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Even Hercule Poirot might be stumped by the death of Normal Heights’ most fabled book store. Like an Agatha Christie mystery, there’s no shortage of suspects.
Was the culprit Amazon?
Fading interest in the printed word?
Or was the Adams Avenue Book Store’s fate sealed by the disappearance of a shadowy figure, the book scout?
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“Assigning blame is a tough game,” said Brian Lucas, 70, the store’s owner, citing rising costs and falling revenues. “It’s not lining up any more.”
Who killed Adams Avenue’s iconic book store? One suspect: the vanishing book scout
From coast to coast, established vendors of used collectible volumes have died. The casualties included some prominent names: Gotham Book Mart in Manhattan, Dutton’s in Los Angeles, Shakespeare & Co. in Berkeley. Downtown San Diego once boasted seven or eight shops, led by Wahrenbrock’s Book House on Broadway. Today, they’re all gone.
The post-COVID world this week: India s storm, a hike in post-pandemic carbon emissions, and the challenge that lies ahead for local bookstores
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When it comes to book sales, the COVID-19 pandemic has been both a blessing and a curse.
Authors and publishers rejoiced at the fact that book sales were up in 2020 by 6 percent, according to NPD Bookscan, but independent booksellers and neighborhood bookshops saw their sales dip according to the American Booksellers Association. Some stores even reported sales down 40 percent compared to 2019 numbers.
So while it seemed like the pandemic drove people to buy more books, most of those books were purchased online at sites such as Amazon and Walmart. Many independent bookstores did their best to stay competitive despite having to close their doors to in-store browsing. Some made it easier to purchase books online while others offered same-day, curbside pick-up or even hand-delivery options. But without customers allowed to browse and, to a lesser degree, having in-store appearances from authors promoting new books, independent bookstores have struggled to adjust to the pandemic
For writer Kazim Ali, writing has always been personal.
As the author of over a dozen books including seven books of poetry, five novels and five essay collections he’s often had to mine the deepest depths of his psyche for a profound sentence or a heartfelt stanza. Not to mention his day job is as a literature and writing professor at the University of California San Diego.
But when asked where “Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water” ranks in comparison to his other projects, he doesn’t hesitate to remark that the recently published book was his most ambitious project and one that left him feeling deeply changed.