Here
at Atelier26, we love shining a light on America's best independent
booksellers. Independents and their staff are in the business of knowing
their neighborhoods, clientele, and clientele's particular tastes (a
far cry from the M.O. of Amazon or the chains). Indies thereby do a
profound service to their communities -- and, by ripple effect, to the
larger culture in our country. It's no stretch to say that vitality of
the indies means vitality for democratic culture itself, which begins in
and consists of (what else?) neighborhoods!
Our latest Featured Indie is Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, California:
Stepping into Bookshop Santa Cruz is something like entering
a synthesis of old California hacienda and countercultural community center. A
stronghold of literary culture in downtown Santa Cruz since 1966, the bookshop
welcomes the visitor with a bright, breezy, and rambling space of more than
20,000 square feet packed with new and used books. Tables, carts, and
floor-to-ceiling shelves bristle with two trademarks of an exceptional indie
bastion: a trove of backlist titles both honored and eccentric, and an
abundance of artfully composed staff recommendations.
Owned since 1973 by the Coonerty family, the bookshop
thrives in a symbiotic relationship with the vibrant intellectual and civic
life of its community on the Monterey Bay (former owner Neal Coonerty was mayor
for a time). Following the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which
leveled the bookshop, an army of local supporters helped rescue much of the
store’s inventory from the rubble. Over the course of the bookshop’s three-year
rebuilding campaign, the store was housed in a tent and a fundraiser through the Northern California Booksellers Association made it possible for all bookshop employees to continue earning wages.
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| Neal Coonerty carries a box of books out of the 1989 rubble |
Favorite recent finds by Atelier26 staff at Bookshop Santa
Cruz include W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of
Saturn, hardcover ($4.95), Joseph Brodsky’s Watermark: An Essay on Venice
($7), Brooke Gladstone’s The Influencing
Machine ($6.10), and, proudly displayed in the large and variegated
periodicals sections, a gorgeous new literary magazine hailing from Santa Cruz,
The Catamaran Literary Reader.
Atelier26 is proud to report that early copies of The Beauty of Ordinary Things by Harriet Scott Chessman are now in stock at Bookshop Santa Cruz.
