In Praise of Good Bookstores

by Jeff Deutsch

Overview

From a devoted reader and lifelong bookseller, an eloquent and charming reflection on the singular importance of bookstores

Do we need bookstores in the twenty-first century? If so, what makes a good one? In this beautifully written book, Jeff Deutsch—the director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, one of the finest bookstores in the world—pays loving tribute to one of our most important and endangered civic institutions. He considers how qualities like space, time, abundance, and community find expression in a good bookstore. Along the way, he also predicts—perhaps audaciously—a future in which the bookstore not only endures, but realizes its highest aspirations.

In exploring why good bookstores matter, Deutsch draws on his lifelong experience as a bookseller, but also his upbringing as an Orthodox Jew. This spiritual and cultural heritage instilled in him a reverence for reading, not as a means to a living, but as an essential part of a meaningful life. Central among Deutsch’s arguments for the necessity of bookstores is the incalculable value of browsing—since, when we are deep in the act of looking at the shelves, we move through space as though we are inside the mind itself, immersed in self-reflection.

In the age of one-click shopping, this is no ordinary defense of bookstores, but rather an urgent account of why they are essential places of discovery, refuge, and fulfillment that enrich the communities that are lucky enough to have them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691207766
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	04/05/2022
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	396,509
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Jeff Deutsch is the director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores, which in 2019 he helped incorporate as the first not-for-profit bookstore whose mission is bookselling. He lives in Chicago.

Table of Contents

The Presence of Books: An Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Space 19

Chapter 2 Abundance 50

Chapter 3 Value 78

Chapter 4 Community 109

Chapter 5 Time 137

The Good Bookstore: An Epilogue 162

Acknowledgments 169

Notes 173

Bibliography 183

Index 191

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Utterly fascinating.”—Dave Eggers

“Jeff Deutsch is one of the most learned and passionate booksellers in America, and this profound and poetic book yields as many untold wonders as his impeccably curated store.”—Ada Calhoun, New York Times–bestselling author of St. Marks Is Dead

“Deutsch’s long experience as a bookseller and a reader—that is to say, as someone on both sides of the counter—has allowed him to produce an entertaining, richly intelligent book on an institution that is essential to a literate society.”—Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading and The Library at Night

“A promiscuously erudite love letter to bookstores, books, readers, writers, and the unique community that they constitute, Deutsch’s hypnotic book is generously laced with memorable and often hilarious quotations, and offers the exquisite pleasures of browsing through the book-lined mind of an omnivorously literate reader and bookseller.”—Wendy Doniger, author of The Hindus

“A compendium of delights for the thoughtful reader. Deutsch, a gifted writer and riveting storyteller, has written a concisely elegant topography of the good bookstore that also illuminates the seemingly opaque craft of bookselling. This book is bound to be the fulcrum of discussions—among readers, booksellers, editors, and publishers—about the meaning and role of bookstores.”—Paul Yamazaki, City Lights Bookstore

“In eclectic, humane style, Deutsch shows how communities need bookshops like ships need sails; a joyful, flowing, erudite river of a book. Jump in.”—Martin Latham, Manager, Waterstones Bookshop, Canterbury, UK, and author of The Bookseller’s Tale

“In this charming work, a revered bookseller puts into words the strong but often inarticulate feeling that many booklovers have about the importance of bookstores. Deutsch makes an eloquent case for the way bookstores educate readers as no classroom or library can. His wide-ranging reflections teach us to value the bookstore as a site not of goods but of experiences.”—Leah Price, author of What We Talk about When We Talk about Books

“Maintaining an open society requires educated citizens, book culture, and bookstores, one of the few truly democratic institutions, open to all. Infused with a deep love of his profession, bookselling, Jeff Deutsch’s reflection on reading, learning, and well-run bookstores is breathtaking. Read and share this compelling and engaging book.”—Haki R. Madhubuti, founder of Third World Press and author of Taught by Women: Poems as Resistance Language

Editorial Reviews

01/10/2022

Deutsch, director of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores in Chicago, reflects on the importance of bookselling in his moving debut. In contemporary society, Deutsch laments, there are “few spaces for conversation and meaningful encounter.” Bookstores, though, are one of the only spaces left that provides a forum for “explicit and tacit public conversation” in the form of dialogues between the bookseller and store patrons, among customers, or at literary readings. Bookstores, Deutsch writes, are an anomalous institution in an age of profit-driven capitalism, and they offer unique spaces for cultivating other values, such as friendship and community. Deutsch draws on literature, as well, bringing up insights from 19th-century art critic John Ruskin to critique Amazon’s model for bookselling, which Deutsch calls “false, unnatural, and destructive,” and readers will learn that poet James Russell Lowell used the word browse about reading for the first time in 1870 (before that, it meant to chew cud). Plenty of time is dedicated to Deutsch’s touching reflections on the Co-op, too: it “seemed as close to a spiritual home as one could hope to find.” A resonant elegy to a changing business, this will hit the spot for literature lovers. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

2021-12-14
The director of Chicago’s renowned Seminary Co-op Bookstore ponders the ingredients that make a bookstore worth visiting.

“We no longer need bookstores to buy books, even serious books,” writes Deutsch. “In fact, bookstores might well be an inefficient and inconvenient way to buy books in the twenty-first century.” That is, of course, because we have Amazon, with its long tail and ability to stock every one of the millions of books on the market. That does not mean, writes the author, that we should surrender to Leviathan and abandon those inefficient bookstores. Amazon’s dominance comes at a cost to literate culture, including the loss of the ability to browse the shelves and consult a bookseller who knows the stock. “What an unparalleled activity it is to browse a bookstore in a state of curiosity and receptivity, chewing one’s intellectual cud!” Deutsch exults. A brick-and-mortar bookstore allows plenty of room for such browsing within the bounds of a curated collection, for it can’t hold everything. Deutsch notes that his bookstore sold 28,000 titles in 2019, and almost 17,000 of those were single copies. The single copy speaks to the single reader, and the author sagely allows that the principal work of the bookseller is to anticipate the needs and moods of the solitary browser. It’s thanks to online competition, rising costs, a clogged supply chain, and many other such matters that physical bookstores have to carry things like coffee and greeting cards, but these are essential to the bottom line, much as purists may scoff at them. By Deutsch’s accounting, sidelines comprise about a fifth of a bookstore’s income. Bookstores are more than mere sites of commerce, of course: They’re places of community, and, as the author memorably closes his argument, the books they sell are “exceptional tools to cultivate our own interior landscape, which, after all, is our portable and permanent homeland.”

A pleasant bibliophilic excursion, as books about books usually are.

Kirkus Reviews

"An eloquent and inspiring paean to the community bookstore. . . . A deeply read and engaging guide. . . . Give this a prime spot on that Front Table."

starred review Booklist

One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of the Year

"Winner of the Heartland Booksellers Award in Nonfiction, Midwest Independent Booksellers Association"

Longlisted for the Non-Obvious Book Awards

"A Scholarly Kitchen Best Books Read and Favorite Cultural Creations of the Year"

From the Publisher