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Three slices of Pure Michigan are celebrated in a just-published tribute to an endangered species -- independent booksellers.
Shops in Ann Arbor, Petoskey and Gaylord get prose hugs from women with unsurprising affection for places that sell what they create. Essays on these reader resources appear in My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop, a hardback published Nov. 13:
* Nicola’s Books, Ann Arbor (selected by Nancy Shaw)
* Saturn Booksellers, Gaylord (Katrina Kittle)
* McLean & Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, MI (Ann Patchett)
Its publisher describes the 384-page collection as "a joyful, industry-wide celebration of our bricks-and-mortar stores and a clarion call to readers everywhere at a time when the value and importance of these stores should be shouted from the rooftops." Eighty-four authors contribute.
A snippet from Patchett's entry is among five excerpts posted by The Atlantic alongside illustrations by Leif Parsons. The writer recalls her first visit to Petoskey during a book tour:
"The world was leafy and dappled, quiet and cool. I started to wonder how I could spend the rest of my life in Petoskey. . . .
I walked into the bookstore of this dreamy little town and at that moment all the other bookstores I'd known in my life fell away. . . . The disposition of the store was one of warmth and comfortable intelligence. It was the favorite sweater of bookstores. The books at McLean & Eakin were arranged to beckon, and there were plenty of big chairs to fall into once you heeded their call.
Books and bookstores are really the only things I can speak to with authority. And so I say to you absolutely: McLean & Eakin, Petoskey, Michigan -- go.
Patchett, a best-selling writer (Bel Canto) who lives in Nashville, has visited the Petoskey shop for readings and other events it hosts -- most recently a two-hour luncheon in June 2011 to promote her book State of Wonder.
Shaw, who writes children's books, lives in the Ann Arbor area and shops at Nicola's Books on Jackson Avenue. She'll speak there at 7 p.m. Dec. 5 about her My Bookstore contribution and her latest work, Elena's Story.
Up in Gaylord, Saturn owner Jill Miner held a day-long customer appreciation event Nov. 17 to mark the 14-year-old shop's national recognition. "“It’s a great honor to be included in this book, which has been the object of much buzz in the industry," she tells the Gaylord Herald-Times.
Kittle, the author of that essay, is an Ohio University graduate who lives in Dayton and has written five books -- including The Kindness of Strangers, a novel that won a 2006 Great Lakes Book Award.
