From 10 July to 10 September, 2020, I posted pictures of bookmarks that I either keep at the ready in an envelope on a shelf or which live in various books around the house. They are from 43 different bookstores; sixteen of them are closed and twenty-seven are still around. A better ratio than I was expecting.

But too many are gone without having been replaced, and we are poorer and more vulnerable for it.

I Read Banned Books


Two bookmarks that resurfaced in old books around the house. The Odegard’s at Victoria Crossing closed in January 1996. (The C*lhoun Square store stayed open a few more years, if memory serves.)

Two bookmarks from Odegard Books in St Paul


St Mark’s was small but mighty. A regular stop when I lived in the gravity well of NYC. But I’m 0 for 2 in the category of “Bookstores that still exist.” I’ll try to find a non-moribund bookmark for tomorrow so that it doesn’t seem like I’m taking pictures of headstones…

Two bookmarks from the late St Mark's in Manhattan


City Lights is a great bookstore, of course, and I try to go every time I’m in the City. But if you told me I could go to only one San Francisco bookstore, I think I would choose Green Apple.

Green Apple Books

(And I checked their website. They’re still alive!)


Cannon Beach Book Company


I think I must have found this tucked in a book I bought somewhere else, since I have no memory of ever visiting this bookstore.

The Booksmith in San Francisco

(Also: apparently not dead!)


Great little shop. Perfect name for a used book store. It was in Linden Hills, next door to the Dunn Brothers.

Bookmark and business card from Rag and Bone in Minneapolis


Lovely shop. I’ve seen it turn up as a location in TV shows when they want the characters to seem refined and sophisticated.

The bookmark is a heavy cardstock, so it’s ideal for thicker books and especially anything with deckled edges.

Bookmark with 192 BOOKS in large letters Bookmark with address for 192 Books


Book Court in Brooklyn


Ah, the Hungry Mind. I started going here when I was nine to collect Tintin books. This was my book store. We were the same age and I thought we would grow old together.

09 hungrymind caus

(It’s hard to tell, but this is an absurdly small bookmark, about half the width of a business card.)


For about five years, I lived an easy walk or a short Streetcar ride away from the Burnside store. I arrived in PDX with 74 boxes of books. When I moved away, I had only 38. Maybe you’ve bought one of my cast-offs.

10x powells

I think this was the color during the late aughts.


Housing Works is such a cool place. And possibly my favorite bookmark: good cardstock, great reminder.

Housing Works side one with address and store hours

Housing Works side two with the sentence YOU ARE HERE in large letters


Sorry, everyone: yet another dead book store. I found this inside an older book I received from a friend.

12a coliseum

12b coliseum


Maybe it was in its decrepit twilight, but I found Gotham forbiddingly hostile and risibly pompous. Despite a rich inventory, I spent as little money as possible on my sole visit and vowed never to return. I shed no tear on learning of its humiliating and predictable demise.

Gotham Book Mart side one with lots of fawning quotes by famous people

Gotham Book Mart side two with more fawning quotes by famous people


Now this is how you do a used book store. (I thought I also had a bookmark from when it was Gryphon, but it hasn’t turned up.)

Westsider Books and Records in NYC


Rounding out this NYC week is the Strand. I wish I could say why, but I’ve always merely liked rather than loved the Strand, despite it seeming, on paper, to be my ideal book store.

15a strand

(I’m sure it’s a coincidence, but they removed the bag check after this cell phone symphony.)


It’s Saturday, which means it’s time once again for a Hungry Mind bookmark. Another tiny one from the late 90s.

16 hungrymind cow1


Powells again. This is from around 2010 or so.

17a powells 17b powells


Almost perfect book store. Large enough to feel like you probably missed something, small enough not to be overwhelming. (I haven’t been to its successor, Next Chapter, but I’ve ordered from them online a few times this spring.)

18 commongood


I picked this up when we visited the USSR exhibit at Expo 86. The USSR may be gone but the Peoples’ Co-op is still struggling on like the rest of us, just trying to make it through 2020…

Peoples' Co-operative Bookstore in Vancouver BC


No bookmark, just a business card from Biography. It was driven out by the Marc Jacobs infestation of the Village. I remember seeing this sign in many windows: Less Marc Jacobs, more Jane Jacobs.

Biography would rise again under a new name and with a very kick-ass bookmark.

Biography Bookshop


The erstwhile Biography, now known as Bookbook. Not sure whether I love or hate the new name. Either way, bold look.

Bookbook formerly known as Biography in Greenwich Village


Odegards at Victoria Crossing closed in ’96. (And was replaced by I wanna say an Aveda?) A few years later, an inoffensive book store going after the Borders/B&N crowd opened up kitty corner. Looking at the locations, the owners clearly had the snowbird thing down.

Bound To Be Read with locations in St Paul Albuquerque and Key Largo


Hungry Saturday.

Hungry Mind in St Paul


Another Sunday, another Powells. From around 2011 or ’12, I think. The period has vanished from the end of sell us your books, presumably to strengthen the symmetry between the two sides.

Powells


This will always be the real Amazon Bookstore. Imagine the alternate universe where the venerable feminist cooperative prevails and the shabby little internet start-up has to change its name.

Day 25 Amazon Bookstore Collective in Minneapolis


Fantastic shop in the heart of Uptown. Everything The Strand wishes it were.

Day 26 Magers and Quinn in Mineapolis


This Borders replaced Odegards, which had held on a little longer than the St Paul store. It’s Kitchen Window now.

Calhoun Square gets its name from the nearby lake, which until recently bore the name of pro-slavery shitbird and all-round “very fine person,” John Calhoun.

Day 27 Borders

Day 27 Borders


I remember really liking Prairie Lights, but I’ve only been there once, passing through on a roadtrip — twenty years ago today, in fact.

Day 28 Prairie Lights in Iowa City


Love this place. A little house, with nooks and rooms devoted to different genres. In the SFF room, some authors are collected in milkcrates. Heinlein’s crate. McCaffrey’s. The fiction is alphabetical, but only by first letter. Perfect for endless browsing and serendipity.

Day 29 Wallace Books in Portland OR


Okay, Green Apple, Black Oak, then City Lights. (I was sorry, therefore, to discover that Black Oak has closed…)

Day 30 Black Oak Books in San Francisco and Berkeley


31a powells

From the mid-teens.


Day 32 Hungry Mind signed copy


Day 33 Collected Works in Santa Fe


The great Labyrinth. My favorite shop in NYC. Possibly the closest in feel to the Hungry Mind in its prime of any place I think I’ve ever been.

Day 34 Labyrinth Books in Manhattan

I preferred the Labyrinth name, but after they renamed it Book Culture its character didn’t change, so I can live with it.

Day 34 Book Culture in Manhattan


I found Edmond Jabès’ Book of Questions here. Yes, in a Borders. In Richfield. Right there on the shelf. Remember when there were national chain bookstores? And even they actually carried books? Now it’s just the Amazon deforesting itself. And there isn’t even a tree museum.

Day 35 Borders


The Blackwell’s by the university was my bookstore during my semester in Aberdeen, but I haunted the Waterstones on Union street whenever I could.

Waterstones in Abderdeen Scotland


From sometime in the early or mid ’00s.

Powells


Hungry Mind bookmark with a drawing of a cow


I love places like Wallace and Mercer Street to the extent they remind me of the Book House. A magnificent clutter. (The St Paul branch, which I think I loved even more, was right across the street from the Hungry Mind.)

Two versions of the Book House in Dinkytown MPLS


Paperback Exchange


Pitch-perfect bookstore. I salute their buyers. For example, I can take in its poetry section almost without moving my head but I’d put it up against any of the best bookstores anywhere else, even those ten times larger.

Moon Palace


Exquisite used shop. An astonishingly broad selection for a place the size of my living room, ranging from the scholarly to the pulp. Great name, too. And so we beat on…

Against the Current


In the strip mall across the street from the original Cheapo. I assume it must have been connected to the BookSmart in Uptown, but I don’t remember for sure. Was this its original location?

BookSmart

(And this bookmark is so old, an area code was unnecessary.)


Hungry Mind bookmark with a matador using a book for his cape or possibly muleta


From sometime in the mid ’00s.

Powells


Borders


Hungry Mind bookmark


48 powellsgreen


I love this place.

Three Lives in Manhattan

(I did a doubletake when I saw the cover of Franzen’s How to Be Alone, not only because it’s a shot of Three Lives as Archetypal Indie Bookstore, but also because — who the hell bends back the front cover of a book like that before they’ve even bought it?)


A bookmark labelled bookmark from a bookstore called The Book Store. Reminds me of the yellow and black generic brands from the early 80s.

Based on its address and the bookmarks’ colors, this was possibly an earlier incarnation of SJSU’s campus bookstore.

The Book Store


Half Price Books


Bookmark with cityscape above text reading Where Smart People Meet


I wandered in during their first anniversary in May of ’96 and was instantly ensorcelled. I appeared in their short-lived lit mag, read at their open mics, and bought and sold tons of books.

Front of Sixth Chamber bookmark

Any closed bookstore is sad, but this one was especially hard.

Back of Sixth Chamber bookmark


Antique Books in Annapolis MD

This turned up in a used book I bought in Salt Lake City, or possibly Santa Fe.


Books Inc


From the last days of the Hungry Mind. After selling their name to a short-lived online school, they rebranded, expanded into Open Book, then closed a few years later.

This wasn’t how the story was supposed to end, but this is apparently how the story usually ends.

Two bookmarks from Ruminator Books


The villain sweeps on stage and strikes a pose. We boo uproariously.

A bookmark from Amazon dot com

He basks in it, studying his fingernails, with the occasional imperious side-eye to the audience.

A bookmark from Amazon dot com

We love to hate him, and hate to love him. He’s the reason why the show is sold out for the whole run.


Bookmark for Red Balloon Bookshop children's books etc


The most recent version I have, and the last for this series. Some friends sent me an envelope full of these in 2018, a few years after I had moved away.

Powells


I picked up armloads of science fiction and fantasy here in the early 80s. Better selection that B. Dalton’s. And with a branch in the local strip mall, it was easier for middle-school me to get to than faraway Shinders or Uncle Hugo’s, both of which were rare, special visits.

Pickwick Discount Books


An excellent bookstore so richly and lovingly stocked, it seems much larger than it is.

Birchbark Books


This version surfaced a few weeks ago, too late to be included in the original post.

Rag and Bone Books


And this brings us to the end of the run.

63aa

I will continue occasionally posting other bookmarks — and things that serve as bookmarks — as they turn up in my books. Find them using this tag.

But I’ve posted something daily throughout April, May, and now July and August, so I’m ready for a break.

63ab