books

Pandemic Diary 14: A Love of Books

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

My eight-year-old self enjoys his shelf of books in quarantine. He gets to choose each day between writing about reading or reading about writing.

* * * *
I’ve been told that I look like a kid in a candy store when we visit a book store. I suddenly appear to have multiple arms, like a Hindu deity, and my stride becomes a purposeful lurch.

There are two booksellers in my hometown of New Paltz, NY, plus our legendary record store offers a wall of books. When was the last time you visited a record store? Heck, it’s been a couple years since I have … and I reside in a community which has one.

An acquaintance, a rare book collector, was about to open a third bookshop here this spring, but the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent quarantine interfered. It is a difficult time to start a business other than a vape outlet or coffee shop anyway, even in a college town like ours, even in times when one can come into physical contact with customers, delivery boxes, cash. There will be better times.
Read More

In Honor of #IndependentBookstoreDay

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

April 28, 2018, is Independent Bookstore Day. For most of the 1990s, I was employed in an independent bookstore in New Paltz, New York. If you are a fan of books and of locally owned businesses and live near an independent bookstore, any excuse to visit your local bookstore is a good reason to visit it.

(Especially booksellers that specialize in used books; the perfume of used books ought to be bottled and sold, but then again, it already is: in old books.)

Huffington Post last year published a list of fifty popular independent bookstores located across the country; I have been in three of the fifty (numbers 4, 13, and 28) and number 28 has employed and still employs co-workers from my old bookseller.

A column of mine from 2015:
Read More

A Range of Emotions, All of Them Good

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

My girlfriend says it is like watching a kid in a candy store when we visit a book store. I suddenly appear to have multiple arms, like a Hindu deity, and my stride becomes a purposeful lurch.

Any purpose to my stride can be attributed to my knowing that she is not much of a fan of shopping at all, and less of a fan of browsing, of idling, of whiling away the hours, of fantasizing about future possessions, of wasting time! in a store whose shelves are taller than six feet and could crush us. I, on the other hand, experience a range of emotions, a panoply of feelings, all of them having to do with enjoying life, in a bookstore.
Read More