A Place For Everything

This is a piece I wrote about bookstores in 2015.

Between the winding rows of bookshelves, there is a vast array of choices: books on dragons, on true romance, teen romance and diaries, on history, on war, peace, and protest; there are books on self-help, self-success, and meditation; books on breathing, books on sleeping, and books on books: books, booklets, novels, and novellas, dictionaries, encyclopedias and world record books; books on fantasy and mystery, sci-fi and real stuff too: biographies, autobiographies and memoirs; books on presidents and entrepreneurs, heroes and terrorists, explorers and whistleblowers; there are bible books and cook books, books that are small, books with pictures, and even the occasional graph or table; there are books on propaganda and marijuana, books on parenting, books for dummies, and how-to books: how-to-be, how things work; there are books by Vonnegut and Hemingway, books with pennames and no-names, editors, and co-authors; there are classic books by Homer and Plato (no, they aren’t forgotten); bargain books, expensive books and everything in-between; there are books for moms, books for soon-to-be moms, and books with large print for moms of moms; there are books for shopaloholics, alcoholics and drug addicts, villains and ones that wish to be, and even some books in braille for the ones who can’t see; there are books for book-lovers and inspiring readers, for mourners and learners, musicians and athletes; books for curious minds: the mystery-solvers, the ones who yearn to turn every page; there are epic books, e-books, and books simply about flowers; erotic novels, bookazines, and ‘activity’ books too; there are books about cannibalism and capitalism, consumerism and communism; coffee-table books, bathroom books, dinosaur books, and fun reads in Spanish; there are books that make you cry, cringe, laugh and chuckle: the ones that make you think; there are books that are re-shelved and re-sold, re-read and re-written; books that are bookmarked, doggy-eared and coffee-stained; there are books with softcovers, hardcovers, or no covers at all; there are some books with plot and others about weather. But, they’re all in the lot together. 

People. There are people with handfuls of books, people with one book, and people with books in bags; people with eye-glasses, sunglasses, and magnifying glasses; there are people drinking water, coffee, and espressos; there are people with feathers in their hats, people with canes, and people with casts on their arms; there are people with free afternoons, people with no time, people who nap, others who caffeinate, and some that do both; there are people who are dragged to the bookstore: children and some students; there are browsers and lingerers, the people who stay until closing, the one-stop-shoppers and the people that read books on comfy couches to avoid paying; there are people with PhD’s, law degrees and GED’s, people with depression, anxiety and seasonal allergies, people who read a book a day or a book a week, while some just make it an annual event; there are people who read books, people who skim, and people who listen; there are people who buy books to stock new bookshelves for show, and people who talk loudly and don’t know; there are people with money, people with fame, and people on food stamps with no shame.

There are the title-lovers, the ones who get hooked by cheesy gimmicks and flashy texts; there are the ones who, despite the maxim, judge books by their covers, its colors, pictures, or complete lack there of; there are the book-clubbers, summer-readers, and the New York Times best-selling disciples; there are the recurrent faces who regularly check the “New Arrivals,” picking up each text with interest; they’ll purchase one or two, or none at all, but they’ll be back soon; there are the ones who stumble into bookstores on a whim: the ones trying to get back into reading; there are the fitness-lovers: the ones who skim to slim; there are employees with nametags, journalists with notepads, and students with backpacks; and there are always people who solely buy books about cats.

Today. One customer is on a mission, though his sluggish pace wouldn’t suggest it. His ballooned upper body rocks with each clumsy step. The stride is slow. He’s held up by his belt, which is ripping on both sides, and securely fastened six inches above his navel. Folding over his waistline, he appears to be pushing his stomach outward, but it has become this reader’s natural stance.

It’s time for a new book, something different, as he quickly glances over the “True Crime” section and darts straight to “World History.” His fingers trace over a few titles that are neatly stacked against the dark maple shelving. A smaller book catches his attention and he picks it up with an odd trepidation. Sleepwalking Into the New World, an exploration of eleventh and twelfth century city-states in Northern Italy, is the book of choice. He remains fixed on the text for a full five minutes, a motionless statue, engaged in every word. But, it’s not the one. Not today. He closes the book and puts it back into place.

The “Christian Life” display catches the man’s attention as he turns to his left. After glancing over the top two rows, nothing seems of intrigue, but he bends down to view the bottom row of books, an action that not only puts extreme pressure on his wobbling knees, but also on the pant-seam that tightly hugs his behind. He picks up a title called A Treasury for Miracles and Friends, a collection of emotional stories about God’s presence in life. After a few moments, he returns the book, and the man grows uneasy. A middle-aged couple, in a rush, grazes by his shoulder carrying The Official SAT Study Guide, and hurries toward the check out line.

After staring at the “Fantasy” section with displeasure for three minutes, he begins to rub his right thumb against his pointer finger in a back-and-forth motion before looking up with aggression, seeking out his next prey. Another man, even heavier, approaches and quietly mumbles under his bearded breath. The two struggle to pass one other in the narrow alley of texts; their stomachs unintentionally brush. Both men are cladded in stained, red collared shirts and silver-rimmed glasses. They make eye contact before the larger man moves toward the “Graphic Novels” section and proceeds to read a collection of Marvel magazines for sixteen minutes. He stands for the entire duration.

Close by, an elderly woman sits down in a large chair next to the “Spirituality” section of the bookstore. After exhaling so loud that half the store can hear, she positions her walker to the right of the chair and takes out a book on psychosis. She tells her husband that books have become too heavy. He ridicules her for the useless text she opted for. The woman grunts deeply, from her chest, before reading the first page and falling fast asleep. A slim high school student with pigtails walks by and stares at the woman before selecting her fourth fiction novel, subsequently placing them all on the ground, in order to tie her crisp white converse shoes.

Her father calls her over to the “Books that Make You Think” table, picking up the Diary of A Young Girl by Anne Frank, pleading with her to read it. Much more interested in her novels, she walks toward the “Teen Romance” aisle; the father shrugs with simple satisfaction that his daughter is excited about reading and looks back down at the table before him. He strokes the cover of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies before carrying on. Placed in-between Frank and Golding’s texts is The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, which remains unnoticed, untouched, and unread.

Sitting on a raised platform in the café of the store, next to a poster of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, is a middle-aged man. After a few seconds of motionless examination around the store, he takes a sip of coffee. Soon after, his eyes return to the book in his hands: Effortless Healing: 9 Simple Ways to Sidestep Illness, Shed Excess Weight, and Help Your Body Fix Itself. With each turned page he brushes his thick, oily hair out of his eyes. He blows his nose every five-or-so pages and pauses to watch the customers sporadically positioned throughout the store.

A frail twenty-something, coated in tattoos, is also having trouble finding a book. Kneeling on the ground, his eyes bounce back and forth between The Good Atheist in his left hand, and Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind in his right. The deliberation leads him to choose the former, and after standing up, he catches a glance with an elderly man carrying Deceptions and Myths of the Bible, by Lloyd M. Graham. The two move on, separately.

A husband and wife: the man wearing a New York Mets baseball hat, the spouse capped in Red Sox, race around looking for a title they can agree upon. Nothing seems to be a match.

In the corner of the store, a young businessman in a slim cut suit is having a comfortable read of Star Trek Generations. A pregnant woman sits to the right and starts flipping through The Stranger by Albert Camus. A sci-fi fan following Spock is a foot away from a woman tracking Meursault in Camus’ existentialist novel. The two have never been closer.

There are more readers everywhere: a woman with her grandson picks up a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a teenage boy with glasses and a noticeable cowlick flips through Mental Biology before grabbing at The Physics Devotional, and a mustached-man is having a read of Miracle at Augusta – his mind wandering to the 18th green; there’s a group of three examining Mohammed, not too far from a woman nearing her fifties holding Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment; there’s two adult men chatting in the “Teen Survival” section, both with a copy of Michael Grant’s Gone.

There are books on windmills, books on God, books on fraud, books on melons and french fries, books on annexations, proclamations, and presidential nominations; there are dissertations, translations and citations; there are books and on Chernobyl, the Khmer Rouge, and the Han dynasty; political power, solar power and horsepower; there are also readers: the professors, the parents, the handsome and the lonely folk; there are the tired and the lively, and the ones who can’t decide; there are genres of books: fiction and non-, botany and architecture, geography and love; each is a new path to explore, linking readers to the page and their curiosity to words.

There’s an unpredictable nature to it all, the web of books and readers, the marriage of people and interests, and the intercourse of text, subject, and thought: a denim-garbed man selects Hamlet from the Shakespeare section, a withered customer with a pony tail pony-tail reads Runner’s Magazine, a petit Asian in a pink blazer studies The Last Unicorn, another fidgets in her seat while reading Oral: Erotic Stories of Going Down, another is reading The Dukan Diet, another Anne Enright’s The Green Road, and another The Science of Good Cooking.

They have long spines, but not all; they are young and old, black, white, and shades between; they are similar and they are different, stressful and successful; they can make you angry, eager, smarter, and work harder; they are mindful and mindless, worthy and priceless; slow, heavy, wrinkly and boring; they can make you dream and make you proud, beautiful and powerful; they can make you ponder: death, darkness, or just tell a nice story; they can be good with words and good with pictures, they can make you sigh, be funny and dry, or talk about apple pie; they sometimes look better on the outside, and even get popular with age; they have traveled across the world, or just a few miles, to meet and embrace – together at the same place.