A comment on an aspect of my recent travels: The one redeeming thing about Portland Oregon is that it has the best bookshop I've been to in my entire life. Three stories and a square city block, arranged in its own order that works really well...go Powell's. This visit occurred after re-visiting The Word, my favourite used bookshop in Montreal (conveniently located around the corner from my old apartment) and walking out with $20 worth of I-meant-to-read-that, and finding an all-the-good-bits abridged edition of Tale of Genji at The Barrow, a used bookshop in Concord, about 10 minutes from my mom's house.

So, today, while running errands, I remembered that I wanted to get Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, and was also looking out for Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, and wouldn't say no to After the Quake by Haruki Murakami and really did want to read The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing even though I didn't have time to read it after I took it out of the library and returned it unread. If I had a copy of it forever, I could read it whenever! Instead of going home, a-detouring I went, first to Willow Books.

Willow Books is Acton's answer to the Borders/Barnes & Noble megalopolis - a locally owned version therein; not quite as big with a small cafe. I went to the classics section fully expecting to see at least the best-known book by the first English language Nobel Laureate. AT LEAST. Nope, 6 titles by Jack Kerouac, then One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest, then straight on to the L's. I went to the information desk and asked if they had Kim by Rudyard Kipling, and the woman smiled as she told me if I hadn't found it there, she guessed they didn't!

Fine.

At that point I was too annoyed to look for other things I wanted at Willow Books, and figured I might as well drive to Concord since I didn't have anything pressing. I went into The Concord Bookshop before I went back to The Barrow. To put this bookshop in perspective - Lois Lowry had a book signing there when I was 12 or 13. They had a huge Harry Potter party every time a new one was released, that always made it into the Boston news broadcasts. With Concord's literary tradition and old money, they are a pretty classy establishment and certainly afford to have something classic sitting on the shelves for a few months before a random weirdo (i.e. me) comes in and asks for it. It's a local bookshop, to be sure, but it's always been fairly highbrow.

Kim? No. Three Murakami titles, all of which I'd read. No Slouching Towards Bethlehem. No The Good Terrorist.

To give them the benefit of the doubt, the lack of The Good Terrorist could well be because it's been flagged by the Patriot Act because of its title.

If bookshops that sell new books have lowered the standards for what they stock merely to what is new and bright and shiny and can be sold only to people who also just seek that, they deserve what's coming to them. They deserve to have potential sales usurped by Amazon, which does have anything you want if you are willing to wait. If these owners and managers stock crap, they are basically giving those who would be their repeat customers no other option than going somewhere else for their various and sundry needs - as good literature is wont to be.