Book Browsing

Far more enjoyable than fancy store window shopping is bookstore browsing, a hobby in which I've indulged for years.

When I was a child, my mother took me to two small bookstores, one in Five Points South (Mrs. Agee's?) in one of the old Munger buildings next to a bakery (where the Munger home had been) and the other in Mountain Brook Village (Book Keepers). In either place, I sat happily on the floor with words and images while my mother shopped herself.

As a teen, I preferred Smith and Hardwick downtown, where the Misses Praytor held court. (Secretly, I harbored an ambition: I wanted to be a Miss Praytor!) A dark, dingy bookstore with a shaky loft accessible up narrow metal steps, the shop had serious literature. I looked through many Modern Library editions of William Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe (whose mother's boarding house and whose angel I saw each summer in Asheville) and Eudora Welty's short stories. There I fell hard for Evelyn Waugh and for the romance of owning a bookstore. I read bits of plays by Shakespeare and Moliere, and I listened to overheard conversations between the two ladies and their customers.

In Denver, I loved study breaks spent at The Tattered Cover, where I especially enjoyed fingering through the huge drama/theatre and travel sections. I also spent time with the children's books, especially picture books.

In New Orleans, I spent whole Saturdays visiting bookstores. I'd begin at Mary Price's store on Magazine, Beaucoup Books, with selections by writers who were new and literally foreign. She sold an especially strong selection of travel and nature literature. Then I'd make my way to Garden District Book Shop, where art books ruled, along with Anne Rice's fiction. If I had the energy, I'd head downtown to the large chain bookstore just uptown of Jackson Square, one of the first chain stores featuring music as well as books. It was so large that it took a couple of hours to wander through before heading again uptown to Rhoda's Maple Street Book Shop and the separate children's book shop next door. Rhoda's store, with its wacky off-level floors and shelves, held more paperbacks crammed floor to ceiling, door-to-door than I'd ever seen before or I've ever seen since. Tulane professors and uptown readers mingled and sat. I always began in the same section in the back with travel books and slowly made my way up front before heading next door.

Finally, I'd drag home.

Now I have one local bookstore for browsing -- a Barnes and Noble college store with a terrific selection of literature, many college-emblem gifts, and textbooks. The store isn't as grand as some I've enjoyed in the past, but it's still a satisfying jaunt, especially on a rainy day like this one. Sections that beckon are the children's books in the left corner, fiction and poetry from the middle to the left where mystery, sci-fi and nonfiction take over, and just left of middle along the back wall, books by local authors -- ranging from college histories to academic treatises to children's books. It's a friendly store where Harry Potter celebrations are held and local celebrity authors mingle equally comfortably.

The long and short of it is this: I'm a bookstore junkie and always have been. There are worse addictions.