For readers, walking by a bookstore and not entering is inconceivable. We just can’t bring ourselves to not pass through that door and take in that “bookstore smell.” It’s a real thing the bookstore smell, like a seductive perfume. There’s a mixture of ink, paper, old hardwood floors, and ageless wisdom with a few shakes of the secret to life sprinkled like fairy dust.
Bookstores as Places of Solace
I never tire of it. It is what has been bringing me back to bookstores my entire life. Whenever something wasn’t going well in my life, a trip to the bookstore was in order. If everything was great, well then, let’s go to the bookstore and celebrate by buying a book.
Is someone’s birthday coming up? They’d love a book, and even if they weren’t big readers, I’d buy them one anyway because to me, there is no gift better than a book. People seek out refuge in life, be it somewhere in nature, a favorite tree, the ocean, or a church. For me and many others, it’s a bookstore.
The Sandy Hook school shooting occurred 10 days before Christmas in 2012 when 26 lives were lost, most of them children under the age of seven in Newtown, Connecticut. In the weeks and months that followed, many people came to my bookstore, House of Books, looking for solace, seeking answers, searching for a refuge amidst the tragedy that had befallen their town and community and the incessant media coverage that hounded locals. I’d listen if they felt like talking or simply offer them help if there was anything they were looking for. Mostly, I think they just needed to feel safe, so they sought out a bookstore.
When the town hosted the Gilmore Girls Festival, I had the best sales day ever. There was a line throughout the stacks, out the door, and down the street around the corner. People waited for over an hour to purchase signed books by some of the actors and writers from the show and, of course, browsed around to buy more books. Other weekends featured poetry readings and author signings where the wine flowed, and people met authors and struck up conversations with other readers.
Related: 5 Family Friendly Bookstore Events
I’ve worked in many places in my life—grocery stores, banks, restaurants, office buildings, department stores, and bookstores—and only in bookstores did I find that people smiled upon entering and the vibe all around was a positive one, one where curiosity is unleashed. People who frequent bookstores are seekers. They don’t want to guess at life. They want information, inspiration, or validation. They are thinkers and escapists. Why not travel to faraway places in your mind and be filled with new experiences?
It has been proven in many studies over the years that people who read literary fiction score higher in empathy. It makes sense, as reading a story is the only way to get into the mind of someone else even if the character happens to be an imagined one in the mind of a writer. It is only when we are able to sympathize with someone else’s struggles and pain that we gain a greater understanding of the outside world, other cultures, races, and the vast human experience. The benefits of reading go on and on.
Bookstores as Essential Businesses
I was surprised during the pandemic that bookstores were not allowed to remain open along with grocery stores and liquor stores. In my opinion, a book is as necessary as breathing, eating, and the occasional cocktail. People were allowed purchase alcohol during the lockdown and readers were forced to either buy books online or schedule a pickup outside of a bookstore, but no browsing was allowed.
It was painful to be cut off from the one thing that has always given me joy and solace, which is walking into a bookstore. I am one of the individuals who will buy the hardcover when it first comes out. With some writers, I don’t have the patience to wait a year for the paperback to be released. I also will not scoff at the $25-30 price tag. A book is still one of the cheapest forms of entertainment and a bonus is that it can be shared.
Books: A Lifelong Pursuit
“Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers. How delightful if that were true.” The Guernsey Literary Potato Peel Pie Society ~ Mary Anne Shaffer.
In all my years of haunting bookstores, I’ve always left with something unexpected. And yet over the years and moving a bunch of times, I’ve realized there’s no way I can keep every book I purchase. So, at least once a year I have to purge my shelves and make that difficult decision about which ones to donate to libraries or sell to used bookstores or pass along to friends or family. There are some books I will never part with: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea, and anything by Edith Wharton, Tolstoy, or Jane Austen. They are mainstays.
When I’m long gone, my books will go to my daughters and through the notes I’ve made inside them—my scribbles, thoughts, and musings—perhaps they will gain some deeper knowledge of who their mother was.
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.” Alan Bennett
As a lifelong reader, that has been my experience many times, and each time it does, I feel more alive and connected to so much more than I ever thought possible. Like that old saying goes, people who read experience many lives; those who don’t, live only one.
There’s something to be said for strangers and customers alike to feel the need to be gracious enough to thank their local booksellers for being there, being open, and offering a necessary resource to our communities as well as places of sanctuary and celebration.