Curveballs and Bookstore Cats
December 31st, 2007 by Chris Ellis in How to Read
TORONTO, ON—I was born and raised in Burlington, Ontario. This suburb-of-suburbs isn’t the centre of much, other than a nice little downtown, safe schools, and manicured lawns. Yet Burlington was the initial battleground in the current war over how Canadians buy their books. Three historic bookstores, the first big box Chapters, the first Indigo, and the third, Different Drummer Books — likely one of the best independent bookstores in Canada — all do business in the city. The independent and box stores couldn’t be more different. After all buying books is more than just buying books; it’s an experience.
In my mind everything about Different Drummer is perfect:
Bookstore cat. Check.
Victorian house. Check.
Conspicuous smell of books in the air. Check.
Vintage copy of Jimi Hendrix reading a Penguin. Check.
Well read staff. Check.
Creaky floorboards. Check.
The beauty of DD is that I can walk in and spout off a laundry list of interests, and like a calm, professional chef cooking during the dinner rush, Richard the owner walks around the store assembling a small stack of books that I know I will enjoy. It’s the human touch that puts this store over the top.
I’ve heard that bookshops of decades and centuries ago worked in a similar fashion, albeit less Jimi Hendrix and probably more Mozart. You would be invited to sup or have coffee or tea with the proprietor, where you would discuss your interests — a bit like a first date. Several days later, the bookseller would call you for a second date, where they would provide a carefully selected bundle of books tailored to your tastes. (Presumably, if the selected books were not up to par, a strange version of ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ would end the relationship.)
This courtship between bookseller and reader has grown cold over the years. Now, readers are acquainted with a computer database’s unloving touch. At Amazon (shame, shame, I know), I am bombarded with “Customers with Similar Searches Purchased,” “Add to Your Collection,” “Recommended for You,” “Selected for You,” etc — picks generated from my past purchases and from other customers (or perhaps not, according to this article). From an intimate coffee to internet dating.
If the computer is the most important invention of the past 100 years, then the relational database — I which sifts and filters to find patterns in seemingly unrelated data — I is the most important organizer of info since alphabetization. Sometimes I wonder if there’s a person in New Zealand with the exact same pile of books beside their bed as me. Perhaps Amazon should provide a new service, as Cupid, helping those with similar book purchases to ‘hook up’. It would surely streamline the process of dating by removing much inane chatter about what you have read lately.
While Amazon’s calculating database does provide useful, I do miss the human touch. Though it may work perfectly, a computer database can only recommend something that is a reflection of my previous habits or inputs. The staff at DD can do the same through memory, but they can do one thing a computer can never do: throw a well-placed curveball. Or better yet, a knuckleball.
I walk home from the bookstore with a pile of material selected by an adept bookseller. Some titles I may have selected for myself, but the one book, the one that will blown me away, is typically one I would have never thought of reading in a million years.
It is this action of the ‘meta editor’ that makes independent bookstores and their booksellers so crucial. They are not just aggregators of data, but randomizers of ideas. I often wonder how much of a role booksellers have played in spawning new brainwaves in great writers of the world, just by suggesting something new. I do know that if it weren’t for the human touch of Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare and Co., Ernest Hemingway would have had to choose between his books and his many trips to the café. Two hungers of the same thread I guess. A hard decision.
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Posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 12:06 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Indeed! This class of bookshop is to me, the essence of a perfect Sunday. I have found two such stores in my lifetime. One was hidden amongst the cheeze and grit of Yellowstone, Montana, where the owner, William, had actually taken the time to write little Post-it notes describing the merits of every book in the house. I loved this store most, because of the care taken to arrange the books, by theme, style, and author.
My time in the area was brief. I shopped only for what I could consume in one summer. But my connection with this store and its lovely owner left a lasting impression.
To my good fortune, I discovered a second shop of this sort in my (new) hometown of Ottawa. The Capital Book Store on Somerset West is just as you described (only they don’t have a kitty). I was lured off the street by the impressive window display and the smell of fair trade coffee. I became a ‘friend’ after spending an hour listening to the owner greet every patron who entered with a new suggestion based on their discrete tastes—everything from Middle Eastern history to murder mystery. I remember the look on her face when I went to the counter with three books—to shy to commit to any one thread of interest (I believe I had a Joan Didion, Robert Twigger, and something more geeky to feed my love of political theory!)