visits - Ravenswood Used Books & Europa Books

Last week I was finally able to take a look at two bookstores on the north and near north side of the city that I've had on my to-do list for a while.


Ravenswood Used Books is a fun, quirky place.  Its narrow aisles wind around with piles of books crammed everywhere, something like a smaller, disheveled version of the Seminary Co-op.  They seemed to have a pretty broad selection of titles; finding anything in particular is hit-or-miss, but every subject section I looked at had a few gems, and there was plenty of good.  A lot of cheap paperbacks were available in the foreign literature section-- the sort you'd find at a library used books sale.  The place had character, the staffperson was amiable, and it will be worth a revisit when I'm in the neighborhood again.  An important note before you visit- they only take cash or checks.  I didn't realize this until I was about to leave, and had to put back some Kafka that I was going to buy.  The picture below, taken from their blog, gives a decent sense of the place...

Europa Books is a rare breed in the U.S. - a foreign language bookshop.  It's actually the Chicago location for Schoenhof's Foreign Books, founded in Harvard Square in 1856.  The contrast with Ravenswood is significant; Europa is tidy and more minimalist.  The lower floor houses most of the literature with an emphasis on French and Spanish language books.  There is also a good deal of Italian, more even than their German selection (which is what I was looking for).  There is travel literature, a large foreign magazine section upstairs, and a childrens' section as well.  For those who are not near Schoenhof's or Europa or can't find what they need there, you can also look at Adler's Foreign Books.  Below is a crappy picture of their German book section that I took while I was there.

Bookseller start-ups

In the carcass of a Border's store that couldn't cut it, an inventive venture named Fleeting Pages will offer books from indie presses and self-publication, workshops, and other events... for a month or so.  The future of the idea is sketchy.  It sounds like they may pop up in another place down the road.  Presumably they could also stay at their initial location for longer if doing so seemed to be the right thing. We'll have to wait until May 7th to find out a good deal of how it will look, but there are indications that this project is getting a lot of attention and support in its early stages.

In Minneapolis, Eric Brew is also working on a project... a multi-use space selling books and artwork on consignment, hosting theatrical performances and rented space for writers to work, selling coffee, etc.  The spot will be called Brew's Coffee & Books Community Space and is currently raising funds to get started.  Brew will need $32,000 in pledges for the project to start (right now $2,115 has been pledged), and the deadline he's set for it is May 4th.

Both of these projects stretch the concept of the bookseller to include a mandate of contributing to the cultural engine.  What is going on is not simply the presentation of books for consumption, but also a preferential option for the small publishers or for local work, and also for continued production of literature or other arts.  Both are pointing social networking tools toward useful rather than gimmicky ends.  I'm not sure what will come of either venture, but the energy behind them seems important in itself.  People want to set up something like this, and it's encouraging to see some people go out on a limb and do it.

If you are in the Twin Cities or Pittsburgh areas, do think about supporting both these booksellers.  Readers should pursue pledges for Eric Brew especially, who is up against a deadline and looking for a good deal of assistance yet in start-up funding.

Greetings.

This blog has been incubating for a little while; I've slowly added to it and played around with it over the last few months without broadcasting its presence at all.  As you can see, it presently comprises a link list of publishers, bookstores, and other book-culture related blogs.  I'm not sure where this is going exactly, but I'd like to briefly share where this idea came from and a few ideas for where it might end up. 

I find paeans and apologias to The Book pretty tiring.  When we have to spend time making things like civic engagement, or literacy, or family values look attractive to people then we've probably already lost a sizable portion of whatever battle we had it in our heads to wage.  If I have to convince someone that books are a fundamental vehicle for human expression, communication, and edification, then forget it.  That's not what this blog is about.  I have no interest in holding anyone's hand who is just going to embarrass the rest of us by frolicking awkwardly in their own  ignorance.

This blog has in mind those who are interested in pursuing various ends within a healthy book culture.  I don't have many answers here and I am not an expert on any of this; the surrounding pages are a result of some of my work at a library, my continued work as an academic, and my bibliographic curiosity.  Many other sites out there are better equipped to help you with books, and I try to do a service of linking to them when I run across them.  Others are much better-read than I am,  and I think that will come across as pretty obvious when this blog ventures out of my own study interests and into "literature", which is really the bulk and center of book culture.  So I'm not making any claims to this site being a normative perspective on the book world or anything, but rather representative of my own idiosyncratic uses of books.  My intention is simply to draw attention to possible futures for book culture that are more sustainable, and to draw more people into a conversation that is often dismissed as nostalgic, impractical, elitist, or irrelevant.

And the time does seem to be ripe for such renewed attention.  The woes of independent booksellers have been voiced for a long time, but it's currently a bit more culturally celebrated to embrace the local, the independent, and the grass-rooted.  The risk of becoming a Portlandia cliche doesn't diminish the utility of the space that's presently open for a sentimental shift away from big-box stores and other structures that can cause problems for book culture.  Meanwhile, Amazon.com is facing increased pressure from U.S. states to pay sales taxes and Borders is a complete mess.  There's no need to trumpet a revolution, but now seems as good a time as any to revisit how we want our community of letters to look.

This is my contribution to that effort.  The links to various resources will certainly continue to be an important aspect of the site, and other features may debut over time.  I'd like to bring in some reflections on material aspects of books & stacks without getting overly aesthetic.  I'll also mention news and may post some bibliographies as well.  Basically, I want to be a help in navigating folks through cultural structures related to the written word (for the most part: publishers, booksellers, libraries, reading rooms), and will mostly focus on the United States, with a bit of investigation elsewhere for comparative purposes (what does translation look like in places that are actually translating at a substantial rate?  What do kulturhauses look like? etc.)  I'm open to suggestions from people, too.  Email me.