What’s your favorite bookstore memory?
Well, first there’s the fact that I worked at a Waldenbooks when I was in high school (best job ever). Beyond that, I have three, and I can’t choose which is my favorite so here you go:
A close friend and I traveled down to Ashland, Oregon every spring for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Part of the routine was stopping in Bloomsbury Books and picking up four or five books. We’d always pick out at least one book for the other person.
The other memory also concerns friends. When we first moved to Oregon, we took classes with a couple who taught backpacking, snow camping, map & compass, etc. We hit it off & spent a lot of time vacationing together. One of our favorite areas to visit was Sisters, Oregon, which has a bookstore we used to always stop in: Paulina Springs Bookstore.
Finally, just after I got divorced, I moved to a small apartment in Columbus, Ohio. Around the corner from it was Nickleby’s Bookstore. It was one of those bookstores that was also a cafe, serving wine and hosting live music. I spent many evenings at a table for one, listening to some guy play guitar, sipping a glass of white wine, and reading a book. I remember savoring my freedom that summer.
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Downtown Wenatchee had a wonderful bookstore, The Homesteader. I loved going to look through the fiction. A very small store but lots of books. This was before trade paperbacks, so I felt like I could purchase a few mass market paperbacks. Even on my salary raising two boys. Eventually the owner retired and soon after the new owner took over the store was gone! I have book marks from the store that I will always keep.
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An overall general memory is the feeling that engulfs me when I walk into a bookstore. The aroma of new books is one of my favorite smells.
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What wonderful memories of bookstores being safe and healing places. The Ashland Shakespearean Festival is a good one. We have been there on the past.
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We used to have a Borders here in Phoenix and it had an upstairs cafe. I was a young teacher then and would go sit and drink coffee and grade papers and people watch. And of course buy books. I won a grant from my school district and got to buy a bunch of books for my students in my classroom library from that store, too.
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