Two revolutionary bookstores and at one you can even buy the Communist Manifesto

One bookstore, Revolutionary Grounds and Coffee, is filled with books about political systems and political people. The other bookstore, Stacks, is revolutionary by shunning the name “store” and calling itself a Book Club. At both these places, however, the front entrance revealed a lot about what I was going to find inside.

While Stacks was promoting a Summer Book “Tasting”, Revolutionary Grounds was urging people to support the Free Gaza movement. At both, however, you can get a good cup of coffee and pastries to enjoy inside or out front even if you don’t buy a book.

But only at Revolutionary Grounds can you sit inside at the Angela Davis table! For those of you who are young, Angela Davis became famous during the 1960s and ’70s as a political activist who also was a college professor at U.C Santa Cruz. Her name and a poor image of her are among several revolutionary people honored with their names on tables in this bookstore.

Revolutionary Grounds has both new and used books in good condition and the obligatory image of the very young and very handsome revolutionary Dr. Ernesto Che Guevara smoking a Cuban cigar. (For the young again: the Bolivian Army captured him while he was motorcycling around Bolivia and killed him.)

Joy, the owner, told me that originally the store had been located on 4th Ave. when it was basically a hippy street. And those old hippy roots are still in evidence now at its location in a shopping mall on Speedway and Swan.

You will find on one shelf a recent edition of the ‘Communist Manifesto’, at the top of this post. In my opinion, more people here in Arizona should read it so they understand the differences between Communism, Socialism and end-stage Capitalism. I could give you my views on these very different forms of economies/governments having lived under all three systems at one time or the other, but this post is supposed to be about bookstores.

So on to the Stacks Book Club

I was surprised at how busy Stacks on Broadway was on Saturday morning. (Parking was ugly!) It seemed like a crowded coffee house with big selection of new books lining the walls on either side. Filling the center were low tables, chairs and sofas filled with chatting people, sipping coffee and eating tasty pastries.

I admired the portraits of famous authors on a back wall, recognizing some, but not others. Then as I looked around I saw that that Stacks carries the funny, weird and sometimes outrageous series I am currently reading: ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ by Matt Dinniman. The woman helping with books said the series–which is eight books long already–is flying off the shelves. (It’s #3 on the Amazon best seller list.)

I was also intrigued by the Book Club concept which it turns out is a pick-and-choose what books you want to talk about from their list, then call to RSVP. Unlike more conventional book clubs, continuing attendance is not expected. Having given up on 3 book clubs this summer for various reasons, the Stacks system appealed to me. Interestingly enough not all the books listed for the Book Clubs were new so pushing the newest best sellers out the door was apparently not the goal of this system. I see that ‘Dog Stars’ is coming up in September and I highly recommend this post-apocalyptic book. Oops. I just checked and, as I thought, ‘Dog Stars’ is not a recent book. It was published in 2012. But The movie is coming out at IMAX later this month.

And there was one curious thing: while every other visitor was either looking at books on the wall or chatting with their friends around low tables, one woman was knitting. No one seemed to notice that she was there for the food and the very comfortable sofa. I hope the green “something” she’s knitting turns out well.

I have now visited almost all the bookstores I know about in Tucson and written about them on this blog. You can read about the others here and here and here. Then sign up to receive email notices when I publish future posts.

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