Stacey's Bookstore... in memoriam

Stacey's Bookstore, a fixture in San Francisco for 85 years, announced to the staff today that the store will be closing for good in March of this year.

To any and all who worked there, or in any of the branch stores already gone, and to the thousands who shopped there over the decades, the loss will be immeasurable.  Stacey's was everything an independent bookstore was meant to be; welcoming, diverse, eclectic, and fiercely, defiantly a bookstore first, last and always.  It was not a toyshop, a coffee bar, or a corporate merchandising environment.  It was not a publicly traded business model, or an Internet investment opportunity.  It was not a retailer of products, some of which happened to be books.  It was not a bland, homogenized mall operation, selling a narrow selection of safe bestsellers, in a cozily overstuffed cultural void, with every available corner crammed with cheap reprints, sidelines and logo bespattered promotions. It was not, in short, the kind of bookstore the city of San Francisco, at the behest of developers, and with the tacit support of City Hall, invited into its new cultural centers and onto every other corner of Market Street. 

What Stacey's was was an Independent Bookstore; stocked, staffed and operated by Independent Booksellers whose knowledge, commitment and heart created one of the finest bookstores on the West Coast.  

Mr. John W. Stacey started the company in 1923.  The full history of Stacey's in San Francisco is one of constant reinvention, expansion and service.   And always, from the beginning, it was about providing books to readers.

There is no way for me to express my personal sense of loss on hearing the news that Stacey's is closing.  It was my home for twelve years.  I learned how to sell books there.  I learned what it meant to be a valued and respected member of a bookselling family there.  I made many friends there, among customers and staff.  Stacey's, for me, will always be my standard of what a bookstore can and ought to be.

I can not believe it will be gone by March.

Our Own Lucy & Linus

And now, to see the evening out at the Booth, we have a duo of real book pros: Matthew & Stesha, UBS's own. True, they are adorable, but they are also really (really) bookish, so come see if they don't know just the right novel ("Not too violent or dirty, mind.") for dear ol' Aunt Lil, or the best new arty comix for your kid brother.

The Stranger at the Booth

Paul Constant, the Books Editor for The Stranger, is in the Booth and taking questions. Trust us, he's as amusing and erudite in person as he is in the pages of Seattle's favorite free paper.

And he's considerably younger and hipper -- than me at least --

so he may just be the one whose advice you need for that younger

relative who absolutely stumps you come gift giving season.

The Man from Norton

This hour at our Holiday Gift Advice Booth, we have Dan Christiaens -- the Man From W. W. Norton -- a publisher's Rep with a long and happy relationship with independent booksellers like us. (And he's joined at the Booth by his beautiful wife.)

This man reads (you hear me?) and not just 'cause it's his job.

Ask and learn, people, ask and learn.

Yo, yo, yo... Nancy Pearl is in Da House!

Seattle's own beloved Biblio-enthusiast, NPR commentator, television interviewer, author of the Book Lust books, and all around Best Librarian Ever -- Nancy Pearl! is in the store now, from noon 'til 2, answering your Holiday gift questions, making recommendations, and, as always bringing happiness to all of us at UBS and the general public.

Get your quarter out, get in line, and ask away!

Next Expert, Please!

Marilyn Dahl, editor of the indispensable Shelf Awareness, is our next expert advisor at the Booth. She's only here until noon, so get in here and get advise on books from a woman who knows more books, and more about books, than just about anyone you're likely ever to meet.

The Holiday Gift Advice Booth is Open!

A team of experts is waiting, all day today, to help you pick the perfect book for any and everyone on your gift list. First up today, David Glenn, Random House Rep Extraordinaire.

The line is already forming, the advice costs one thin quarter and all moneys raised go to the University Book Store Scholarship Endowment Fund. So get in here today!

Free Stuff Flash Mob: aka Campus Thank You

Q: How delighted were we with the turnout for yesterday's Campus Thank You Celebration?

A: Very!!!

Great crowds, great vendors, great singers, great games, great raffles, great prizes, great students, faculty and staff. Thank you to everyone who participated.
Don't be strangers. Stop by. Shop a little.

Dear Diary... found a real bargain on your replacement today.

Bargain Hunters of the Book Store Lobby! There are, just at present, a whole caboodle of beautiful bargain journals, notebooks, note cards, stationary sets, and just fabulous paper products of various description waiting to be snatched up by eager discount detectives. They will not last. Come in soon.

I hear "The Chimes" at midnight yet again...

Every year at the bookstore, I read Truman Capote's little sentimental masterpiece, "A Christmas Memory" aloud, to celebrate the Holiday Season, as we call it in retail.  Years and years ago, when I was living in San Francisco, I went every year to hear just such a performance at a bookstore there. Now that reading was given by a wonderful retired actor.  Mine, alas, is entirely amateur, if somewhat... practiced, shall we say? by now.  This has become a tradition for me and the bookstore and I confess, I look forward to it every December.  Whatever my shortcomings as a reader, I like to think, as they used to say on the "Society Page" in my little hometown newspaper about any local event other than a funeral, "a good time will be had by all."

This year's reading of "A Christmas Memory" will be Wednesday, December 3rd, at 7PM at the bookstore in Seattle, with encores at Bellevue & Mill Creek 

 (check the Reading Aloud Events Schedule for a reading near you.)  Please do come.

Additionally, on Tuesday, December 9th,  at 7PM, I will be reading Charles' Dickens' 

"The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In."  This will be a first for me.  Back in February, I helped celebrate the Great Man's Birthday with two selections from his novels, both taken from his own adaptations for his celebrated public readings.  Again, I like to think, "a good time was had by all."  (At least, no one complained to the management about the noise.) Emboldened, I added this reading of Dickens' second Christmas Book -- written the year after "A Christmas Carol," -- to my

 schedule.  The exceptionally good people in our Events Department indulged me yet again, bless 'em.

The only problem now is adapting Dickens' reading copy of "The Chimes" for an audience unfamiliar with the story.  Had I simply read the more justly famous "Carol," I need not have spent, as I have, so many long nights typing, scribbling and sweating to communicate something of the true magic and power of this lesser known work to a contemporary audience.  Dickens' didn't have this problem when he did his readings of "The Chimes."  In the first place, he was, by all reports, a truly remarkable actor and his readings of his own work were considered one of the wonders of the Victorian Age.  Oh.  In the second place, Dickens' audience knew his other Christmas Books -- he wrote five all together -- as well as they knew his "Carol."  Certainly, now as then,  everyone knows Ebenezer Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the rest as well as any characters in the history of literature.  But contemporary  audiences

 probably don't know this second story or dear old Toby "Trotty" Veck at all.

Well, you should.

And so, I'm up tonight again, typing, scribbling, etc., in the hope of doing justice to Charles Dickens, Toby, and The Chimes.   I won't, of course, but I'll do my best.

I hope you can come and hear the result.