A Midsummer’s Dream: The Finale

Hurricane Ike claimed yet another innocent victim. Midsummer Books, in Galveston’s historical Strand district, drowned in eight feet of mucky brine that destroyed its eclectic collection of literature and homey interior. 

For years Galveston’s only new bookseller, Midsummer Books provided a literary mecca for Isle readers, tourists, academics and otherwise freethinkers. Unlike those corporate megastores that peddle everything from Kafka to coffee to CDs to comics to cosmetics, Midsummer Books carried — and displayed prominently –the latest fiction and fact from both people of letters and promising scribes.

Its shelves featured the top picks of the inspired Book Sense Indie Booksellers, not the “esteemed” New York Times Book Review, which too often hucks tripe from such literary gnomes as James Patterson, Danielle Steele, and Joel Osteen.  

Not that either Midsummer Books or its Galveston Isle home teemed with liberal agenda — this remains Texas, after all. But Midsummer Books never followed the popular but the profound. Camus not Coulter. Its shelves offered books on a wide variety of subjects including history, science, biography, architecture, philosophy, literature, natural history and Texas lore that I missed in Borders or B&N, simply because of the sheer volume of mass pulp that those stories purveyed. Midsummer Books shucked fluff to expose literary fruits. Sure, the store carried entertaining books, but those with droll sensibilities such as the best dog cartoons from The New Yorker, graphic novels (not comic books) and a lovely children’s collection.

Midsummer Books felt — and smelled — as a bookstore should. Walk in and you whiffed vellum anticipation mixed with the mustiness of Galveston humidity. The display shelves and tables were dark wood. Comfortable mismatched chairs and rugs over the hardwood floors invited browsing. And the orange bookstore cat snoozed comfortably near the poetry section (I do hope the kitty escaped safely).

Whenever another independent bookstore dies, America loses an irreplaceable aesthetic soul which every author, artist, academic. antiquarian, avid reader and citizen must mourn. Independent bookstores, no matter what their specialty, remain as vital to freedom of speech in this nation as the First Amendment — and as in the case of Denver’s eminent Tattered Cover often are called upon to defend it. 

These usually mom-and-pop booksellers wage the David-Goliath fight daily for independence of thought, creation, words, and views as well as for financial survival. Hometown newspapers no longer reflect local points of view, but rather the editorial and financial considerations of distant corporate conglomerates. Local TV and radio outlets focus on ad revenue for corporate owners which leads to sensational and nonsensical (and frequently politically extreme) news and public affairs programming. 

Instead, local independent booksellers, detached from the editorial flaccidity of corporate boardrooms, keep the dialogue and debate of current events alive. With profit margins teetering toward nonexistence, the indie book store becomes the true American commons of debate, discourse, democracy and dissent.

I last visited Galveston Island two days before Hurricane Ike hit. I normally enjoy lunch at my favorite restaurant Gaido’s, walk the seawall or beach, and finally settle down to browsing at Midsummer Books. That day I ran late, scratching the walk and the bookstore off my list. Since I planned to return to the Isle just two weeks later, I’d stop by Midsummer Books then, I promised.

But independent bookstores often die from reasons much less violent than hurricanes but frequently just as suddenly. For those of us who love them, the loss remains as traumatic. I missed Midsummer Books that day and now will forever. 

Please visit your local independent bookseller today. The literacy (and liberty) you save, may be your own!

 

Independent Bookseller Resources Links:

• American Booksellers Association
• IndieBound
• Tattered Cover – Denver, Co.

 

Local Houston Independent Bookstore Links:

• Brazos Bookstore 
• Blue Willow Bookshop
• Murder By The Book
• River Oaks Bookstore
• Shrine of the Black Madonna Cultural Center and Bookstore
• Light of Islam Bookstore

 

PLEASE NOTE: I did not include bookstores that sell used books. If you know of other Houston-area or national independent bookstore links, please add them in the comment sections.  Thanks!!