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April 2008
Recent Posts
Musings from the Tattered Cover Excerpt: "The Story of Forgetting" by Stefan Merrill Block Of Texas, and nature, and writing Sneak peek at Sunday's reviews Live! From Denton -- the Texas Nature Writing conference keynote Categories
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I just spent five days in Denver for the American Copy Editors Society conference (ACES: The few, the proud, the defiantly picky!), and although the conference left little time for sightseeing, I did manage to get to the Tattered Cover's historic downtown store twice. I was going to get all evangelical about Dallas' need for something similar, but I see that while I was gone, we had the announcement about Legacy Books coming to the Shops at Legacy in Plano. Well, I'm really, really happy for Plano, and I hope Legacy does indeed follow the inspiration of Tattered Cover and other legendary indies. But Dallas -- c'mon, Dallas, are we gonna let PLANO have a better bookstore? Geez. So allow me a brief moment of evangelicism: TC is pretty much everything a great bookstore should be -- filled with creaky wooden floors and shelves, with sections that are beautifully organized but in a "thinking outside the box" way that leads you to selections you never knew you desperately needed until ... there they were. The last thing I need in my house is more books, but somehow two TC shopping bags found their way home with me. On my first trip, midday on a Wednesday, the store was full of contented customers being helped by fabulously eccentric, incredibly book-smart employees. I've been in a local big-chain bookstore at that same time of day when I was the only custumer in sight. My favorite part of TC is the utter care taken in terms of helpfulness. All over the store, little handwritten signs answer the questions to apparently frequently-asked-questions. You might wonder, while perusing the journal section, "Where are the purse-sized address books?" A teensy sign points the way: "The itty-bitty address books are over on the checkout counter, near the bookmarks." Ahhh. Customer Service. It still exists; who knew? |
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