Indie Love

I have a secret crush that I'm about to let out of the bag... I adore indie book stores. Yep, really. There is nothing better than searching through piles of old (or new) books and getting reacquainted with my favorite authors. My absolute favorite indie book store so far is Sam Weller's in Salt Lake City. It smells like dust and ink and paper and truth. I love that place. I spent 2 hours in there on Saturday and left with a collection of poems by Maya Angelou and essays by Barbara Kingsolver. I had to walk away from a beautiful antique hardbound copy of a collection of Rudyard Kipling's writings. He is officially my favorite author; unfortunately, I'm too poor to buy his books in antique form. For now I'll just keep picking them up in the library. As I wandered around in the basement of this great old store, my fingers started twitching and the gears in my mind starting turning and I remembered how much I love to write, really write, and it made me sad that I've moved so far away from writing and that my blog is the only place where I write and I don't even do it very well here. Those beautiful books were staring at me from the shelves, begging to be held, read, understood. I love that Sam Weller's mixes new and used books on the same shelves and that they have a big gated room full of rare books. I love the squeaky wood floor and the stillness of the store. Everyone shops with the hushed reverence reserved for libraries and churches. I've heard that there is an indie bookstore in Springville, just 15 minutes away from here, and that I don't have to go all the way to SLC to buy books. We'll see. I'll give it a try, but it's a new book store, with new books and bright lights and probably no basement, or attic, or balcony level. But I'll give it a try. I hope it doesn't have the sterile, unfriendly feel of a Barnes and Noble. And I hope Sam Weller's will forgive me.