Beach Reads Under an Artificial Sun

The world outside my window is blanketed in snow, in spite of this being late March, which has me wondering if I should increase my carbon footprint or something. Don't get me wrong, snow is one of the things I like about living in South Dakota. It's cool to have seasons again after living so long in Texas -- even if one particular season seems reluctant to end. One thing that's not so cool: the paucity of bookstores. I mean, what do people do during these long winters? (Wait. Don't answer that.) Whatever they do, they don't read. Either that or they buy their books online.

Consider this. If I want to buy a book here in Sioux Falls, the largest city in our state, I have only a handful of choices. Two are on my street: The Book Shop (which sells used titles) and Zandbroz (which has a selection of new ones). Then there's Barnes & Noble on the other side of town, a Christian retail place (nice, but not much selection -- all the books are displayed face out), a tiny place called The Book Nook (also Christian), a new independent place called Cover to Cover (mostly mass market and magazines), and a Waldenbooks in the mall. So I count seven choices, and most of them have small selections. If Barnes & Noble doesn't have something, the odds are the others won't either except for The Book Shop. (Did I mention The Book Shop is being sold and might not continue? Hopefully it will.)

Now imagine that instead of reading a book, you want to get a fake tan. That sounds pretty specialized, doesn't it? You'd think a community that can't support more than a handful of bookstores doesn't have a hope when it comes to tanning salons. And you'd be wrong. Here in Sioux Falls, you could book an appointment at Year Round Brown, which has five locations all over town. If that's not to your taste, there's always Tan World, which has four locations. If you're one of those people who sees chain tanning as inauthentic, there are also some independent options, at least four or five salons that offer tanning as one of their services.

Doing the math, it seems that tanners have twice as many options as readers do in our town.

I'm not complaining. During a long, gray winter, I really appreciate the fact that my fellow citizens have good, even tans. They're probably just getting their books online. You can't get a tan online. Yet.

But over Easter Weekend we went to Minneapolis/St. Paul, the Twin Cities. People around here just call them the Cities. (That right there tells you something.) In the Cities, they have bookstores, and that's where I spent my free time. What an experience. I felt the way a really pale, nearly translucent person must feel when he turns the corner to find a Year Round Brown franchise staring back at him. How did I live without this? How can I go back?

Amazon is all well and good, but what they call browsing online really isn't. I know it seems entirely free-form and unfettered, but without the physical presence of books, you lose spontaneity. Putting a keyword into a search window isn't the same as bending over and turning sideways to make out the titles on the bottom shelf. The problem is, you need a lot of books for this physical browsing thing to work. A row or two of homogenized bestsellers won't do it. Even a big box seller has a hard time, because a stroll through Barnes & Noble is like going to the Book Zoo. There they are, nicely corralled, but it's nothing like encountering them in the wild. Browsing at the chain store is like ordering from the TGI Friday's menu. The experience doesn't change just because you're at a different Friday's. That's the point.

In the Cities, though, I crept through Book Smart on Hennepin Ave., one of those places where the radio in the corner is playing NPR and is so dusty you think it hasn't been shut off in years. A bookstore that makes you go down into the basement for anything like recent hardback bestsellers. The main floor is reserved for exotics. And what did I find? A beautiful, heart-breakingly pristine hardback of John Gardner's The Art of Fiction. I didn't know there had ever been a hardback, but there it was, selling for a whopping $7 -- which won't even cover an intro session at Year Round Brown.

Then there was Maggers & Quinn. I had to be clever with this one, because Laurie was ready to leave town. Here I took advantage of something else Sioux Falls doesn't have in abundance: a MAC cosmetics shop.

"I would hate to leave," I said, "without checking out that makeup store."

That did the trick. A half-hour of supportive accompaniment, and I was cleared for another visit to the bookstore. (We also stopped by Design Within Reach, a first for me, which should really be called Design Way Way Out of Reach. But at least I now know how big a book advance it'll take to sit in a Womb Chair.) At Maggers & Quinn, they have a table devoted to P. G. Wodehouse hardbacks. It's hard to think of a better use for a table. I left with a little stack of Hesperus paperbacks, but I could have bought a lot more. (Gotta save for that chair.)

And then we were back home, just in time for another snow flurry, stranded inside with nothing to do but read and watch Year Round Brown commercials on television, convinced that there's a profound something or other in all this. A town where the tanning booths outnumber the bookstores? Virtual browsing versus physical? A world where makeovers and upscale furniture are the price we pay for a half hour in the dusty old shelves?

Only it's too cold out there to think, with or without the artificial sun.

-- JMB

J. Mark Bertrand is the author of Rethinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World (Crossway, 2007). He blogs at his own site jmarkbertrand.com, The Rethinking Worldview Blog, and The Bible Design and Binding Blog. You can also catch him at his new blog about the literary life -- Write About Now.

Comments

[Miz Melly]

Ah, Mark I feel your pain! When I lived in France the bookstores were fabulous - they also stocked an amazing array of stationary which fed my paper addicition - but everything was in French and as I wasn't fluent, well it just wasn't the same. I did still get a kick out of smelling the books on the bookshelves - do you do that too, or is that just me? Moving back to Ireland was brilliant from a 'book shop' point of view. You'd love Dawson St in the city centre where no less than three major book stores are on the same street!!!

[Nathan Knapp]

"You can't get a tan online. Yet." I love that, Mark. lol.

Here in backwoods southeast Oklahoma, I live within a half-hour drive of one used-book store, which is filled with with mass-market paperbacks and a few literary novels - and to top it off, it's in Arkansas. It's a two hour drive to the nearest "book-zoo" (BooksaMillion or Hastings), but that's about it for the entire southeast Oklahoma/west Arkansas area, so I have a strong appreciation for those. I'll be moving to Seattle in the fall - here's to hoping for a wider selection of book store options.

[Heather Goodman]

I may not have good bookstore options, but I've got a plethora of libraries (pause for a minute while I run the Three Amigos line...). And the libraries do a decent job of stocking with new and old discoveries. Between the city libraries (of which there are half a dozen), the colleges (another half dozen--no, more), and neighboring towns which share library cards (very kind of them, if you ask me), I'm set.
The only problem is they carry too many books, which leaves me with few excuses for buying books.
And Miz--you're not alone with the book smelling. I miss card catalogs--you know, when they actually used cards--for the same reason, the smells.

[Christopher Fisher]

My business plan for Sioux Falls: A parntership with Year Round Brown renting/selling books. You know, like at the airport? Only "read while you tan" instead of "read while you fly."

Then again, for some reason I doubt Year Round Brown's customers would be the right market for an inter-store book loan business. On reflection of my literary friends and colleagues, I only now realize we're a rather pasty crowd. I wonder why that is.

[Susan Meissner]

I feel your pain. I lived for 14 years an hour and half east of where you are, in a Siberian wasteland full of charming people but no bookstore for 50 miles in any direction. Going to Mankato to stroll the Barnes and Noble shelves made me giddy. But the Cities? Well, going there to breathe in the books was enough to make me cry.

Sooz

[J. Mark Bertrand]

Melanie -- Here's something funny. When I was at the above-mentioned Book Smart, a couple of guys entered mid-conversation. One of them started: "When I lived in France..." And I thought, "You don't hear that too often back in South Dakota. I, too, love the smell of old books.

Nathan -- I feel for you. You won't have any trouble finding good bookstores in Seattle, though, so happiness is on the horizon. Make a note to visit Wessel & Leiberman, which is where I scored a whole set of Mauriac hardbacks that had belonged to Denise Levertov.

Heather -- I miss card catalogs, too. We found one in an antique store, with all those little drawers, and I was sorely tempted, in spite of having nowhere to put it.

Chris -- You'll be happy to learn that Year Round Brown offers a "tan with a friend" package which I imagine could be easily adapted to "tan with your critique group." Imagine workshopping stories and getting a tan at the same time. It could change the very nature of fiction.

Susan -- I'd forgotten about your exile in these parts. Sounds like you really miss it, huh? :) Your Mankato pilgrimages make me downright grateful for what I have, which is an embarrassment of riches in comparison.

[Karen Schravemade]

I live in a regional Australian city of 60,000 people. We have ONE bookstore, and it's about the size of my smallish living room. Other than that, there's a book corner in the newsagency, or a mass-market selection at Big W. Oh, but if you want a drink, you're spoiled for choice. Rockhampton boasts about twenty pubs and bars.

Look, I'm sure my non-literary town really does have a lot going for it. If you enjoy a good steak, come live in Rockhampton. It's the beef capital of Australia.

And I'm a vegetarian who likes to read. Would someone remind me again why I live here?

[J. Mark Bertrand]

A vegetarian who likes to read in the beef capitol with hardly a bookstore? You win the Paradox Prize for the week, Karen. I feel downright spoiled with choices! :)