Looking over my bookshelves is like scanning a scrapbook of my trips. When I travel I always visit the local independent bookstore and collect a recommendation from an employee. While I’ve shopped for years in bookstores, my first experience in asking for guidance was at the Corner Bookstore on Madison Avenue in New York. I had walked numerous blocks with my children, they were complaining, I was cranky, and my feet hurt. I stumbled across the store and fell in, hoping for respite.
The place was small but bright with oak stained book tables lining the front half of the store, and similar shelving in the back half and along the walls. I collapsed in the one chair by the front window and sent my kids to the children’s section. I scanned the stacks of books and felt overwhelmed; I was too beat to look. In desperation, I asked an elegant woman who was briskly arranging the surrounding books if she had any books she loved.
She wondered what type of reading I enjoyed. I paused; normally I’m not a beach reader. I love a challenging book. But on that day a book without pictures would have been a stretch. I told her my usual choice but that I felt defeated by everything. She brought over No Angel by Penny Vincenzi, a family saga of war, love, affairs, and heartbreak; within the first thirty pages I became lost in another world, on vacation from life. The second book was Old Filth by Jane Gardam, a literary book with a unique character personifying the bygone British Empire. Months later, in a California museum I saw a woman carrying Old Filth, the only time I’ve seen it, and I wanted to stop her and talk to her about it, but then realized that the book feels especially communal to me only because of my personal experience at the Corner Bookstore.
After flying home from New York and unpacking my books, I decided that finding independent bookstores wherever I travel and buying a recommendation would be my new collection. The beauty of these stores is that the employees read a lot, are experts in certain genres, and are opinionated about books. The stores often reflect their community, what might be popular in one place frequently is different from what is selling in my hometown. Walking into a store as a tourist, exploring the stock and then leaving after a substantive conversation with a local gives me a sense of connection to the area, much more intimate than chatting up the waitress at the local diner.
Finding the bookstores is relatively easy; I search the web for “independent bookstore and the city and state.” City websites include lists of bookstores. Fodor’s Web site usually cites several bookstores; simply search a city, click on shopping and scroll through. Book Sense, a marketing group for independent bookstores, offers a store locater function on its website. Readers share great bookstores and that is how I first heard about Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. It’s mentioned frequently, and someday I’ll be in Portland for more than a layover and can visit. Of course, the best finds I usually discover by accident; I need a bumper stick on my car that says, “I stop for all independent bookstores.”
On occasion, I’ve had to be a bit pushy with the clerk, either because everything she suggests is common nationwide—who needs to hear that a recent Oprah pick is popular—or she’s so surprised to be asked she turns shy. In these situations, I’ll ask the clerk what she has read recently that she liked. This is how in Grass Valley, California I found The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra, a piercing book about the destruction of Kabul personified by two couples living under the Taliban. With all the hype over Hosseni’s A Thousand Splendid Suns, this jewel was never mentioned as a companion read, but with a little curiosity and probing, I was fortunate to find it.
