Pack up your reading glasses! Bookstore tourism is here.

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A bookstore drenched in history

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Browsers who lose themselves in bookstores are now taking a quantum leap forward. Bibliophiles now clamber aboard tour buses for guided excursions to the best independent bookstores for miles around.

"Booklovers don't just love books, they love the places that sell them," wrote Larry Portzline in American Libraries. His May 2007 article, "Bookstore Tourism Takes Off," told of the origins of the new "national grassroots movement": a one-day bus trip to New York City from the author's college in 2003, to leaf through the beckoning tomes of Greenwich Village's 20-odd bookstores.

Three years later, Portzline was in a position to host a bookstore tourism panel at BookExpo America in Washington, D.C. The president of the Southern California Booksellers Association, Terry Gilliam, spoke of successful and frequent "I Feel the Need to Read" bookstore tours to Los Angeles and San Diego. "There really are people who will pay you money to drive them from bookstore to bookstore,"  said Gilliam -- not to mention wine tasting, food events and author programs included in the tours.

Nancy Rips, an advocate of the Omaha Library System, shared her own success story at the exposition. Each year, Rips leads fellow Nebraskans on book safaris in Manhattan, trekking through indie bookstores and the New York Public Library, resting their rucksacks at a New York Times author brunch. Rips has also lead walking tours of the literary landmarks of Greenwich Village, where Allen Ginzberg's howls still echo in the alleyways.

Larry Portzline has big plans for 2007:

"This year I plan to create the National Council of Bookstore Tourism (NCBT), a trade association and nonprofit organization that will promote indie book stores as a group travel niche. It will also support cultural and heritage tourism efforts, boost reading and literary programs, and encourage economic development and downtown revitalization. It will accomplish these goals by partnering -- at the national, state and local levels -- with booksellers, libraries, schools, colleges, reading groups, the travel industry, independent business alliances, and government agencies." [1]

True to his word, Portzline had his website (http://www.bookstoretourism.com/) up and running on August 31.

Many nameless bookworms have tread this path before. This writer, for example, browsed every bookstore in central Bucharest, Romania during a visit in 1997. I also spent the greater part of a Saturday at that city's huge weekend bazaar of bookstalls that stretched for blocks in the midst of that city.

Browsing Romanian bookstores had deep cultural significance in 1997. Not only had the press been freed of the Ceausescu regime's censorship and pseudo-science, books were undergoing a major spelling change.

Before dictator Nicolae Ceausescu came to power, the Romanian language had two letters to represent a single sound. These were â and î, and which one you used depended on the origin of the word. Ceausescu  decreed that the language should be simplified and did away with the â, except in words like România and român, which expressed the country's Latin roots.

Soon after Ceausescu and his detested wife were executed in 1989, many publishers restored the old spelling. Others were more reluctant and stood by the î orthography.

In 1997, the dichotomy was still in place. My own brief formal instruction in Romanian had taken place in 1975, with one course taught by a Transylvanian graduate assistant. My teacher, Ion, was outspoken in his criticism of the Communist regime. So, hopes faded for an intermediate Romanian course when Ion failed to return to the USA after a trip home to Cluj.

Once in Bucharest, I realized that I spelled Romanian like a Ceausescu apparatchik. The restored â spelling was easy to read and kinder to the eyes, but it was trickier to write. One evening, to my delight, I caught a debate on the spelling issue while watching Romanian television in my hotel room.

My accommodations, by the way, were in the Hotel Capitol -- a big literary hangout in the early 20th century.

So, I say to bookstore tourists, wherever you are: Bun drum (Bon voyage), amici miei, bun drum!

Source Citation:

[1] Portzman, Larry. "Bookstore Tourism Takes Off: Grassroots Effort Benefits Independent Bookstores, Libraries and Bibliophiles." American Libraries, Vol. 38, No. 5, May 2007; pp. 50-53.