GENIUS
Bright ideas, new perspectives
Book & mortar
A local bookstore works to keep Evanston’s literary community alive. BY TANNER HOWARD
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10 | northbynorthwestern.com
from the web for the sake of reading. Her store provides a space that promotes the value of deliberate, concentrated reading – something that has been challenged by the web’s emphasis on fast-paced information and resulting short attention spans. “We feel that the experience that you have when you unplug is a very intellectually important experience,” Barrett says. “It’s kind of like going to the gym and exercising when you lead a very sedentary experience.” Through their efforts, Barrett and her husband Jeff Garrett, who helps manage the store, have already started to revive a piece of Evanston’s literary past. Bookman’s Alley long served the community as an intimate, overstuffed bookstore, immortalized in Audrey Niffenegger’s bestseller The Time Traveler’s Wife. The store was well-known for its endless towers of used books, stacked precariously high. Its owner, Roger Carlson, was a lively figure who was always eager to discuss books. “We understood it was an institution, but we didn’t want to run an antiquarian bookstore,” Barrett says. “Without adopting [Carlson’s] business model, we wanted to preserve the sense of a quirky literary space and honor it in that way.” While Bookman’s Alley closed at Carlson’s retirement, Evanston has rapidly seen the damage of a changing marketplace
ILLUSTRATION BY ANDIE LINKER
ust off the beaten path of Sherman Avenue, tucked inconspicuously into an alleyway unseen to most passersby, lies Bookends and Beginnings. White footprints painted on the alley’s asphalt lead pedestrians to the bookshop’s door. Inside may be the last refuge for Evanston’s literary community. Bookends and Beginnings opened in 2014 in a building that once housed Bookman’s Alley, a store that played an enduring role in Evanston’s book-loving community for more than three decades. Bookends is a strikingly beautiful space; it is full of long, well-stocked wood shelves, and many paper tabs inviting shoppers to learn more about the owner’s favorite books. There is history in this place, a deep reverence towards the act of physical book buying that is in danger of disappearing from Evanston for good. To preserve this tradition, the store has heavily invested in its web presence, promoting itself primarily through its Facebook page and a monthly newsletter that reaches more than 4,500 people. In a competitive business climate that has seen a sharp turn towards online shopping, the stakes are simply too high for Bookends to ignore the internet’s power. At the same time, owner Nina Barrett hopes their digital efforts ensure that more people understand the value of unplugging
