What's In Your Bookstore?

Every summer I take my children to Petoskey, Michigan for vacation, a place overflowing with fun activities for kids: mini-golf, beaches, specialty toy shops, and the best pancake restaurant we’ve ever found. There’s even a large, indoor water park nearby. However, the one thing my children say we MUST DO, and we MUST DO IMMEDIATELY is visit McLean and Eakin Booksellers. I don’t complain, since the place is my favorite bookstore too. It has everything my ideal bookstore would have if I were to ever design one myself, (which is every book lover’s dream, right?). Here are my six must-haves:

1.     It’s not a huge place, but it’s curated. The books on display look so good, I want to read all of them! And I have read many of them. One of my favorite activities is to point out the recent books I’ve already read and those that are on my TBR list. I also like to discover authors I know personally (do Facebook friends count, even those I haven’t met in real life?): I know that author, and that author, and hey, why isn’t my new book here? The day that happens, I’ll know I’ve made it as a writer.

2.     I can’t get my children to leave the store. The children and teen sections are just as carefully curated, and my kids often find books they haven’t seen at other bookstores. Somehow, the store even understands my ten-year-old son’s obsession with Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes. The kid’s section is cute, too. The adorable displays and shelves of new picture books almost make me want to have another baby. Almost, but not quite.

3.     Speaking of cute decorations, I am not a purist. I love bookstores that are full of cuteness and distractions from the books themselves. Expansion decks for Cards Against Humanity, bookmarks, puzzles, gold-trimmed journals, tiny humorous books about mother in laws, trashy magazines, even records! The displays and quirky items selected by the bookstore only heighten my enjoyment of the experience.

4.     And how about places to sit? There’s a long bench right in front of the fiction new releases so that I can sit down and read the first several pages of some of those books on my TBR list. I’ve seen online that the books have gorgeous covers, but now I can see whether the insides lives up to the outsides. Unless, of course, there are already five people sitting on the bench, which there often are at McLean and Eakin. Which brings me to my next point.

5.     The place is always packed! Now you would think book lovers wouldn’t necessarily want to be squished up together with a bunch of people, but book people are a unique sort of crowd, which you know if you’ve ever attended a large book fair. Things are relatively quiet and peaceful, with an “excuse me please,” now and then as you reach for a book that someone is blocking. Also, with all the gloom and doom about the end of reading and the looming bookpocalypse, I’m always thrilled to see a bookstore doing a booming business.

6.     Okay, that was too much rhyming in that last sentence, so I’ll leave you with this final characteristic of what my favorite bookstore must contain: salespeople who read. When my daughter buys the recent trendy futuristic teen book, the girl behind the counter inevitably asks her whether she’s read so-and-so’s other book or whether she’s familiar with this other author who writes similar books.

When you visit McLean and Eakin (or your own favorite bookstore), good luck getting your children and yourself out of there in under two hours. The only downside to your visit will be, you’ll leave with a lot less money for visits to the Original House of Pancakes. Looks like you’ll be making your own pancakes this week!