Where book people go in Tucson

The Tucson Festival of Books, the third largest book festival in the U.S., is going to be live again. The 2019 Book Festival was cancelled. The virtual Festival in 2020 was interesting; I ended up looking in on author discussions that I may not have considered pre-Zoom. I knew I could easily drop out of the audience if I lost interest and no one would notice. Sampling and walking out on an author is something I’d never do in real life.

And now the real world is coming back. In March 2022 real authors, real publishers and real booklovers will be wandering around the University of Arizona campus, listening to lectures and buying books.

But when I received a notice last week about volunteering at the Festival I realized I hadn’t checked out even one of Tucson’s bookstores. That’s a serious oversight for someone who writes about the cultural side of Tucson.

Time for a true confession

My only excuse is that I have become a devotee of Kindle books–books that invisibly fly through the air at any hour of the night or day, then settle into my little black digital book reader and never clutter up my already overpacked bookshelves! Better yet, from a pocketbook point of view, the book mothership--Pima County Library–offers thousands of Kindle ebooks and streaming movies for free.

Anyway… to correct my omission I spent part of Saturday visiting two large bookstores–Barnes & Noble and Bookman’s–and lined up 3 smaller ones to visit next. There are also 16 comic book/graphic book stores in Tucson! 16!! Which I will not be visiting just yet. Maybe later. (Or maybe not.)

The yin and yang of bookstores

Barnes & Noble and Bookman’s are like night and day or up and down in the literary world. Sure, they both sell books and some other things, but they do it in dramatically different ways. B&N is traditional and restrained; Bookman’s is a wild fantasy of fun. Take, for example, how each of them honor Stephen King and the upcoming Halloween season. B&N on the left, Bookman’s on the right.

Or the first thing I saw, below, when I walked in the door of each store. AT B&N author Silvia Davis was signing her book and chatting with fans right inside the front door. At Bookman’s I was startled and delighted with a group of people sitting around a table near the front of the store laughing out loud! Whatever they were doing, they were having fun.

Or looking straight to the back of each store I saw an enormous newstand at B&N and guitars hanging on the back wall at Bookman’s.

Going beyond just books and magazines Bookman’s calls itself Bookman’s Entertainment Center and includes things as varied as antiques, trombones, Nintendos, and even a Home Brew starter kit. (The kit is in the second photo tucked beside the glass case.)

B&N clearly had one big edge: a cafe where booklovers can sit and sip coffee and discuss books or whatever with other booklovers and friends. No hurry. Just enjoy yourself.

And since October, which has become Halloween month, is just days away, there was a horror sculpture tucked in near the front of Bookman’s Midtown. Is it a reflection on Covid 19 or the state of the book world these days?

Next: 3 bookstores with independent ways with books.

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