Tag Archives: Pete Hautman

Secondhand Bookstores

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In a post last week I asked what you wanted from this blog, and a few of you were kind enough to answer.  To St. Tracy, my first responder, I must say I’m still interviewing potential candidates to serve as both maid and cook for your household so you’ll have more free time to frequent my website. The next qualifying round is a cat-juggling contest, an underrated skill I know you value highly in your domestic workers.

My second responder, John, wondered if I might do profiles on famous writers who also happened to be squirrels. To which I say I’d love to, however, convincing a squirrel writer to take the cigar out of its mouth long enough to say anything on the record is near impossible. So no go, unfortunately.

But John also suggested I write about some of my favorite secondhand bookstores, and that’s a request I can fulfill immediately and with great pleasure. It so happens that my wife and I spent a recent Saturday on a used bookstore tour of North Hollywood, Los Angeles, and Simi Valley, the latter city (in case you don’t live in Southern CA) exists in the southeastern corner of Ventura County and is not just the home of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

No, it’s also where you can find the amazing $5 Or Less Book Store. Nestled in the middle of a bland strip mall like a diamond in the rough, this place is 10,000 square feet of printed-page bliss (and also used CDs and DVDs a’plenty). Every genre of book is represented, but I usually hang out in the literary/commercial fiction section, which in the two times we’ve been there has been well stocked with exciting finds in really good condition. And get this, the hardcovers are $5 and the paperbacks are only $2. Easy to get carried away here, and as happens to me in any secondhand bookstore, the low prices are a compelling reason to take a chance on authors I’ve never read. In that respect, I picked up A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O’Nan and The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht, as well as Castle by J. Robert Lennon. I also found myself drifting over to the DVD section and unable to stop myself from purchasing Footloose (the original version from 1984), because there’s nothing like watching Kevin Bacon dance out his angst over the narrow-minded pop-culturally paranoid denizens of small-town America.

Our next stop on the tour was the Iliad Bookshop, a sparkling gem in the industrial funk of North Hollywood, which specializes in Literature and the Arts. This is what it looks like inside:

Don’t let the empty shelves fool you. They’re all usually filled to capacity, and on the recent Saturday we were there they had overflow books in several stacks on the floor and packed tightly together on rolling carts. The Iliad also features, hands-down, the cleanest and grandest customer bathroom you’ve ever seen. Sadly, I don’t have a picture of it, but really it’s a place you just have to spend some time in to fully appreciate its grandeur. The store itself is great fun, especially for a literature geek like myself, a place to slowly shuffle the creaky wooden floor, aisle after aisle, getting lost in the meditative experience that is book browsing. It is transcendent.  Very reasonable prices here too and most of the books are in fine condition.  Picked up Godless by Pete Hautman, and the Joseph Heller biography Just One Catch, by Tracy Daugherty (hardcover, pristine condition, only $10).

Our final stop on the tour was The Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles. The experience to be had here is almost more about the space and atmosphere–towering ceilings, marble columns, art objects made from books, hipster soundtrack–than it is the books (though they do have a solid selection of both new and used titles). They also host readings, musical performances and even how-to seminars on bookbinding and apartment gardening. Did I mention the hipster soundtrack? Anywho, they also have a dark and dank upstairs area that’s like a cool secret attic to creep around in and pluck out a surprise title, all for $1 each.  While up there I snagged a well-cared-for hardcover copy of T. Jefferson Parker’s Iron River, and on the main floor I picked up The Dog of the South by Charles Portis, The Ecstasy Business by Richard Condon, and a grungy version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest with “non-reliable narrator” scrawled in pencil on page one. I couldn’t resist.

So there you have it. These three stores are but a small sampling of the many others dotting Los Angeles and its outlying areas. A few others I’d heartily recommend: Libros Schmibros in Boyle Heights; Brand Bookshop and the Mystery and Imagination Bookshop, both on Brand Blvd. in Glendale and literally across the street from each other.

Do you have a favorite secondhand bookstore? Here in California, or wherever you live out there in the world? I’d love to hear about where you go to indulge your habit.

LATFOB – What Stuck With Me Part 1

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Photo by Carolyn Kraft

“Starting a book trying to achieve the big picture will get you into trouble.”

“You can’t be an American novelist and not be haunted by The Great Gatsby.”

“Reinvention. Characters who try always fail…and that’s a novel.”

“Cormac McCarthy has three books where babies are being eaten. How does he get away with that?”

The answer to our nation’s problems is craft brewing. It’s the artisanal movement that’s going to save us.”

“75% of all literary fiction readers are female.”

“I refuse to have a cover with a beheaded woman on it.”

“Can’t think about who’s going to like your book while you’re writing it.”

“Fiction is an act of prolonged empathy.”

“Writing is about trying to be less afraid.”

“The reward of writing is the opportunity of having a genuine experience.”

“Worst thing to do as a writer is to be afraid of writing from the perspective of gender or race other than one’s own.”

“You can’t read a great novel and update your Facebook status at the same time.”

“I want to entertain myself at the same time I’m trying to entertain my audience.”

“You never stop coming of age.”

“When you go into a project nervous–that’s a good sign.”

“If you’re from the South and someone kills a person in front of you, the proper thing to say is ‘Well, that was a very interesting choice.'”

“While you’re writing, always ask yourself ‘Is it true?'”

“The hive mind is in ascendance.”

“YA writers have established a community; they even write together.”

“This is the golden age of storytelling in YA fiction.”

“To be a reader now is really to be in pig heaven.”

“There needs to be more diversity in YA literature. Overall, there’s not a lot of people of color [in executive positions] in the publishing industry.”

“Transvaginal wanding is not just my drag name.”

“Fairytales take away the burden of originality. They are like a river of stories we can dip into and swim around in.”

“Fairytales invite us to change the world as we know it. And because it is a world of change it’s possible to take the marginal characters and make them the center of the story.”

“Fairytales are constantly recast to fit the culture.”

“Ultimately what we take away from fairytales isn’t their morals but their sense of wonderment.”

“It is so pleasurable to read as a child.”

“Finding yourself as a writer is discovering what really moves you as a reader.”

“Writing is intuitive. Like a person stumbling around a dark room, a dark forest. Images become stepping stones to get across the river.”

“Post-modern novels seem to be contemptuous of the reader.”

“The first job of the writer isn’t to cater to the audience.”

“The challenge is clarity.”

“Amazing that out of nothing can come a novel.”

 

The wit and wisdom above was collected onto a miniature yellow notepad Saturday April 21 at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. Said perspicacity was uttered by anonymous festival-goers, as well as the novelists Chad Harbach, Lauren Groff, Jonathan Evison, Anthony Giardina,  Libba Bray, Pete Hautman, Aimee Bender, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Trinie Dalton, Jack Gantos, Ransom Riggs, and Thane Rosenbaum.