Packing up my books as I prepare to move from Buffalo to New York City is a bit like watching my life pass in front of my eyes. My collection of books began in the early 1970’s. This was just before the emergence of book chains and finding what you wanted required searching in a hodgepodge of venues. In the neighborhood, supermarkets and corner stores had book racks. For some reason, the Erb Deli had sci-fi books not found anywhere else. At the Thruway Mall, J.C. Penney’s had a book department in the basement and downtown there was Ulbrich’s on Main St. The 2nd floor book department at Ulbrich’s was accessed by a stairway hidden off to the side. You’d never know it existed unless someone told you it was there.
Two oddities stand out from this era. One being a plethora of TV and movie adaptations and the other is the heavy sludge of 1970’s pseudoscience. Before the VCR, the only on-demand technology available was books. The pseudoscience holds up to my discerning adult eyes about as well as one would expect. For example, space-faring civilizations that solved the physics of interstellar travel would certainly not appear similar to 20th century astronauts, anymore than the Wright brothers flying outfits bear any similarity to jet fighter pilots. These books are valueless except perhaps as a historical curiosity. That decade’s embrace of UFO’s and ancient alien visitations may somehow explain part of my generation’s gullibility to the likes of Alex Jones.
Anyways, there is one interesting aspect to these books, none of them mention Roswell. That 1947 episode did not hit the popular radar until Jesse Marcel, an Air Force desk jockey who was a Walter Mitty type prone to exaggeration, gave the National Enquirer his long tale of a UFO crash in New Mexico in 1980.
From the late 70’s to mid 80’s, my collection is a bit fallow. My move to Houston, the ultimate unwalkable city, in high school blunted my daily access to book sources and later in my college years, I was too buried in textbooks to read a whole lot else. However, there was the most excellent Spectrum Books, located in what I can only describe as an upscale strip mall (only in Houston) on Westheimer Road. By the mid 1980’s, the Mom & Pop book venues were by and large replaced by chains such as Waldenbooks in the malls. And those chains heavily stocked Stephen King. I read the 1,100 page It bit by bit at my stops to the Bryant St. Laundromat. This facility served as an odd fulcrum of life at Buffalo State. With its constant drone of dryers in motion and on the wall a poster of a perpetually upcoming Pete Seeger concert, I met more students and profs here than any other place save the campus pub. Not a bad reading spot, really.
It was Stephen King who turned me on to Jack Finney in the book Danse Macabre. Finney’s work was anything but macabre. You can kind of think of Finney as the Twilight Zone on steroids. To start off, I’d recommend The Third Level, Second Chance, and Home Alone. As luck would have it, Finney’s classic short stories were compiled and republished in the late 1980’s. I would find those in a newer, larger chain, Barnes & Noble. I never had the antipathy that others had for Barnes & Noble. Perhaps because the first one I stepped in was the decidedly off-beat 5th Avenue New York City location. Fact is, B&N offered a far superior selection than any other place and the people who manage and work there love the business. I’d venture to guess I have bought more books there than any other venue.
Not everything I wanted could be found at B&N. As the 80’s came to a close, it was an exciting time for astronomy. President Bush proposed a crewed mission to Mars while at the same time NASA’s great observatory program (including the Hubble) was taking shape. The former never got off the ground, the price tag was simply too large. The latter was one of NASA’s great success stories and continues to pay dividends to this day. It was difficult to find a wide array of astronomy books in stores back then. I relied on the Astronomy Book Club from Sky & Telescope magazine.
It worked on the same premise as the old record clubs. You got six books essentially for free and you agreed to buy four more over the next three years. I entered into this with a bit of trepidation. When I was in high school, I joined a record club and some of the records were of sub-par quality. For example, the mix on Led Zeppelin IV muffled the drums. How do you muffle John Bonham? There was no need to worry. A good chunk of my collection came from the book club, ranging from astronomy texts to popularized science. This book club no longer exists as a result of technological advances in the 1990’s.
The internet radically changed the nature of the book business. None more than Amazon. I initially embraced Amazon with great enthusiasm but these days, I do not buy from Amazon unless I really, really, have to. Like a lot of the tech world, Amazon has metastasized from a entrepreneur start-up to an oversized behemoth. Besides concerns over the possible lack of competition in the book world, the working conditions in Amazon’s warehouses are atrocious. The final straw was hearing Amazon’s decision to place an ambulance outside its warehouses to treat heat stroke rather than install air conditioning for its employees.
During my college days, I worked in a NAPA warehouse unloading trucks in Texas. I remember being dehydrated to the point when I did have access to water, I felt a cold rush to my head when I took a drink. Jeff Bezos’ net worth is approaching $150 billion, certainly enough to afford better working conditions. For now, I’ll stick with Barnes & Noble and whatever indie stores I can find.
Speaking of which, the original 5th Avenue Barnes & Noble store has closed, a victim of gentrification. A lot of indie businesses have fallen pray to this trend. Still, in a city of 8.5 million, I have to believe there are some interesting bookstores to explore, not unlike the first time I set out to buy books in the 1970’s. I am looking forward to some good hunting.
*Nope, image atop post is not my place but the old Cincinnati Public Library which was torn down in 1955. Photo: Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County