Fathers and Sons at Ohio Book Store

If you're ever within 100 miles of Cincinnati and are able to go, Ohio Book Store on the Queen City's Main Street is a must. One large building, five floors, approximately 350,000 (not a typo) books, and the nicest people you'll ever meet (more on them in a bit).

We had a small sense of what to expect before entering Friday, we had high hopes that we would walk out happy, and we were certainly not disappointed. Our first (very successful) stop was paperback fiction (which Deborah covers here), and after that, it was upstairs to the hardcover fiction.

A quick note about going upstairs: it was about 85 degrees in Cincinnati on Friday, and the floors above the main floor were where Ohio Book Store's AC didn't exist. We were headed to the third floor, so we were warned about what to expect. In short, it was pretty hot.

Deborah aptly likened what we found on the third floor to visiting the stacks in a university library. Just one giant, open floor with rows and rows of bookshelves stocked with books. The third floor wasn't only fiction, but it made up at least half of what we saw before us.

As we often do when we find large sections like this, we split up and each started from one end of the alphabet. I took Z, and as I worked my way backward, I collected:

• two Thornton Wilder works -- The Bridge of San Luis Rey (a personal favorite, and an edition published in the same year it won the Pulitzer Prize, 1928) and The Ides of March (on our to-read lists, this edition published in its original year of publication, 1948, as a "Book-of-the-Month Club" selection); 
• Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1921, the year after its original publication, and the year in which Lewis was initially awarded the Pulitzer, though the award was later given to Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence;
• A Modern Library edition of Six Modern American Plays. Eugene O'Neill's "The Emperor Jones"; Matthew Anderson's "Winterset"; George Kaufman and Moss Hart's "The Man Who Came To Dinner"; Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes"; Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie"; and Thomas Heggen and Joshua Logan's "Mister Roberts" comprised the collection published in 1951.

Our daughter wasn't really digging the heat on the third floor, so she and Deborah headed back downstairs, leaving me to finish the floor. Forty minutes later, I emerged with one more book, which ties in nicely to the experience we had at Ohio Book Store.

The work I added to our collection was Fathers and Sons  by Ivan Turgenev. True, it is a book we already own (and it's a book I am currently reading). But this was a slipcase, Heritage Press edition (published in 1942) of Turgenev's novel illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg, whom we have come to appreciate via the work he did on copies we have of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. So now that we are on the lookout for Eichenberg-illustrated editions, this was one we had to have.

Fathers and sons is also an extremely important theme at Ohio Book Store, as it is run by James Fallon and his two sons, Mike and Jim. We had an opportunity to talk quite a bit with James and Mike (we also met Jim at the end of the day when we helped close the place down), and the Fallons are incredibly nice and welcoming people who really seem to love what they do. And since we love what they do, we were honored to meet them and be in their book store, even if only for an hour or so.

We'll spend a good deal of time on Get a Spine talking about the present and future of used-book stores, and this was one visit that left us extremely upbeat about the future. The eldest Fallon has been in the book business since he was in middle school, when he first started working at Ohio Book Store, and he bought the business in 1971. His sons both work there, too, and in addition to being booksellers, they run the store's book-binding operation.

We're not sure if the Fallon brothers have families and children of their own, but we get the feeling that if they do, the Ohio Book Store is one used-book store that we can count on being around for as long as we are. And that feeling makes us very happy.

Books added: Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev; The Bridge of San Luis Rey and The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder; Main Street by Sinclair Lewis; Six Modern American Plays, intro by Allan G. Halline 

Publishers (in same order):  Heritage Press; Grosset & Dunlap; Harper & Brothers; Harcourt, Brace and Company; Random House, Modern Library

Years: 1942; 1928; 1948; 1921; 1951

Where obtained: Ohio Book Store, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Price: $30.50 for the five

Two Significant finds in Cincinnati

Next on our map after the first stop of the day on Thursday was a place called Significant Books. I mean, how do you not go to a book store with that name?

Also north and east of downtown Cincinnati, Significant Books was only noticeable because we saw one street-level white door with an "Open" sign and handwritten sign that said "All books 65% off." Enticing, but when a sale is that deep, you know it can't be for good reasons. Upstairs we went.

In our research, we had found some info that Significant Books was a nonfiction store only. And while not entirely true, it is probably at least 90% true. So our shopping was pretty quick -- but fruitful.

We added another Modern Library edition, this one Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley from 1941, for $1.75 after the discount, and then Deborah found Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, published in 1945, in the dollar box, which meant that one was a whopping $0.35.

A couple of interesting things about these two books. First, we are fairly certain that this copy of Brideshead Revisited is the a first U.S. edition copy, which we are very excited about, and on the "open market" it seems to be selling for hundreds of dollars. We'd never sell, because that's not why we buy, but we mention the selling price out there in the world only to say that for $0.35, that seems a bit crazy!

Second, neither of us have yet read Antic Hay or Brideshead Revisited, but in our quick research of Antic Hay, it turns out that Brideshead Revisited actually mentions Antic Hay! Quite a coincidence, and reason enough to read those two back to back someday.

Borrowed from Wikipedia, here is the mention in Brideshead:

"Picture me, my dear, alone and studious. I had just bought a rather forbidding book called Antic Hay, which I knew I must read before going to Garsington on Sunday, because everyone was bound to talk about it, and it's so banal saying you have not read the book of the moment, if you haven't."

Lastly, while checking out, we had the opportunity to meet Significant Books' co-owner, Carolyn Downing. Carolyn is a lovely woman in her late 60s, and in our conversation we learned the reason for the 65% sale... Significant Books is trying to close its doors for good, so everything must go.

After 30 or so years at their current location, and longer than that in the book business, Carolyn and her husband, Bill, are calling it a day due to a multitude of factors (health primary among them), meaning another great used-book store is nearing its end. We certainly wish Bill and Carolyn the best as they move on to some new adventures (likely sometime this summer or by fall), and even though it was only a brief visit and we might not have made it back ever again, we're saddened to know that one of the great stores will no longer be out there.

Good luck, Carolyn and Bill!

Books added: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh; Antic Hay by Aldous Huxley

Publishers (in same order):  Little Brown and Company; Random House, Modern Library

Years: 1945; 1941

Where obtained: Significant Books, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Price: $2.10 for both

Lions and tigers and ... books? Oh my...

After a lovely Thursday morning spent taking our 8 1/2-month-old to her first zoo -- the very well-done Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden -- it was time to find some books.

We arrived in Cincinnati prepared with a long list of book stores to check out, and since we were already in the car for the day, we figured we'd first hit the ones that were not central to the downtown area.

The first stop, Smith & Hannon Bookstore, was an ominous start. Located north and east of downtown Cincy, it's a small, three-story house with the book store on the ground floor. Smith & Hannon was open ... but locked when we arrived. After commiserating with the DHL delivery guy about this oddity, we then heard a voice from upstairs telling us to just knock on the door and someone would answer.

Not that same guy, though, right? The logic being that if he was the one to come down and open up, why would he tell us to knock first, rather than just coming down to open the door himself? You know, since he already knew we were there...

We knocked... and sure enough, there that same guy was to greet us. Sadly for the DHL delivery guy, our greeter wasn't able to sign for the package being delivered, but soon enough the owner of Smith & Hannon appeared, making the delivery guy happy, and giving me an opportunity to enter the store.

Now, in those few minutes of waiting outside, I could tell that this was not likely to be the kind of store we were going to have any luck in. It was very small, and the editions looked newer and mostly nonfiction.

Once inside, I found that to be the case. Much of the store's fiction was more current. The one bookcase that had older books on it had a handwritten sign on it that said "These books are not for sale." Oh well.

But the five minutes in the store weren't without value. I had an opportunity to speak with Smith & Hannon's owner, and our brief conversation was an example of a familiar and troubling topic we'll end up talking a lot about on Get a Spine, and that's the often-troubling present and questionable future of used-book stores. 

One of the motivations we had in starting this project was our love of used-book stores, and the desire to play some small part in not only getting the personal experiences of visiting them, but also doing what we can to A) promote the bookstores we visit, so others will visit them also, and B) promoting the broad idea that used-book stores are important cultural, social and intellectual institutions that need to exist in our society.

And we're motivated by those two final reasons exactly because of the kinds of things I was told at Smith & Hannon today, which is something we hear often. 

The owner was an older woman -- the age of used-book store owners will also be a common theme in this space -- and I asked her how long she'd been in business, and she said it had been about seven years. I asked her where she gets her stock, and she said it was a combination of her own collection, visiting library sales, and donations. I asked her how it was going, and her reply was, "Oh, it's not." 

There was a lot of sadness in her voice when she said this, and I can't say what she was most sad about. Maybe it was feeling sad about people and where books and book stores fit in society. Maybe it was sadness about a struggling business and the need to make ends meet and pay the bills. Maybe it was neither, or both, or more.

Whatever the case may be, even if Smith & Hannon wasn't the book store for us, we sincerely hope that it's still around if we ever pass through Cincinnati again. That would be a welcome sign to us.