Buford Highway Recollections

Book Nook as it appears now, in its current location on North Druid Hills road

In the early 1980s, my cousin and friend Scott and I would go on book-buying trips down Buford Highway once a month or so. (At least I remember it as being that often and that regular. Maybe it's something we only did three or four times…but I remember it as being every month or so for a period of a year or so. Also, for me they were book-buying trips, but I think Scott was actually more interested in looking for records.) Sometimes we'd go on a Saturday, sometimes on a weekday afternoon after school—most of the time when this was a regular event for us, we were both still in high school at Berkmar, me in ninth or tenth grade and him in eleventh or twelfth.

The high spot of these trips was Book Nook. Back then it used to be where Clairmont intersects Buford Highway. (Some years ago, it moved to—and still occupies—a building on North Druid Hills, which is fine, and I still go there two or three times a year, but I liked the old location better.) Book Nook was a large used bookstore with a great SF/fantasy section, and probably quite a lot of other types of books, too, but I don't remember because I never looked anywhere else. I do remember, though, that you had to go by—or was it through?—the comic books to get to the SF bookcases. (Book Nook is still a large used bookstore, and it still has a pretty good SF/fantasy section, but now when I go there I also go to several other sections, and also in their current location you don't have to go through the comic books to get to the science fiction shelves.)

When I was in high school, I used to go to the library during my study hall period and look at the original 1977 Science Fiction Encyclopedia—still my favorite edition, primarily because of the illustrations, which were omitted from the mid-90s update. I loved that book; I read more about science fiction than I actually read science fiction. Sometime in the mid-80s, a year or two after Scott and I had pretty much stopped going on our Buford Highway excursions, on a Book Nook visit with my first girlfriend, Laura, I found a copy of the Encyclopedia, and I pounced on it, though I was (and still am) a little disappointed that it didn't have the dust jacket. I can't remember how much it cost, or whether I was able to buy it right away or if I had to go back later (hoping all the while that no one else had gotten to it before me, I'm sure) with the right amount of money. More than thirty years later, I still love that book.

Besides Book Nook, there were at least two other places Scott and I would go regularly. One of them was also a used bookstore; I remember going there one afternoon and finding a copy of Harlan Ellison's landmark anthology Dangerous Visions and thinking I'd found a real prize. I realized years later that it was just a cheap and fairly common book club edition, but I still have that copy, and have read…oh, maybe a fourth of it in the thirty-five years since I bought it. (I've always been guilty of spending more money buying books than time reading them.)

Three books I still have that I know I bought at bookstores along Buford Highway in the 1980s

The other store I remember Scott and me going to on Buford Highway was primarily a used record store—I remember Scott buying an ABBA record there once—but they might have had used books too. I can vaguely picture the inside of the store, but not its location along Buford Highway. I can also remember the owner of the store, as he rang up Scott's ABBA record, telling him about how the members of ABBA spoke no English and learned all their songs phonetically but didn't know what they were singing. Scott just nodded and said, "Oh, really, that's interesting," but as soon as we left the store he told me that was a load of crap (which I'm pretty sure I already knew).

I recall one time on a Saturday Scott and I had lunch at the McDonald's that was near Book Nook, and as we ate, Mike Beaty and Toni Pecoraro, two guys we knew from Berkmar, came in. Mike had a huge afro—look at Neal Schon on the back of a late 70s Journey album—and Tony had shoulder length hair. The both played guitar and were in a band together. I know now that they were just a couple of teenagers, not very different from any other teenagers, but at the time I thought they were rock stars. I don't remember if we talked to them, or if they even acknowledged our presence.

I still occasionally drive down Buford Highway, usually just for nostalgia's sake, since all the book stores and used record stores are now long gone (or, thankfully, moved elsewhere in the case of Book Nook). Sometimes it makes me happy just to be there, since I have so many great memories of that time in my life, and of those book-buying trips with Scott. Sometimes it makes me sad that the area has changed so much, and sadder still that I can't be fifteen again, heading out with Scott to drive down Buford Highway.

Audio Books

There are some books I claim to have read—several by Bill Bryson; pretty much everything I say I've read by David Sedaris; Daniel Pinkwater's brilliant The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death—but really haven't, at least not strictly speaking. Because I listened to them as audio books.

Chances are I've listened to them several times, in fact. I'm sure I've heard Bryson's A Walk in the Woods and Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day five or six times each. Charles Kuralt's Charles Kuralt's America is one of my favorite books; I've listened to it several times, and I've also actually read the printed book—the audio version is abridged, and I wanted to see what I was missing—but I prefer the audio version. It's not that I'm too lazy to read and would rather have Kuralt read his own book to me, it's just that he does it so well.

Many years ago, when I had a regular corporate job and a daily commute, I listened to a lot more audio books than I do these days. There were a lot of really good productions of middle-reader and young adult novels of the kind I then aspired to write, some of which I still have. Because they are mostly on cassettes, it's a lot harder to listen to them now, but someday when I have more time and more energy, I'm going to digitize them to make it easy to hear them whenever I want.

(Why the four books in the picture, you may be wondering, when I didn't name any of them specifically in this post? Well, for one thing they are all books I remember enjoying very much. The Madeleine L'Engle book, A Wind In The Door, which came second in the sequence that began with A Wrinkle in Time, is perhaps my favorite of her books (though I would actually rather read it than listen to it; I think I only listened to this audio book once). The Neil Shusterman book, The Dark Side of Nowhere, is one of the things Anna and I listened to on the drive home from our honeymoon, so I have very fond memories of it. But most importantly, they were in a cabinet in my office and were easily accessible; I didn't have to root around in the garage or that funky storage space under the stairs to find them.)

My Anxieties Have Anxieties

I don't know how old I was when I first read Peanuts. I'm pretty sure it was sometime back in fourth grade, maybe even third, when I started my relationship with these books.

And for me, Peanuts was always about books. I'm sure that for years I was not even aware it was a daily comic strip, probably didn't even know what that meant—but I knew the books. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was on TV for the first time two years before I was born and had become a seasonal staple by the time I was in fourth grade, but I don't remember seeing it when I was a kid, or seeing any of the other Peanuts TV specials that had been produced by the time I was in fourth grade—but I knew the books.

I've been collecting them, the books, for more than forty-five years. I don't actually have that many—forty-two: I just turned around and counted them—but they are precious to me.

Not everyone cared for Peanuts as much as I do, of course. Al Capp, creator of the "Li'l Abner" comic strip and a generation older than Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, once famously characterized the kids in Peanuts as "...mean little b*stards. Eager to hurt each other." Maybe Capp had a point, but he didn't seem to appreciate the fact that this made them all the more real as kids and as human beings, and that it made the moments of truth and beauty they revealed, either by transcending the inherent melancholy of life or by accepting it, all the more beautiful.

"Life is rarely one way, Charlie Brown," Linus says to his friend as the two lean against the brick wall where they do all their philosophizing, "You win a few, and you lose a few."

"Really?" says Charlie Brown, who—at least in his own perception—has never won a thing in his life, and—again, at least in his own perception—probably never will. "Gee," he says in the last panel, his mouth in the beginnings of a hopeful smile, "that'd be neat!!"

That hopeful smile makes Peanuts wonderful.

Books I Have Lost

Not everyone who loves to read values books as physical objects; plenty of people love reading but don't need, or even want, to be surrounded by bookcases filled with books.

But I do. I value books as physical objects, and I want, maybe even need, to be surrounded by bookcases filled with books. It makes me happy.

And it really bothers me when I lose a book. Three years ago when we moved into our current house, I had boxes and boxes of books to move and unpack, and at some point--several months, actually--after I was done, I realized there were some books I couldn't find. It's possible I got rid of those books in a fit of downsizing, but I doubt it--the books in question I don’t think I would ever have wanted to get rid of, and one of them, Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain, is a book I did get rid of once, and then bought another copy of some months later when I found that I wanted it back. I'm afraid that somehow amidst all the hubbub of our move I lost or misplaced a whole box. (And what else may have been in that box that I haven't missed yet?)

Whenever I get rid of books I regret it. Oh, I don't miss every single book I've ever gotten rid of, but I'm never sure which books I'll miss and want back. About twenty-five years ago I read The Magus by John Fowles; it was brilliant and compelling, but also long and challenging, so at some point I got rid of it. I wish I hadn't. I doubt I'd re-read the whole thing again--though I might--but it would mean something to me to have it on my shelves. I also used to have a great hardback Modern Library edition of Emerson's essays, but I got rid of it because Emerson's work has long been in the public domain and is readily available online if I want to read it on my tablet, and the book was taking up valuable shelf space...

The next time I get the idea to purge some of my books, I'm going to box them up and put them in the attic instead of getting rid of them. That will make it easier to get them back three months later when I decide I do want them after all, and will give me the pleasure of going through the box and finding some things I'd forgotten about.

Lots of Short Stories

I love short stories. As I've written before, it's my favorite literary form, and there are Great and Important writers--Anton Chekhov, Raymond Carver, Grace Paley--whose published prose writing consists entirely of short stories (though Chekhov also wrote plays, of course, and Carver and Paley both wrote poetry), and other writers who did write novels but are remembered primarily for their short fiction: Eudora Welty, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Cheever.

I've never managed to finish Moby-Dick, though I've started it several times and gotten about half-way through, but I've read "Bartelby" more than once and I love it. (I think I may have written a paper on it when I was an undergraduate, but I have no idea what I said; probably a bunch of that annoying claptrap that I was so full of in my late teens and early twenties. If you knew me back then: Man, I'm really sorry. I'm better now. I really hope so, anyway.)

Don't get me wrong: I do like novels. I used to read a lot of them. I often wish I read more of them these days. I really wish I could read more novels--but I'm kind of a slow reader, and frankly I can't often sustain interest for that long anymore in one story, in one plot. Usually after half an hour or forty-five minutes, maybe an hour, I'm ready to move on to something else.

Which is why the short story is perfect for me.

Not Fiction

When I was a kid, reading to me meant specifically fiction. If it wasn't a novel, I didn't really think of it as "reading."

But I realize now that I read a lot of non-fiction back then. The earliest non-fiction memory that I can hang a book title on, and which is also one of my most pleasant library memories, is of Edward Edelson's Great Monsters of the Movies, which came out in 1973 but which the Bethesda library didn't get until I was in third grade in 1975. The librarian--whose name I wish I could remember--set it aside for me when it arrived and gave me the honor of being first to check it out. She knew I would love it. She was so right!

The Bethesda library also had this great book about reptiles that I kept checked out nearly constantly in fourth and fifth grade, and I read books about dinosaurs, and the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot (some books about one or the other, some books that included both), and various supernatural goings-on (C.B. Colby's Strangely Enough! being one I remember well; I have two copies of it now). When I got older, I read books about lasers and music and other things that interested me, and when I began to get seriously involved in science fiction, I read through the Berkmar library's copy of Peter Nicholls's The Science Fiction Encyclopedia (the original edition, from 1979) every chance I got. I eventually found my own copy of it at Book Nook, but it’s missing that cool dust jacket.

For the last decade or so, I haven't read many novels, but I've read a lot of non-fiction, especially short works, mostly feature stories and personal essays; I'd now say it's my second favorite literary form (after the short story). Gay Talese, Gene Weingarten, Michael Paterniti, Malcolm Gladwell, John Jeremiah Sullivan, and Hampton Sides have all published fantastic collections of their magazine pieces, and there are also personal essays I love by the likes of Bailey White and the great E.B. White (no relation to Bailey White that I'm aware of; in fact, I just realized in typing this that they have the same last name!).

I now most definitely think of non-fiction as reading.

The Weekly Reader Book Club

Back in fourth grade I was a member of the Weekly Reader Book Club.

Man, it was the best getting books in the mail! And I read every one of them, always finishing one week's book before the next week's arrived. Over the course of the next couple of years I read them all again, getting through some of them three or four times while I was still in elementary school. (This was, of course, in addition to re-reading Harriet The Spy and The Witch of Blackbird Pond every couple of months, and reading other books from the school library as well, like The Ghost Belonged to Me and Tuck Everlasting. I was constantly reading back then. It's a wonder I managed to fit in any of my actual school work!) I still have all of those Weekly Reader Book Club editions, on a bookshelf in my bedroom.

But it's not that many, really: only seven--all of the ones I own are shown in the photograph--so if it really was "weekly," then I wasn't even in it for two full months. I'm not sure why it was such a short time; maybe it was even my choice. Maybe I begged my parents to let me divert the money towards the ever-growing Micronauts and Shogun Warriors collection my brother and I were intent on amassing. (Hmmm...Micronauts vs. books? That's a hard call. Today, I'd probably pick books--probably--but I'm not so sure about 1978 Chris.) It was a long time ago, and I don't remember. I know that the Weekly Reader Book Club started many years before they ever sent me a book, and I also know it doesn't exist any more. But then, neither do Micronauts or Shogun Warriors.

And by the way, Harriet the Spy (by Louise Fitzhugh), The Witch of Blackbird Pond (by Elizabeth George Speare), The Ghost Belonged to Me (by Richard Peck), and Tuck Everlasting (by Natalie Babbitt) are still great books--I've re-read them all in the past few years, and they hold up well. If you haven't read them and you're interested in children's literature, I recommend them. You might enjoy them.