision.  But it’s not too late to thank them for all that they gave anyone who stepped foot into their lovely bookstore.