Memories on the Shelves
By Turi Sioson
About two years ago, I discovered my favorite place on Earth. It was a bookstore owned by a man whom I always saw manning the shop, glasses on, book in hand, sitting quietly while we browsed. He sold used vintage books — many of them oddballs and largely unwanted — shelved and stacked and littering the floor. There were literally piles of books everywhere, but I rarely saw anyone else in the one-room store. To most people, it probably looked like a disorganized bookstore that wasn’t worth their time — it would take hours to thoroughly comb through the whole store, and you would have to get through a lot of titles like How to Make a Business Deal (Self-Help, oddly-large-paperback, 1945) and The Wrath of the Melded Monster (Sci-fi, mass market paperback, 1963) to get to some of the really good stuff. But, for me, that was part of its charm.
I went there nearly every week before the first lockdown in March 2020. In fact, it was quite literally the last store I went to pre-lockdown. I can’t tell you what made me feel like this little store was so much a second home, but I can tell you what I saw of myself there: a new English major just finding her footing in the world of well-known literature, unknowingly buying rare vintage copies of famous books, simply because they looked and sounded interesting. I saw my interest in owning a bookstore start to bud — I talked to the owner about moving to Japan and having a bookstore just like his; I joked about buying up his stock and using it for my own shop.
Bookstores of all kinds have always been a part of my life. From the moment I could walk, I was spending weekends in local bookstores with my parents, having them buy me books that I had only ever checked out from the library previously. I found new books and became obsessed with certain series (Warrior Cats, which my dad had to tear me away from by forcing me to read Black Beauty before he would buy me the next book; The Hunger Games, which I spent months collecting through multiple trips to my neighborhood used bookstore; Happy Happy Clover, which is still one of my favorite manga series). I went from never being able to ask an employee about a book to happily working in a bookstore, answering questions, talking on the phone, and making recommendations. Though the stores have largely remained the same ink scented, friendly, nerd-welcoming spaces they’ve always been, I have become a different person nearly every time I step into a bookstore.
In the now-defunct Borders, I used to visit my dad, who was working there part-time, and stumble around through the CD aisles and the children’s section with my mom, which to my dismay, I can no longer remember that well. But I was giddy; I was easily distracted. I liked the books my mom was buying me, and I liked that my dad worked there. I think his co-workers once giggled and “aww”ed at me. One location of Borders had a huge escalator, and the last thing I remember of it was watching it from afar as I left, just a few days before they closed their stores for good.
In Barnes and Noble, before I started elementary school, I wandered the children and young adult section with my parents close at my side, not daring to interact with any other child, not wanting to do anything but pick out my next book. Somewhere around middle school, I did the same, but picked out Warrior Cats books so much that I can no longer recall anything else I read during that time; I let my parents wander away from me a bit more. I still would not speak to anyone else, not even an employee who could help me find the book I was looking for. Occasionally, I would wander over to the magazines, scan for Taylor Swift, then meander my way through Nature and Pets. I began to feign an interest in poetry to seem cooler, maybe more intelligent; it made my dad happy, and whenever I was with him, I’d mindlessly stare at the tiny poetry section, thinking I was truly looking for something. High school me was only ever there for manga — three at a time, that was the limit — and Japanese study books. I was as awkward and silent as you can imagine a high school reader to be. I had more than one fight there with my mom, and after one particularly loud one, I did not go for six months.
Last year, I began reading nonfiction, breaking my life-long tradition of despising the genre, assuming it was not interesting enough. I was just beginning to become interested in Women and Gender Studies as a formal field, and I bought a book about the history of witches a few months after lockdown. College was making me curious again; I was ready to devour anything that I could not take a class on at my community college. I still have yet to read that book, but it is the first of dozens of nonfiction books that live happily on my shelf — some read, some half-read, and some still mysterious and waiting.
In my neighborhood used bookstore, when I was still young enough to enjoy young adult novels but old enough to start hating them, I divided my time between fewer Warrior Cats books and more adult authors that my dad liked. This was a three-year funk that made me hate the world and think I was better than everyone else, and simultaneously made me feel too lame to really fit in with my friends who hadn’t touched a book since they were six. I brooded in these aisles a little too much to enjoy to admit; I was annoyed by everyone’s presence, but was still too timid to speak of it. In my last couple of years of high school — when I had largely shed my brooding — I frequented the CDs without my dad; I bought every Michael Crichton I found; I snatched up manga in Japanese for my studies. I had no idea what else to buy, being so totally raptured by the same five authors, and refusing to take a chance on anyone else.
A couple of months ago, I discovered that this neighborhood shop that I had been frequenting for years had a fairly prolific vintage section. In between the stacks of anthologies and the couple of random novels I knew nothing about, I couldn’t resist choosing a vintage book as well. I ended up spending way over my budget that day.
In March, I went out to buy a book for my friend at the independent bookstore I had been going to since I was a child (because supporting local businesses rocks). But when I made it there, the line was so long, and I only had so much time before I had to go to work. I desperately looked up where else I could go in the area, and found an independent feminist bookstore that I had never been to. So, I went, not knowing what to expect. To my surprise, I audibly gasped at everything I saw, and spent half of my relief fund check from my university. They opened up a job position shortly after, and I soon joined the small group of wonderful people working there, surrounded by books by and about women and the LGBTQ+ community. I had come out of a relationship just at the beginning of the year, realizing that I had been pretending to be someone else for my whole life. My understanding of who I was began, as it always had, with books, and with a bookstore, where I genuinely felt like I was a part of two of the most important communities in my life.
Over the summer of this year, my favorite place in the world — that little used, vintage bookstore — closed, and was reopened as a completely different store, with a new name, a new vibe, a new stock, and a new owner (though the original owner is still involved as a partner). When I drove past the store and saw a fresh coat of paint and the new name on the door, I didn’t cry, nor did I cry when I entered the store two days later. But I did cry when I got home, and I realized that this was a chapter of my life that was never coming back. I realized that I could measure a time in my life just through this one bookstore: the slow Sundays browsing after a grocery run; the growth of my personal library from two shelves into three and a half, a good 40% of them coming from this one shop; my earliest college days that I spent writing essays and speed-walking to buy books before I had to go home.
The memories I have of my growth and my changes throughout the years have always been measured through bookstores — this physical space where I have come and gone and come again, with different hair and different moods and different thoughts. I have taken advice from booksellers on more than just books; I have picked up a new piece of myself on a number of shelves. There are more than a few bookstores that I have not mentioned here that have had such a tangible impact on me, that I could not recognize my life without them.
Bookstores are my second home, and their eyes have watched me grow. ◆