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Get to Know Your Bookseller!
Developing a relationship with your local bookseller is, as Martha Stewart would say, “a good thing.” Get familiar with the store, have conversations about books with the people who work there, and let them become familiar with your reading taste. A knowledgeable bookseller can pass along recommendations and let you know out about new or older books in your fields of interest that you wouldn’t otherwise know about. For me, a visit to the bookshop is an event, not an errand. Whether I’m shopping at a small store or a large one, it is all the better if I recognize friends when I walk in the door.
One of my favorite book stores, and the one I have the longest history with, is The Regulator Bookshop on 9th Street in Durham NC. I gave my first public poetry reading there years ago, launched What Travels With Us at that bookshop in 2005, and when my house burned down, the staff chipped in and sent me a Home Depot gift certificate. Tom Campbell and John Valentine expanded the store a few years ago to include a coffee shop. Check out The Regulator if you are ever in Durham.
Second on my long list is Chatham Books of Chatham VA, hometown of Pulitzer Prize winning poet Claudia Emerson. Chatham is a few miles from my own hometown of Martinsville. Rick Dixon, Bill Hewitt and white American Shepard Buddy welcome you to visit beautiful southside VA and their cozy and well-stocked store. CB has a major author visit about once a month, and downtown neighbor Henry Hurt opens his private librarium for their readings. While Henry runs a virtual antiquarian bookshop, Shadetree Rare Books, he also maintains a private store front a few doors down from CB and offers this space for cultural events, where authors and readers sit around a giant conference table surrounded by Henry’s private collection of antique books. What a great way to go home again.
On our farm in Tennessee, my husband and I are miles from any book store, but I know folks at Davis-Kidd at Green Hills, Barns and Noble at Opry Mills, and Borders on West End downtown. And on my travels back to NC, I sometimes stop at Book Works in Cookeville, Carpe Librum in Knoxville, and Maloprops in Asheville. I’m seldom in too big a hurry to stop and look at books
Build a relationship with a bookstore near you!
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