Where Everybody Knows Your Name
Last week I read this wonderful book, My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop. I lapped up every syllable about 82 independent bookstores, envious that I don’t have a bookstore where everybody knows your name, where books are recommended, where your own books are promoted.
The first bookstore I ever entered was Books and Cards, located in an industrial strip shopping center by a gasoline tank farm. Glamorous, it wasn’t. But I was seventeen, and could not believe such a wonder existed in Fairfax County. The store carried greeting cards, stationery supplies, and paperback books stacked on tables.
I snatched up the new U.S. Ballantine edition of The Lord of the Rings. I’d read library editions of the trilogy, out of order because some clod would have checked out The Two Towers or The Return of the King. At home I handled the 95 cent paperbacks like the Book of Kells. Lined up, the covers formed a small version of Barbara Remington’s famous Middle Earth poster. Now that I owned books, I wanted more.
The next time I remember going into Books and Cards I was eighteen, out of school and working as a secretary. With my first paycheck, I bought ten Yearling paperbacks: Elphi the Cat with the High I.Q., The Furious Flycycle, Charlotte’s Web, and others. I added a one dollar book rack and gave the bundle to my seven-year-old niece. It was the best, most heartfelt present I’ve ever given. Susan read all the books, even the hard ones.
Books and Cards closed and for a long while there were no bookstores in my life. Eventually, chain stores popped up in malls: Brentano’s, Waldenbooks, B. Dalton. While I loved having access to books, the stores looked alike from mall to mall. I knew about bookstores with cozy reading nooks and resident cats that were like second homes to real book people like me. Where were those stores?
Crown Books opened, the first big box bookstore. I loved Crown. It was close! It had a lot of books! But it wasn’t a second home. Neither were Crown’s replacements: Borders, Books-a-Million, Barnes and Noble.
We have a B&N and BAM in Fredericksburg. About once a week, I walk into one or the other. And walk right back out again. I rarely buy anything. I don’t feel comfortable. I don’t feel welcome. I don’t even feel like I’m in a bookstore.
When I finished reading My Bookstore, I felt bereft. And then I realized—there was one of those bookstores nearby! I just hadn’t properly claimed it. Riverby Books has been in downtown Fredericksburg for years. I’ve gone in occasionally. I liked the store, but didn’t trust that it would stay in business.
One day this fall I stopped in. Sunlight sprinkled the linoleum floors with gold coins. I went up the stairs and pulled out a book on wildflowers from a pile on the steps. I went down the stairs and sifted through a box of vintage Golden Books, a bargain at $2.50 each. I snapped up a dozen.
Riverby Books is located in a quirky old building. There are plenty of reading nooks. No resident cat, but that’s okay. They sell used and old books, interesting books, books you can’t find at Barnes and Noble. Books you didn’t know you wanted until you saw them.
I never walk out of there empty-handed. Or empty-feeling. A trip to Riverby fills up that book-shaped space. At home, I’ll read my new acquisition, then make room for it on one of my bookshelves. If the book is very special, it might sit next to my prized Ballantine edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
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