Beckoned and Bound Bookary
Posted by David Duhr in 
A few weeks ago we asked about your ideal bookstore, and Lily McSweeney’s response was so charming and imaginatively detailed that I thought it was worth sharing in a blog post. Enjoy reading about Lily’s ideal bookstore, Beckoned and Bound Bookary. Share your thoughts — or your own ideal bookstore — in the comments below.
Bookary Bound
Dreaming of the ideal bookstore calls to memory all my best book-buying experiences. I do not think of my ideal bookstore in terms of its name, or appearance, or selection of books. I think instead of something along the lines of Ollivanders wand shop; a store wherein the book chooses the reader. I have always found the very best books — or they have found me — quite by accident or fate. Books have made themselves known to me by happening to have a cover whose color caught my eye, or a title that brought a tear to it. These books have sunk into deep places inside, carved a path, or planted seeds, many of which propagate still, flowering continually.
Serendipity in procuring books occurs only when one is in a state of seeking. There is a need or a longing somewhere in the general area beneath the sternum, down to the stomach — something stirring, or starving. It is best if you do not know for sure what you are seeking, only that you have that ache inside, summoning . . . something. When you are in that state, that is the most opportune time to enter a bookstore. So, I am conjuring a place that is not so much a destination as a destiny. Maybe Sternum and Stomach would be the name of my store.
I had this specific book-starved experience not long ago. I was walking up Downer Avenue, heading somewhere other than, but about to pass, Boswell Books. I heard a dog howling to a siren and began thinking about wolves. So, I went into Boswell and asked at the front desk if they had any wolf books.
“Did you say wolf?”
It must have been my literary angel who peeked out from behind the shelf she was organizing. She had a punk-academic, earnest aspect, with undertones of quiet curiosity and a sober sensibility kept afloat by secret sources of joy. Her hair was black and bobbed, her arms were tattooed, and she wore a plain white cotton blouse with a plaid, retro, roller-skate skirt. I looked for the skates and instead saw black ballerina flats. She headed toward the middle of the store, beckoning me to follow, talking as she walked.
“The best thing out about wolves right now is by Rick McIntyre,” she said.
She stopped in front of a certain shelf and held up both arms like Vanna White, indicating a row of five books.
“It’s a series. You’ll want to read them all.”
She said it without any doubt, as if she had a crystal ball and had seen me coming with wolves in my eyes.
Then she walked away.
Me and this series of wolf books — it was love at first touch. They had really soft covers and were just the right size and weight for me on this hot and humid day. The first one in the series was called The Rise of Wolf 8.
And wait, what’s this? With a foreword by who? Robert Redford?
And there he was on the cover, peeking out from behind its edges. No, not Redford. Better. It was Wolf 8 — the very wolf my soul was longing to know. I took him home, and I read that entire book in short order and deep wonder. It was the best book I had ever, ever read. And it was exactly what I needed.
I’ve read many books about wolves, but this was the first one where a man who was passionately in love with them spent years of his adult life passively observing them, and documenting his observations — not his opinions, not his theories, not his values. He described wolves exactly as they are and what they do. He did not interfere with them. As a reader, I was immersed in the lives, from birth to death, of packs of wolves and individual wolves, each with their unique personality. Should I say animality? Were it not for that humble perspective — birth to death in complete nonjudgmental detail of everything each wolf did, throughout most days of every year of their lives — a reader could not hope to understand just how intelligent and inspiring these animals are.
Wolf 8 had certainly found me, and I wanted more.
The next day I went back for book no. 2, The Reign of Wolf 21. He is all black, his handsome head emerging ghostlike from the book’s dark cover. His eyes are golden! What beauty. I had felt awed and honored to spend many happy pages immersed in the life of Wolf 8, but here was the very other wolf my soul was longing to know. I am still reading this one, and it is the best book I have ever, ever read. The very knowledge that after these two there are three more books in this series feels like having found my own forest, where I can live for a time. I am content, sternum settled, heartbeat steady, stomach sated, stealthy animal imaginings surrounding me as I read.
In Milwaukee there used to be two bookshops that were both my favorite. One was called People’s Books. I felt sort of revolutionary just walking in there, and also very much at home. There was nothing special about the building. The shelves were just functional, metal, evenly spaced in straight rows with books of various genres and subjects. All the books, whether shelved under History or Music, Gardening or Fiction, were by and for the people. I used to shop there quite often, because I did not need to be seeking something in particular to find what I needed there. What I needed, always, was grassroots democracy and truth. I never left that store without a book, and it was always the best book I had ever, ever read. I believe I purchased Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman there. I felt guilty paying for it. People’s Books is no more, and I miss it.
My other favorite was on Brady Street and had a name I can’t recall. It might have been something as prosaic as Multilingual Books. Every book sold there was available in at least four or five different languages, mostly European. I purchased A Christmas Carol in Italian there and a book of fairy tales in side-by-side Spanish and English. That store left town much too soon. I miss it also, but multilingualism was perhaps not popular in Milwaukee.
Schwartz Bookshop on Wisconsin and later Oakland Avenue was the mainstay for eastside and downtown Milwaukee for years but went out of business following the untimely death of its eponymous founder. It was here that Letters to a Young Poet found me and immersed me in a lifelong love affair with Rilke.
In each of these bookstores, I was found by my books. So, each of these bookshops played a part in my destiny. Each of these stores — People’s, Multilingual, Boswell, Schwartz — have had something unique and pleasing to offer. And each of them adds something to the perfect bookshop brew I am concocting.
I wonder, though, is my potion made from the memory of the places where books are sold? After all, a perfect and timely book once leapt into my arms at a charity book sale in a church. Another time, a book left behind on a park bench seemed to have been waiting there just for me.
Or does the magic come more from the books?
Then, one day I am out walking and come across a sight I have seen hundreds of times but see now for the first time through the lens of my dream. I spy something with my little booklover’s eye.
This is a photograph of an elementary school in my neighborhood. It was built in 1887 and still has all its old charms, despite the modern extension. A huge playground surrounds three sides of the building, bordered by shade trees and picnic benches, with a carefully cultivated garden featuring a curving path. It is there for the children to study, plant, grow, and harvest. There are birdhouses and feeders, and dozens of squirrels and rabbits live and learn there too.
During the academic year you’ll see children at play during recess, lining up for field trips, or working in the garden. Often, they will wave and call to passersby if a ball sails over the playground fence, or if they see someone walking a dog they like, or if they are just being friendly. On evenings and weekends parents bring their preschool children to the playground. Adolescents, teens, and adults make frequent use of the basketball courts. There is a large sandbox there as well, and a little brook that runs along one side of the playground. When the playground is empty, people let their dogs off leash there. Often, I’ve crossed the school grounds as a shortcut, and more than once I’ve met engaging young children, chatty and charming. The place is enchanting.
This old schoolhouse, including its campus, is the perfect setting for my bookstore.
Here in this spacious old citadel of childhood cultivation, with its creaky floorboards and tall windows, my dream shop will come to life. Here, amongst classrooms, slides and swings, trees, squirrels and birds, garden and brook, here is where all books should always be, for this is where books are born: in childhood, in imagination, in nature, in learning, in play.
This is the setting in which a serendipitous encounter between book and reader will be most likely to occur, for the spirits of children reside here too. I don’t wish to share the somewhat morbid story of how it came to be discovered, but this school was erected on an old burial ground. People rest in peace beneath it. During a cholera epidemic in the nineteenth century, the ground here was used as a pauper’s grave. A hospital once stood here. There are adults and children buried below. Most, especially the children, I assume, are in Heaven, and who is to say that from that sacred space the children’s spirits do not mingle with the students of today? Who is to say a child spirit would not lovingly partner with destiny to bring about the rendezvous between an earnest reader and a waiting book ready to jump into her arms? After all, we were all children when we first learned to read and to love books.
Here’s how my bookstore, Sternum and Stomach… or maybe I’ll call it Beckoned and Bound. . . will come to fruition. The entire building will be filled, on all three floors, in every room, with books — new books currently in print and older ones as well, like a library. It will be, in fact, a bookary — combination shop and library. Out in the garden will be several Little Library boxes for people to donate or exchange their well-read pages.
Upon entering the bookary you will be greeted by a spirit child who will accompany you in your exploration. You will not see them, but you will feel them — for they are you.
The décor will remind you of a fairy tale, but the bookary will not be a repository of magic. You will. The store will simply encourage what already exists inside of yourself. You are the seeker, the shopper, a lover of erudition and adventure; and by the powers of synchronicity and serendipity, your book will find you. It will summon you. It will bind you in its spell.
Each room in the school — each classroom, office, or lounge on all three floors — will be devoted to a category of books, but many books will reside in more than one category. So, Call of the Wild, for instance, being a novel about a boy and a wolf during the gold rush of the late nineteenth century, will be among the wolf books in the animal room, but also can be found in the fiction room downstairs, or across the hall in historical fiction.
The hallowed halls of the school-become-bookary will be filled with statues of people, from preschoolers through centenarians, in various postures of reading: sitting beneath a tree, lying in the grass, sprawled across a rug, cradled by a hammock, snuggled on a sofa, lounging on a cloud. Images of authors and quotes and scenes from their writings will cover the walls. Some old school desks will remain in place, so you will be able to sit and peruse a book before you possess it. The chalkboards will stay as well. People can write the names of their favorite books there. Staff can advertise a new book, or a sale.
This bookary will be connected to its community, and so there will be rooms available for book signings, book clubs, writing groups, classes and lectures. There will be Story Hour, to which all ages will be welcome to either read or listen. The old school gymnasium will be a giant living room with cushions on the floor, couches, rocking chairs, and tea. This will be the library-quiet room, otherwise known as The Shush. The old school auditorium will accommodate poetry readings and literary drama and will be called The Scene.
At the checkout counter you will be given the choice of buying your book or entering into another of the bookary’s programs: Borrow to Buy will be a program wherein each month you pay a small borrower’s fee and when you return the book, you will have paid enough to purchase it, though at less than its original price — which will only make sense, because it will be a used book by then, even though it has been used by only you. (Newly published books, however, for some predetermined period of time, will not be available to borrow, in order to encourage more buying, thus helping to sustain our authors.)
Read and Recycle will be another program. If you donate a book to one of the Little Libraries on the grounds, you will receive a discount on your next purchase.
Another will be Read and Remain. You will sit and read for as long as you want at one of the school desks, outside in the garden, or on a swing on the playground. Then, you will return the book to the Remainders shelf, come back another day, and read it some more.
Finally, there will be a program for volunteers: Read and Redeem. A certain number of volunteer hours will get you points eventually redeemable for a book of your choice. Volunteers will categorize and shelf, dust and clean, keep the floorboards creaky, read for Story Hour, create stage scenery for plays, and perhaps walk your dog while you shop.
And after you have spent hours, or even an entire day, here at Beckoned and Bound Bookary, a spirit child will take your hand, lead you through the garden and across the playground, point you toward home, and kiss you on the cheek.
You will be back tomorrow.
Lily McSweeney lives in Milwaukee, and sometimes in books.