Bookshop Santa Cruz is celebrating its 46th birthday this weekend. I’ll be
out of town and not present for the ceremonies, but since they’re asking people
to reflect on independent bookstores , I can make a modest contribution.
The
first bookstore I really remember was Vroman’s on Colorado Boulevard in
Pasadena. We lived in nearby Altadena the first 12 years of my life, and my
memory of Vroman’s is mostly of going there a couple of times a month, always
on a Saturday afternoon, to spend part of my allowance on Hardy Boys books.
Years later, after I had moved a few hundred miles away, I’d still make a pilgrimage
to Vroman’s when I was in Los Angeles to visit my parents. The parents are gone
now, but Vroman’s remains.
In
my high school years, I took to going to the Pickwick bookstore in Hollywood. It
was bigger than Vroman’s and more chaotic, plus Hollywood in the sixties was a
pretty dodgy place, which added a bit of a frisson to the expedition. The
Pickwick, alas, is no more.
Surveying the Local Scene
Our
county now has four major bookstores and several smaller ones. Bookshop Santa
Cruz is the leader, active in independent bookseller circles and industry
change. They recently invested in a book-printing machine that has gained
considerable community attention and use.
Crossroads
in Watsonville, where I had the first book-signing for my mystery, The McHenry Inheritance, is a gem of a
small bookstore, providing a vital service for a community where people would
otherwise have to make a 25-30 mile round trip to buy a book.
Capitola
Book Café is another good general bookstore, serving the area between Santa Cruz
and Watsonville. Logos, in downtown Santa Cruz, is a behemoth of a used-book
store.
In
all the stores I’ve mentioned, there’s a wonderful sense of serendipity, a
feeling that you could stumble across something new and wonderful that you
never knew about before you walked through the doors. To me, that’s the single
most important thing a real bookstore offers.
Browsing
and chance discovery are somehow easier when the actual books are in front of
you, rather than up on the computer screen as you scan Amazon. Amazon has its
virtues, but it’s best when you know what you’re looking for going in. It
rarely surprises you.
Bookstores Encountered by Chance
Over
the years there have been a number of bookstores I came across on trips, often
completely by chance. I’ve been racking my brains, with no success, to come up
with the name of the bookstore in London where I scored some incredible British
mysteries and thrillers by authors I’d never heard of. That score included my
first Dornford Yates book.
Then
there was Murder Ink in New York City, where the scenario was the opposite. It
had quite a reputation and was one of the things on my to-see list when we made
our first trip to Gotham in 1988. Murder Ink lived up to its reputation.
And
finally there are some small-town bookstores in getaway areas. Three I
particularly recall. There was The Book Keeper in West Yellowstone; I still
have one of their bookmarks, but the store vanished some time after our last
visit more than 20 years ago, and a Google search today turns up nothing. Toyon
Books on the Plaza in Healdsburg in the California Wine Country had a great cat
and amazing selection for its size. It’s now Copperfield Books. And finally,
one that’s still around, and from which I bought a couple of volumes in March,
Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino on the California coast. Long may it thrive.
