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| Helpful 2020 display at Octavia Books in New Orleans. | |
Imagine there was a week--let's say mid-March, 2020--when states in the U.S. began implementing widespread precautions and even shutdowns (trying desperately to avoid the word "lockdowns") in order to prevent the spread of a mysterious new virus called Covid-19.
In a Shelf Awareness column published March 13 of that year, I wrote: "Ever tossed by the roiling seas of public information, misinformation and disinformation regarding Covid-19, independent booksellers are doing what they have always done best: communicate with customers in informed, constructive, helpful and sometimes even entertaining ways. Sanctuaries take many forms, including virtual, so here in my little corner of the plague I've been collecting some online words of wisdom from indies as they update friends and patrons."
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| Stockpiling at Janke Books in 2020. | |
Among those booksellers were Fiction Addiction, Greenville, S.C. ("So I know you all have been working on your quarantine kits because there was no soap or toilet paper anywhere in the store yesterday. Remember, you're going to need books too!"), Janke Book Store, Wausau, Wis. ("Two very important things to stockpile during coronavirus."), and Riverstone Books, Pittsburgh, Pa. ("We are regularly sanitizing surfaces and high-trafficked areas.").
Words and phrases suddenly came into terrifying common usage: quarantine, masking up, isolating, social distancing, handwashing, sanitizing. Some of them have gradually lost their ubiquity while others remain, shadows on the edge of diminished, but not quite vanquished, fears. At our house, we still have a basket of face masks and a Purell dispenser near the entrance, and I can't imagine a time when we won't.
It's history now, that week in March 2020, but it was a chilling present tense at the time. And even as history, it has a very, very long tail. Four years ago, neighborhood kids left messages of hope in chalk at the end of driveways here. Ours was "Stay Strong!" 
Deborah Langston remembers sitting on the floor of her bookstore, Beach Town Books in San Clemente, Calif., with her family and staff "reorganizing books in the dead of night while the doors remained closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic," Voice of OC reported.
"Almost every book came off the shelves and we evaluated every book. We cleaned every book, we stickered every book and, you know, we had many nights that we were there until three in the morning with just books on the floor finding a system. And so the rebuild was family," she said.
They used the shutdown as a time to reorganize their bookstore and establish more efficient processes, including color-coding different sections and cleaning books with essential oils. "If the store wasn't shut down, maybe we wouldn't have put those systems in place because we wouldn't have had a slow enough moment to properly evaluate and be really critical of how we do business," she added.
In many ways, we've moved on. Jacks Thomas, guest director of BolognaBooksPlus, told the Bookseller recently: "Post-pandemic, there certainly seems to be a place in people's calendars for book fairs, and I am delighted by the success of the major players over the past two post-pandemic years.... So yes, I think that at last we are getting to a pre-Covid climate. Book fairs remain an intriguing mix of relentless and serious trading, the serendipity of the chance meeting, the passion of a much-anticipated launch and the gratification of the big acquisition. What's not to like?"
And yet, two days ago my neighbor tested positive for Covid. TIME magazine just reported that the virus killed roughly 1,000 people in the U.S. during the week ending March 2, 2024, and "has left about 7% of U.S. adults with Long Covid--but despite its continuing toll, real-time data on infections are limited, most mask mandates are gone, and isolation guidance has been scaled back."
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| At Under the Umbrella Books | |
As I scan social media, I do occasionally notice booksellers wearing face masks (the Booksmiths Shoppe in Danbury, Conn; High Five Books in Florence, Mass., for example). And some bookstores still have active face mask policies, like Under the Umbrella in Salt Lake City, Utah, where many of their Instagram posts feature masked-up booksellers and customers.
Four years ago this week, as Covid shutdowns of varying intensity took hold nationwide, I wrote that I'd been thinking about one of my cave-dwelling ancestors, surveying the distant terrain beyond the entrance while making daily calculations: the family's survival depended upon how far he was willing to venture out on the open savannah, or into the forest, to hunt and gather. Stay in the cave too long and his family died of hunger. Venture too far out and he became prey. That he survived long enough to keep threads of my DNA going is a testament to his ability to strike a balance between refuge and prospect.
"With the microscopic predator Covid-19 on a worldwide hunt for us now, we all wake each morning and squat near our own cave entrances, calculating how much we're willing to risk to get through another day safely," I noted. "A bookshop traditionally provides the temporary refuge of a quiet and cozy space, while simultaneously offering limitless prospect within the pages of books on its shelves. Now the terrain has shifted dramatically. Indie booksellers, however, have always ventured a little farther from the cave in search of ways to survive... and to evolve. They will continue to sustain, and be sustained by, their extended families."
And so they have been.