On Books-Confessions of a Bookstore Snob Part 1: The Everything-to-Everyone Bookstore.

When I was a child, my family was struggling financially, as any young family would be. We lived in Taiwan and my parents learned to live frugally. I had my share of toys as I was growing up, not as much as some other kids but I never felt the sting of not having things. My parents were always up front saying no when I asked for things that were beyond the family budget.

Yet the one thing that I could ask for and was never denied is books. My dad was a connoisseur of the used book stands in Taipei, he was well known amongst the stall owners. At that time, Taiwan had not started honoring the international copyright laws, so pirated editions of English language books filled the book stalls. He was particularly keen on acquiring inexpensive pirated editions of English language textbooks in mathematics, physics, and electrical engineering. We always spent Saturday afternoons together, our bonding time, and time for my mom to take a break from me, the only child. We would stroll up and down the stalls of books that populated a specific section of the marketplace in Taipei where all the booksellers congregated, taking our time browsing for treasured finds. Even though I did not know how to read at that time, I enjoyed that time immensely, partly because I spent time with my dad, who worked 8-5 every weekday and half a day on Saturday. This was the germination of my book habit.

Our ritual did not stop when we moved to Honduras. We would often go to the only English language bookstore in Tegucigalpa and spend time going through the store carefully. I was preoccupied with the comics: Archie, Classics Illustrated, Peanuts, Doonesbury, etc. When we moved to Colorado, I had a yen for my own books and I would often buy books with my allowance; of course if I didn’t have enough money to feed my habit, I would always ask, and I would get what I wanted most of the time.

Some might ask at this point: why not take advantage of the libraries? This is where part of the snobbery comes into play. The school libraries were fine, the public libraries were fine, but I had a problem with reading on a schedule, I wanted to read on my schedule, having to renew my books every two weeks was an annoyance that rankled. One can say that this is part of having privilege.

On a subconscious level, this could be my nascent attempts to attain Umberto Eco’s anti-library: a large collection of references at my fingertips so that I can look up pertinent knowledge as the fancy tickled me, my own personal Google, before there was a Google. I did use the library as I progressed through my schooling, doing research for various papers that was assigned to me and often researching topics that were then unknown to me, but I accrued my own library according to my interests through the years.

As I made my way through college and gradual school, my reading interest became much more catholic and the depths of my desire for reading material grew. As an engineering gradual student, I was always on the lookout for technical books. I did not, however, limit my purchases to just technical books. I went through various reading phases: a personal feeling of inadequacy regarding my lack of grounding in literature drove me to read the books on the New York Times fiction best sellers list; my own ego, presumptuousness, and arrogance drove me to buy books that I thought I should be reading as a member of the intelligentsia; and my exaggerated pretensions of grandiosity drove me to buy books that I perceived society expected me to read. I have since given up most of those impulses because of all the less than satisfying books that I had waded through. Now I read whatever piques my interest.

My expertise in bookstores, if you can call it that, came from my experience frequenting bookstores in my life. I frequented bookstores where I lived and in towns where my travels had taken me. In my later professional life, I was afforded the perk of travelling around the country for work, so I always planned some free time to visit bookstores in whichever city I happened to be. I would map out the bookstores in an unfamiliar city ahead of arriving so that I did not waste any time trying to figure out the lay of the land. I consulted the internet, as well as fellow travelers in this bookstore barnstorming adventures. My Bookstores (Rice 2012) is an invaluable book that I read repeatedly, hoping that one day I could hit all the stores listed. I am not even close to completing that bucket list.

I call the chain big box store for books the everything-to-everyone bookstores, some are more successful at their raison d’etre than others. They reside in strip malls or large commercial spaces, vying for space with the boutiques and the shoe stores. They serve people who are looking for a quick escape from the shopping routine of their spouses or as a convenience store for the generic literary needs. These bookstores have massive sections set aside for stationary supplies, journals, greeting cards, wrapping papers, and various other literary accoutrements.  The book selection at these book megamarts are rarely inspired, they sell what they think the  general public wants to buy. The store employees have very little say in the selection, most of the stock comes from a general warehouse that is filled titles determined by corporate buyers. Understandably, books that reflect the regional preferences or character are nonexistent.

B. Dalton’s was the chain that I grew up with because there was one of those in the mall close to where I lived. The mall is also strategically placed between our house and the high school I attended; an after-school outing to B. Dalton’s was often added on to my trip home. It holds the distinction of existing as a contradictory space and time: having a massive selection in stock and yet never having anything that is unique nor breathtaking, strong on the Harlequin romances and inspirational books that appealed to the suburban readers, but not to any other possible clientele. Their stocks are chock full of books that other bookstores also carry and rarely, if ever did they have something that was unique or distinctive. These same stocks will inevitably end up on the discount tables at the local  big box stores after sitting unsold for months if not years at B. Daltons. I was, however, both shocked and amazed that I found Bertrand Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian there. First, I never thought that they would even consider stocking a title like this; second, I didn’t think anyone in the small suburb of Denver, outside of yours truly, would look for a title like that; third, I didn’t think the local clergy in the small suburb of Denver would allow such a title, maybe they didn’t know or perhaps there was a rebel book buyer throwing his weight around. Truth be told, I single handedly helped keep stores like that in business during my high school years.

There are also the two giants that co-existed for a long time: Borders and Barnes and Nobles. Border’s started out life in the college town of Ann Arbor, MI, I visited the mothership many times and it was very impressive. The selection is sometimes eclectic as well as being all things to all people, a difficult feat to accomplish. The vibe was very much of a cool college town bookstore, where the students aspiring to be the cool kids congregated to learn how to act as the future bookstore dwelling hipsters and to develop their look of faux gravitas. Of course, these same people  will mostly eschew poor Border’s when they become gradual students and congregate at the local independent bookstores. They will then knowledgeably disparage the likes of Border’s.

Border’s also was the first chain store that was dawdler friendly, having a reasonable coffee shop with agreeable pastries and selling Seattle’s Best coffee. I quite enjoyed it, even though Starbuck’s bought them out. Although I can never forgive Border’s for destroying my favorite independent bookstore in St. Louis.

Barnes and Nobles (B&N) is still alive today, even after Amazon had destroyed most of the brick and mortar bookstores around the country, like Border’s. Their resilience does say something about them; persistence is admirable. B&N has always been the staid, teetotaling stick-in-the-mud relative kind of bookstore. This chain was never interested in providing the reading junkies with their fix of ample choice, or inspiring the light reading clientele to read more interesting and challenging books, they were very happy to be as bland and uninteresting as possible so that they do not threaten the status quo. The layout and décor of the neighborhood B&N gave off the unwelcoming vibe to me, I rarely spend much time there to browse. One trip through the aisles told me most of what I wanted to know. They usually have a coffee shop, many times they are Starbuck’s. I will dawdle there over overpriced coffee and pastry while I plowed through a sack of books that I bring into the place; with headphones on, because their muzak are as generic as their book selection, as I focused on enjoying my reading experience despite my location.

Here Dayton, there is a bookstore named Books & Co, it is a chain, but a chain that was unfamiliar to me. It is housed in a large and impressive looking building in a shopping center that was deliberately designed to look like a charming European village with all the standard cliches filling up the “village”. I was hopeful when I moved to town and learned of its presence. I was sorely disappointed. This is a bookstore that had all the potential of a great bookstore, but mostly disappoints. The store is huge but filled with books that is available anywhere and everywhere else, there was no distinguishing character ethos to the bookstore. Their religious book section exceptionally large and full of different titles. My thinking here is that if they can put forth a more than pedestrian effort on one section of the bookstore, why not put forth a similar effort to building a few of the other genres? They instead filled their massive space with more calendars that they can ever sell, discount books that are discount books for a self-evident reason, and once again, average generic books that the average generic corporate book buyers believe the average generic readers will throw their money at.

Waterstones is the British equivalent of B&N, except they are a bit better in my opinion, perhaps I succumbed to my Anglophilic tendencies, or it might be that I was in the UK whenever I visited a Waterstones, which made me that much more agreeable. There is something to be said about the feel of a Waterstones that clearly made them salient in my mind, a sense of calm amidst the hustle bustle of the British streets. Even their bookstalls in airports are very inviting and gives the traveler an oasis in the sensory overload that is the average airport. Perhaps it was because I saw books that I had not seen nor was I acquainted with filling the front tables of the Waterstones, but I was always suitably impressed. Rest assured however, that I was not blinded to the fact that Waterstone’s was more similar to B&N and Border’s than it was to my favorite independents, it was just that the vibe in Waterstone’s was distinctly British and not American, and that difference attracted me, even though the primary and driving fundamentals of the stores were the same: make lots of money and cater to the least common denominator.

The irony here is that Waterstones parent company has acquired B&N in mid-2019, and the Waterstones’ CEO, James Daunt is now the new CEO of B&N. I certainly hope that he can revive B&N as he had Waterstones. I wish him well.

The irony of the everything-to-everyone chain bookstores existence is that while they had forced the shuttering of many independent books stores around the country, Amazon ultimately forced the big box everything-to-everyone stores to shutter their doors. In a surprising twist of fate the independents have shown signs of renewed life and are flourishing in their own way and in their own space. Perhaps it is because they were competing with the everything for everyone stores that made the small independents resilient and gird themselves to compete, I am not a bookseller so I would not know, but I welcome the return of the small independent, even though I know the 800 lb gorilla that is Amazon is always around the corner.

Works Cited

Rice, Ronald. My Bookstore: Writer's Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers Ltd., 2012.

Next: Confessions of a Bookstore Snob Part 2: The Bibliophiles Dream