06/23/2010 Janet Geddis - Beyond the Trestle
About a year and a half ago, I was on one of my famous bookstore tours. Whenever I’m going anywhere, I research the place and figure out what, if any, independent bookstores call it home. At a luncheon with some former high school teachers in summer 2008, I mentioned my habit of—nay, obsession with—visiting indies wherever I roamed, and my 11th grade teacher told me about her friend Laura Keys’s new store in Decatur, Blue Elephant Book Shop. I marked the store on my list of places to visit next time I was in the area and plum forgot about it until one morning in Decatur after brunching with friends.
I had some time to kill before driving back to Athens, so I strolled around the city until I stumbled upon Decatur CD, where I purchased an Indigo Girls album and asked the owner, Warren, about his eclectic collection (curated by Atlanta's famous A Cappella Books) of music-related books—biopics, memoirs, song books, and more. He was curious about my curiosity, and seemed pretty unimpressed by my wish to open an independent bookstore in Athens. As is often the case, however, I was able to show him that this wasn’t a whim but a well-researched plan, and soon he was giving me some ideas about what sorts of books sell best in his store (this is important for me to know, as Athens happens to be home to a couple of folks who like music). I left with a thanks, loaded the CD into my car, and followed Warren’s directions to Blue Elephant Book Shop—he had recommended it to me and was unsurprised to hear that I was a friend of a friend of the owner. It seems that, like Athens, Decatur is closely-knit and many people run in the same circles.
Link to Beyond the Trestle blog here for the rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment