Lighthouse Books

If you’re reading this blog, the chances are pretty good that you’re reading lots of other blogs, and if you’re doing that, the chances are even better that you’re a Reader (upper case “R” in case you missed it) and you read real books, too, and reading books has been an important part of your life since childhood. I’m a reader, too. Thousands of hours lying on the floor reading in all kinds of bad light, far too closely, and at an extremely bad angle, left me myopic and overweight, but it also left me with a passion for reading and books and the world that can be created between our ears that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

The main character of John Dunning’s Cliff Janeway “Bookman” novels is a former cop turned bookseller/appraiser who, in one of the novels, classifies folks—such as you and I—who have book collections. Cliff Janeway says one of the types are those who collect books just to posses them as a compulsion without regard to their individual significance (almost any books on the shelf would do as long as there were many of them).

If you’ve never read any of the “Bookman” series, you’ve a treat awaiting you. These are mystery novels a cut above most. Publishers Weekly calls them “compulsively readable.” That’s the truth. I suggest buying them all at the same time, because you’ll want to pick up the next one in the series to read, immediately upon finishing the first one.

You and I are definitely not in Cliff Janeway’s indiscriminate collector category. I’m sure you’re like me in which each book in your or my collection has a significance of its own and has not only been read once, but probably many times. That significance can vary, of course. Sometimes it’s the information in the book. Sometimes it’s its commercial value (such as a rare, signed first edition). Sometimes its power to move us (fiction or non-fiction that speaks to our heart). And sometimes it’s nostalgia.

I don’t have many nostalgia books, but I have a few. The story of my discovering the pleasure of owning a book for nostalgia’s sake began while recently living part of a year in New Orleans. Around the corner from the place in the French Quarter where I was staying was a tiny bookshop on a back street, Kaboom Books. As bookworms will do, I wandered around looking at titles, just enjoying myself, with no purpose other than simple exploration.

I came upon two old editions of Horatio Alger novels. Not being particularly valuable editions, they were cheap enough I felt I could indulge myself and buy some books that had shaped my father’s generation. I had heard about them but never read them, so my motivation was probably more curiosity than nostalgia.

Now, old books—and I mean really old books—have been a part of our family’s life for generations since my father, sister, both paternal and maternal grandfathers, and possibly even a few more beyond that were Methodist ministers who all had extensive libraries in their homes which included frighteningly old Bibles and, my favorites, ancient hymnals. So, old books are a comfort “food” for me. But buying the Alger novels kind of sparked a new slant on the meaning for me of old books. I began to see, now that I’m an old “book” myself, how my own life arch intersected old books I discovered.

The next solid step on this path of personal archeology came at a charity silent auction where I bid on two books I remember reading in grade school. I actually remember sitting in the little southern Illinois town’s public library reading them. I remember even the quality of the light from the windows above me while reading, the dust motes in the air, the tactile quality of the wooden chair, the pre-air conditioning air. I was particularly fond of the Indian book and would fantasize for hours about being in the woods with my bow and arrow and loin-cloth. Fortunately, I won the bid at the auction and have been able to read the books again.

(An aside: I think the folks who write fiction and non-fiction for kids deserve a lot more thanks and appreciation than they probably get. They’re the ones who shape generations of readers. Without any Doctor Dolittle, Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, or Nancy Drew, chances are there wouldn’t even be anyone primed to read War and Peace.)

Which brings us to the book pictured at the top of this post: Dave Dawson with the Air Corps from the Dave Dawson War Adventure Series. Now, one of the facts of life about being in the family of a rural minister was that you were also poor. You lived in a house provided by the church, called a parsonage, and it wasn’t considered seemly (or necessary) to give the preacher much of a salary. Sometimes, they just gave you leftover foodstuff. Or whatever else it was they wanted to get rid of. So it was that I wound up owning all dozen or so of the Dave Dawson books that were published during WWII. Although they were published a couple years before I was born and I was reading them 10 years after the war, I loved these books. I think it’s because of them that, today, I enjoy suspense and adventure fiction so much.

This past year, the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair was at the Coliseum here in St. Pete. (The next one is March 13, 2009, and you can be sure I’ll be there, camera in hand.) As I wandered up and down the aisles of the 2008 book fair, I happened upon the stall of Lighthouse Books, ABAA – owned by Michael & Cathie Slicker (1735 First Avenue North, St. Petersburg, FL 33713; 727-822-3278; LighthouseBooksABAA@verizon.net). About twenty years ago, I had been in their tiny St. Pete store but had not been back since. So, my curiosity was aroused. I stepped into their book fair stall and discovered one of the reading passions of my youth: Dave Dawson (pictured at top of article). I bought it. Beside the joy of owning it, I found it also prompted me to re-explore Lighthouse Books itself.

I’ve always measured the culture of a town in the ratio of taxidermy
shops to independent bookstores. In this regard, St. Petersburg fairs pretty well. I’ve covered two other St. Pete bookstores that I haunt, Wilson’s Bookworld and Haslam’s Book Store. Lighthouse Books is right up there with them in my personal pantheon of local independent bookstores.

Their copy says they have ” Floridiana, Americana, Caribbean/Latin American History, Southern Literature, Maps, and General Antiquarian books.” That, for sure, and much more. Every wall in this tiny, one or two bedroom cottage where they have been located since 1984 (before that it was farther downtown) has a floor to ceiling bookcase. In front of each bookcase there are books stacked several bookshelves high. You literally have to turn sideways to wiggle through the warrens of Lighthouse Books. Nothing’s haphazard. Everything is quite organized, but there are more books in one space than you might think possible.

There was half of one whole wall devoted to the Civil Way that my Mississippi Cuzn Don would have loved. Another cranny was dedicated to genealogical books among which I noted several for research into the, I’m sure, frustratingly tangled roots of African-American ancestry. And…an entire room of antiquarian children’s literature!

They were all there. Dave Dawson. I treated myself to a $3 one and a $6 one. I’m hooked, aren’t I.

Lighthouse Books is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10.00 am – 5.00 pm.