Sexy Fun Time (for book lovers)

Nice to know there are still plenty of books in the world. If you love to look at books--on voluminous shelving, displayed in funky store windows, as part of art exhibitions, in massive libraries, or shown off in quirky personal spaces--then head on over to Bookshelf Porn where you can peruse through hundreds of photos of books on shelves of all shapes, dimensions, and sizes.

They post one photo a day. You can see the books from famous locations such as the British Library, the Anthony Burgess Museum, and bookshops from Salem to Melbourne City.

Meanwhile, here are some photos from my own collection:

Bunch of Grapes: Welcome Back!

The Bunch of Grapes bookstore in Vineyard Haven closed early last summer due to a fire that gutted the second floor of the store and a next-door restaurant.


I’m happy to report that the bookstore, under new ownership, has reopened less than a year later.


The two story location now has a restructured downstairs with a more open layout and dark wood finish. Plus, chairs to sit and read. Or just sit.


I was lucky enough to be in the neighborhood on their grand reopening day.


I picked up a copy of Ghosts, by César Aira.

A Book Tour of Florida

That’s right: I went to Florida and bought books. You can do that in Massachusetts, why go all the way to Florida? I hear you say. Well, why not? I was there anyway (Anna Maria Island, visiting family), why not do something I love?

While we hit two Goodwills and one Salvation Army between visits to the beach, I also wanted to go to a Books-A-Million, apparently the third largest bookstore chain in the country (after Barnes & Noble and Borders) although they don’t have a single store in New England. They're found mostly down south. During a visit to Bradenton, we ran across one. I’d never even seen one, so we went in.


It smelled like a Barnes & Noble. I ordered a house blend from the youthful, hirsute barista. The coffee was not great and I ended up dumping half of it out. The layout of the bookstore was flat and wide open. At first that was pleasant enough, but the signage was insufficient and I had trouble delineating sections. The stacks spread out into a linear sameness that had me popping my head up out of each row, like a prairie dog, to get my bearings.

What Books-a-Million did have, however, was a voluminous selection of bibles and other religious tomes. Liz counted six rows total. There was even a bible remainder section. In Northeast bookstores, bibles are tucked away in the back rows, sometimes under the guise of Spirituality. Here, there was a prominent display of new religious books next to the new non-fiction table, new in zombie fiction table, and finally, new in paperback fiction.

During a day trip to Siesta Key, Liz and I stopped in the business district, a main street of restaurants, bars, and shops. I was drawn in by a sign promising a used book heaven. And indeed that was the name of the shop, Used Book Heaven.


I found an early John D. MacDonald mystery The Deep Blue Goodbye, featuring his most popular character, Travis McGee. The shop keeper, a kindly old lady, mentioned that this was MacDonald’s first McGee novel. How could I resist? The Travis McGee novels are all set in Florida, so MacDonald’s books are still pretty popular down here.

During a stop at St. Armand’s Circle, an upscale shopping locale just over the bridge from Sarasota, I hit Circle Books. A small store that keeps its pond well-stocked with fiction. Because I was on vacation, and in the mood to spend decadently, I wanted to spring for a new hardcover. When I was younger I would have never considered buying a hardcover book new. So expensive. And I rarely bought a new paperback. But now I’m all about supporting the book industry.


I had just finished reading about a young author I admire, Joe Meno, in the latest Poets & Writers magazine. He has a new book out, The Great Perhaps, and I was curious, so I picked up copy.

Our time in St. Armand’s wasn’t over yet, as Liz wanted to shop in one of the many clothing boutiques. I busied myself reading the beginning of The Great Perhaps on a nearby bench. After a while my mind wandered and I took out my camera. I’m a people-watcher, and this is one of the sights I documented while I waited for my wife:


I’m not sure what’s going here. Turns out, this girl with a cat tail also had matching ears. She and her family sat next to me on the bench, eating ice cream, drinking coffee, like nothing was unusual or unique. Like it was just another day to play dress up. But I’m haunted by this girl. Maybe somebody will fill in her back story. Maybe a writer. A writer of fictions...

The Culture of Books

As much as I love reading books, I love buying books. And browsing for books. And looking at them, and, yes, smelling them. New books, anyway. Used books have their appeal as well. My father's a used book dealer. Summers, he would come home late Saturday mornings after hitting yard sales and book sales to go through his boxes of new used books. If any were musty, he would set them outside, fanned, so that they could air out in the Cape Cod afternoon.

I often went with him on his hunts for good used books. To church basements and strangers' driveways. I poked through the flats of paperbacks and hardcovers, editions both first and book club. I looked for comic books and movie tie-in books early on, then later, novels and books on filmmaking and photography. Accompanying my father on these mornings made me realize that he lived and worked in a milieu that he loved. And whether he meant to do it or not, he passed down his love of books to me.

All this brings me to last weekend when Liz and I drove up to Portland, ME to look around. It was a quiet Sunday, but I found two bookstores open. While Liz was off to neighboring yarn shops, I browsed around in Longfellow Books, a progressive independent store that sold mostly new books, but also carried a selection of used books. There I bought a book I've had my eye on for a few months, Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country, which is a revision and re-imagining of three of his earlier connected novels, Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River, and Bone by Bone, that take place "...on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century." The book won the National Book Award last year. I've already got a big book in my queue (2666), but I'm a sucker for epic books and lost (or found) classics.



After Longfellow's, I found a book store called Yes Books, selling used and rare books. The store was all narrow, tall stacks of used paperbacks and hardcovers. I immediately found the fiction section and poured over half the hardcovers and all of the paperbacks.

During my book searches I release internal radar which branches outward from somewhere behind my eyes, parsing all spines in view for that perfect combination of longing, condition, history, and edition. Some used bookstores and book sales give off the spent karma of the picked-through, the deserted, the Oprah-certified bestsellered. Then there are those that exude a promise of editions long out of print, of classics ready to be found, of barely used books for over half the original cover price. As I scanned the Yes Books' stacks, I felt I was getting close to finding at least one book to buy. I kept seeing interesting books that I would have bought if I hadn't already owned them. Plus some close calls and runners up. I finally found two titles worthy of my interest, both monetary and literary.

First, something I had recently just heard of called Desperate Characters, by Paula Fox. Published originally in 1970, this was the reprint from '99, with a back cover pull-quote from David Foster Wallace, and a new introduction by Jonathan Franzen. A lost classic, introduced by one of my favorite novelists...be still my heart. The description heralds it as, "...one of the most dazzling examples of the storyteller's craft in postwar American literature..." Which war? Doesn't matter. I'm there, first in line, tickets bought online months ago.


The second book I had eyed when it came out in 2008, a paperback original called Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski. Graphic novel-worthy cover illustration, promising a silly premise done up in serious blood-red splatterpunk. "A hot shot of adrenaline straight to the neural plexus," shouts a blurb on the back cover. Okay, I'll bite. I always like a spot of fictional blood lust. Modern-day noir riffs in the corporate workplace. I can relate.


I'm sated. For now. I doubt I'll finish this new round of books before another round makes it through the door. But so what? Reading's not always the point.