About Bookstores

Imagine you have arrived in Anchorage, Alaska, with your 12 sled dogs, ready to ride the rugged 1,150-mile Iditarod Trail to Nome. Even under the best of conditions, you might be traveling for almost a month; the nights are very long, and you cannot fit a human companion on your sled. Question: What are you going to bring to read?

Thanks to a great outpouring of booksellers’ recommendations, we were able to compile a fantastic Poetry 76 Top Ten. The flier will go on press this week; the pad of fliers will go into the March "white box," and they'll get to you in time for April poetry displays.

At the site of the venerable Chatterton’s Bookshop, closed in 1994 after the death of its owner, is Los Angeles's five-year-old Skylight Books, the result of great production, directing, casting, and location.

Sam Weller's Books, a downtown Salt Lake City landmark since 1929, is introducing the world to some of the best of Utah's writers while the Olympic Games are played down the street. The store is offering a packed schedule of appearances by about 30 local writers, musicians, and visual artists (many from the area) during the two-week period between February 8 and February 23, Roxann Campbell, Weller's events coordinator, told BTW.

On Thursday, February 8, The Red Balloon Bookshop, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based childrens bookstore, was host to a panel discussion on free expression. The innovative idea grew from an incident last November, when a Red Balloon Bookshop customer wanted to ban a book she had never read. The patron (an educator, in fact) came to store manager, Roxanna Markie, incensed that the bookstore carried the book Little Black Sambo. Based only on the title, the educator assumed the book to be racist. It isnt.

According to Reuters, the travel industry experienced a 20 percent drop in "like-for-like" sales for the 20 weeks to January 19. The International Air Transport Industry Association announced that passenger traffic on international flights was down four percent, and in December international traffic plummeted 12 percent from the prior year. Among those travel-related businesses feeling the pinch from these drastic drop-offs are airport and hotel bookstores.

On January 19, in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Tempe's Human Relations Commission hosted its Fourth Annual Diversity Awards ceremony to honor and celebrate individuals and organizations from the community who demonstrated a commitment to diversity. The 28-year-old Changing Hands Bookstore was among those honored with the 2002 Diversity Award in the Business category.