My Bookstore
I did an event at Bookshop Santa Cruz recently, to celebrate a collection of essays by authors on their favorite Indie bookstore. The folks who put together My Bookstore asked me to write on Bookshop, and I was happy to revisit the place in my heart that the store occupies. Important things take place in bookstores, and it seemed to me that Bookshop Santa Cruz occupies much the same position in modern-day Santa Cruz that Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company occupied in 1920s Paris. So that’s what I wrote.
But I didn’t expect to find reading it aloud to be such an emotional experience. I got quite choked up, telling the story of how Bookshop Santa Cruz led the community’s recovery from the 1989 earthquake–particularly since Neal Coonerty, the owner, was sitting right there. How often does a person get a chance to read a public thank-you to a man?
The book itself is a lovely thing, bursting with the love of 81 top-ranking authors for their favorite Indie bookstores. You can order a copy from Bookshop here, which I would be happy to sign for you if you tell them, or you can order it from your local Indie. Enjoy.
