Booksellers—A Superstore That Is No More

 

I did a recent Facebook post about Anne Rice and her book Interview with the Vampire. I mentioned that I had briefly met Rice up at a signing at Booksellers, a wonderful store on Chagrin Blvd. in Beachwood, Ohio—not far from Cleveland. (One of my FB friends, Ben Woodworth, worked up there for a while; he had played Danny, the male lead, in the production of Grease I directed in the 1980s back at Aurora [Ohio] High School.)

For years, Joyce and I went up to Booksellers every Friday evening—after I had graded my vocab quizzes for the week.

There, we browsed, bought, and always found time for an apricot scone at the little coffee shop inside the store.

We also attended many of the frequent author appearances they hosted. One of those authors, in 1995, was  I, who had just published an annotated, illustrated edition of The Call of the Wild. I was sure I was headed for a Nobel Prize.

I wasn’t.

Maybe a dozen people showed up to see my slide show about Wild and Jack London and to get their books signed.

But I was still thrilled: a signing at Booksellers!

Booksellers, I know, had to struggle. Border’s and Barnes & Noble both had stores nearby, and the competition must have been fierce.

I wish I could remember some specific titles I bought there—and there were a lot: Every week we went home with at least one. Sometimes an armload.

They had a wonderful inventory, full of writers I’d heard of and writers I should have heard of and did so principally because of the intense browsing we did. Fiction (my favorite), nonfiction, poetry, drama—all got our respectful attention.

Each week, I could not wait to get there, dreaded having to leave. And all the way home, Joyce and I talked about books, books, books (okay, and maybe scones, scones, scones).

Wandering around that store gave me a glimpse of a form of heaven that would really make me happy—not playing a harp on a cloud for all of eternity.

And maybe I’d get to chat with Shakespeare, with Dickens, with Raymond Chandler, with so many others ...

One can hope ...