Comments on: Back Pages Books

by: Mary Lou Shields

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 12:46:16 +0000

And let’s hear it for the atmosphere of an independent bookstore or a library no matter which side of “the pond.”

by: Cathy

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:22:09 +0000

Here’s to the independent bookstore. They’re so personable and welcoming, like a good friend. I’ll definitely pay a visit to Back Pages!

by: Mary Lou Shields

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 02:15:01 +0000

That I inspired such breathtaking prose flatters me no end. Ah, dear Administartor, you do have a way with words.

by: Administrator

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:06:23 +0000

You are indeed the finest fan anyone could wish for - and Back Pages values you almost as much as I do, I’m sure. Yet I’d have one cavil - the store isn’t musty, but rather airy; the word I’d have chosen is ‘calm’, like the best libraries. When I was a young man I’d make my way to the Oxford Museum’s library of Ethnology purely because of its atmosphere. I’d walk through the spindly Victorian iron pillared/gothic greenhouse that was the Pitt Rivers museum (think of the glass ceiling of Waterloo station placed onto a village church), go past the shrunken heads display from Borneo, past the plesiosaurus, and into a nook of calm that was the library. The British Library may have more books, but, as someone famously said, how many original ideas have started there? It’s an archive, not a place for inspirations, which probably all happened outside that busy atmosphere….

by: Mary Lou Shields

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:49:07 +0000

I, too, am a fan of Back Pages Books. (Their new store is ever so much better than the old one.)
Until you noted it, I didn’t realize that - also like you - I prefer any kind of musty book store to Barnes and Noble but I’d failed to make the airport connection.
And, of course, dear administrator, you are so right when you say that at the end of the day “it’s about a sense of connection with others who think in similar ways.” And isn’t that what we love about “Stories We Need To Know?” All the connections?
Signed,
A. Fan