{"id":13454,"date":"2014-07-03T02:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=13454"},"modified":"2014-05-25T17:42:35","modified_gmt":"2014-05-26T03:42:35","slug":"postcard-from-alaska-a-real-bookstore-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/?p=13454","title":{"rendered":"Postcard from Alaska – A Real Bookstore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bookstore\"
The interior of Hearthside Books on Front Street, Juneau<\/figcaption><\/figure>Leaving the women behind I stride towards the one shop I want to look through. My wife, my mother and her best friend– their idea of shopping and mine do not mesh. We know this and have arranged a plan, I leave them for an hour, to meet again at the vehicle.<\/p>\n

I rapidly pass storefront after storefront, fine jewelry and tourist kitsch have no attraction for me. A few pretty pieces in the galleries draw a glance or two, but I turn and walk on. Memory leads me down the street and away from the docks, towards a shop I have visited in years past and I only hope it is still there.<\/p>\n

Leaving the waterfront district and the tourist shops behind, I climb another block, to a shop occupying an oddly shaped storefront where the street splits. The result is a pie wedge shaped building, the shop I want is in the point.<\/p>\n

This is a place I will always enjoy, a store filled floor to ceiling in books. It is a small shop, no literary supermarket, there simply isn’t the space. But the book-buyer here carefully chooses the selections, there seems to be anything you could want in the one foot of shelf space devoted to each subject.<\/p>\n

A single rack, three feet of wall, is Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I have either read most of what is available, or know the authors displayed are not ones I enjoy. I make a couple selections, a classic Heinlein I have not read since I was a young teenager and one by Ben Bova I do not know. These I will save for traveling, to pass the time during the trip home with a long layover in Seattle.<\/p>\n

For the next selection I rely on the advice of the sales clerk, a field guide to Alaskan birds. Every vacation is marked by what you forget at home, for this trip one of the forgotten items was a well worn copy of Sibley’s Western Birds.<\/p>\n

Purchases made, the clerk ushers me out the door, closing time had passed while we chatted and exchanged credit card slips. I have few minutes before I must meet the gals, so I stroll back towards the docks and back into the crowds from the cruise ships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leaving the women behind I stride towards the one shop I want to look through. My wife, my mother and her best friend– their idea of shopping and mine do not mesh. We know this and have arranged a plan, I leave them for an hour, to meet again at the vehicle. I rapidly pass … Continue reading “Postcard from Alaska – A Real Bookstore”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[403,1717],"tags":[1742,620],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13454"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13454"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13456,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13454\/revisions\/13456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkerview.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}