Out-of-Town Booksellers

In a week, an old co-worker of mine will be visiting Boston for the first time.  I first met her when she was seventeen and still settling on her combination between sweet and surly, and even though her name is Krysten I found it prudent and appropriate to attach the 'baby' bit and affectionately call her Baby Krysten, or BK for short. We worked together at another indie bookstore, and as much as I'm looking forward to seeing her face, I'm also interested to see what she thinks of the Booksmith.

Watching booksellers move around a bookstore they're visiting is fascinating.  They walk in, searching the shelves for the section that is their specialty.  They peruse the shelf with a critical eye, murmuring, "I've read that, it was really good," "I loved that one!" and "Avoid." They'll engage you in discussion, asking about particular shelving details and examining the shelf-talkers, roaming the store to see how everything flows and what sections are put together.  Booksellers, having experienced repeated section moves and have the muscles and eye rolling to prove it, understand the entire process behind putting particular sections together and are interested in why science and sports are near one another.  Spend 30 minutes with a touring bookseller (it's impossible to spend less than thirty minutes with one, inevitably the conversation will stretch and you will be loathe to return to the job at hand) and the two of you will have doubly long to-read lists and a burning desire to visit more bookstores. 

I hope she'll like visiting the Booksmith.  I hope she'll like walking around Boston, taking the T, and seeing what the city has to offer.  I also hope she won't mind when I go into frantic Mom-mode by repeatedly asking her if she's wearing enough layers.

Can't wait to see you, BK. 

From Poutine to Opera in Montreal

As we approached the restaurant outside Montreal’s Jardin Botanique, the unmistakable strains of an opera aria greeted us. We were exhausted after three days of trekking around the city and its parks, including the botanical gardens, where we had been greeted by enormous living plant sculptures presented by various countries for the Mosaicultures Internationales Montréal exhibition. After all that walking, it was delightful to find ourselves sharing tapas and a bottle of wine on a sun dappled terrace while being serenaded for free by members of the Opéra de Montréal.

We had spent our first morning at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. (If you missed Chihuly in Boston, he’s now on exhibit in Canada.) I could have spent the whole day among the paintings, but we opted for an afternoon strolling through the tree-lined avenues (designed by Frederick Law Olmsted) of Parc du Mont-Royal, where we were stunned with a view of the city and the St. Lawrence.

The evening before we had dined at an exquisite French and Portuguese restaurant, but now I pulled my companions across the street to sample poutine, a local dish with a history to, well, maybe not recommend it—a hearty dish of potatoes and cheese curds smothered in gravy, poutine, according to my Lonely Planet guide, was eaten by early settlers trying to survive the long winters. We washed down our meal with some beer and walked through the Old Town and onto the quays until it was time for a light show at the city’s famous Notre Dame Cathedral. The show was complete with historical re-enactments and dramatic voice actors.

We spent a day in Little Italy, at the Marché Jean-Talon, a sprawling market full of fresh produce, then went south on a hunt for bookstores. Our favorites were Mona Lisait where the owner played us classical guitar as we browsed and complimented our French, and Les Aux Points Cardinals—a travel bookstore with a full room of maps and gorgeous globes. After touring the sleek and modern bibliothéque nationale, we followed our Lonely Planet guide to Le Petite Extra for a dinner that would only be rivaled by the tapas on the terrace the next evening.

Autumn had begun to touch the trees surrounding us in the Jardin Botanique, and as soon as the tapas disappeared and the sunlight began to fade, I was cold. I left the table to procure a chocolat chaud from inside the restaurant, and, when I returned, my companions greeted me with a warm, soft wrap they had just procured from the restaurant for “la jolie jeune fille.” Cozily wrapped and sipping my hot chocolate, I found in this gesture an attention to comfort and beauty that rivaled that of Europe, and soaked in the strains of a robust Carmen as my last evening in Montreal twinkled into twilight.

Bookstore Tourism: Tokyo Edition

Still recovering from massive jet lag accrued over my recent flight over the International Date Line, I was reading Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart as I tried to lull myself to sleep at something resembling a decent hour. It's still hard to get to bed on time, and harder still to wake up in the morning and feel alert during the day, but since the time change between Brookline and Tokyo is (only) 13 hours, according to Wikipedia I only have 5 more days to recover from the jet lag. I should be right as rain just in time for my birthday! Anyway, back to the Murakami. At the beginning of chapter 6, the narrator says: "The day the letter arrived, I'd gone out to Shinjuku for the first time in quite a while, picked up a couple of new books at the Kinokuniya bookstore, and taken in a Luc Besson movie." While in Tokyo, I stayed in Shinjuku, and visited this very Kinokuniya, with it's staggering 8 stories of books.

There were tons of bookstores in Tokyo, and even a neighborhood of used bookstores near the major universities. The reading culture in Tokyo is alive and well, with many of the passengers on the clean, efficient Tokyo subway lines reading paperback books carefully covered in leather, canvas, fabric and even tidy paper book covers. The displays in many of the stores were gorgeous and vibrant, twisted stacks to the ceilings, beautiful piles wrapped around the bookshelves, and book design is beautiful there, with many of the books in similar trim sizes, with a sewn in bookmark in the popular-sized paperbacks. There's even a magazine devoted to the art of book design and illustration!

Kinokuniya was a little special for me because even though it's technically a chain, the only others I've visited were in Seattle and New York, two cities near and dear to my heart. I bought a copy of Alice in Wonderland in Japanese at the Seattle location, with a cool slipcase, and in New York I bought Finn Family Moomintroll in Japanese complete with illustrations. In Shinjuku, I loaded up on cute magazines with bunnies and stunning Japanese architecture magazines, and even rode the elevator with a real live attendant decked out in lace gloves and hat. I was on the hunt for a particular book and having trouble with the organization at one point (it didn't seem entirely alphabetical, even knowing the Japanese alphabet), and when I asked for help, the very kind and gracious bookseller bowed, ran to the computer, looked at me, excused himself and apologized profusely, dashed past me and returned with a Japanese to English dictionary and pointed at a word. "Not in stock." They have a single word for that! I thanked him, bought my treasures, which the cashier placed elegantly in the bag, taped shut, bowed and thanked me.

All of this was a microcosm of my stay in Japan, orderly, elegant, everyone takes such care with details and politeness I felt so welcome and happy and impressed and overwhelmed and soothed all at the same time I had a hard time leaving. So how about it kids, who's coming with me to set up Booksmith Tokyo?

Hipsters, Bookstores, & a Ferris Wheel

I had just left the wood floors of Elliot Bay Bookstore and was walking down a rain-sparkled street to one of my favorite cafes, Bauhaus, already anticipating the dim corners and foggy windows that give Bauhaus its romantic and edgy feel--the perfect blend of stimulation and hibernation needed to write the night away. Across the street on the puddled pavement of an empty court of Cal Anderson Park, a game of bike hockey commenced. I passed a drag queen in an elaborate pink evening dress. There was no doubt where I was: the hipster of Seattle's neighborhoods, Capitol Hill.

While I spent most of my week-long stay in Seattle in the University District, where I used to live and work, I visited almost every neighborhood in the immediate area. Perhaps because of the city's unique topography--houses and businesses are built up into the hills that rise from the surrounding waters of the Puget Sound, Lake Union, and Lake Washington--Seattle's neighborhoods are distinct, each with its own atmosphere, its own sub-culture and its own particular breed of residents populating its streets and cafes.

If you are in the U District, the dominate atmosphere is of course, the student population. A walk around the campus in spring time, particularly in the "quad," is essential--cherry blossoms are everywhere. Be sure to stop in my old stompin' grounds, the University Bookstore, an independent with a great selection of new and used books. Want more? Head down the back alley to Magus Bookstore, full of used books, and grab a coffee at the hole-in-the-wall cafe, Allegro.  Along University Way are the typical student eateries, with a diverse smattering of Asian cuisine.

I spent a full day in Ballard, where I was amazed to see whole streets full of new, hip cafes and shops that had sprung up in the past few years. Among them were the more familiar bars that still give the neighborhood its old fishing village feel--Coner Byrne a particular favorite of mine. This neighborhood hosts a small independent bookstore that specializes in children's books, The Secret Garden.

I lived in Queen Anne for a few years, at the bottom of the hill. When I hiked to the top I found small shops and cafes, pricier than other parts of the city, but delightful to spend a day browsing. Among them, Queen Anne Books, set to re-open under new ownership in February. Just across the ship canal and the shockingly blue Freemont Bridge, is Freemont. If Capitol Hill is the "hippest" of Seattle's neighborhoods, Freemont is the "hippiest" neighborhood in Seattle, defined by its slow pace, its Sunday Market, and of course, more bookshops and cafes. It is all Jamaica Plain aspires to be, and never will be. (I love you JP, I live in you, and I have faith that you will find yourself someday).

I haven't even touched Wallingford, Belltown, Green Lake, the International District, Magnolia, Maple Leaf, Ravenna, West Seattle or Downtown (where I rode the new Ferris Wheel near Pike Place Market to stunning views of Mount Rainer, the Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains), but I have to leave something for you to discover on your own. We've got a large selection of guidebooks covering the Pacific Northwest to help you on your way.