There is one bastion of lollygagging that remains in certain pockets of the country, and it's one that has deep roots here in Western Massachusetts: Used bookstores.
Gabriel Books at 21 Market St in Northampton Veteran travelers will tell you there's a certain joy in taking the slow roads, the old roads, the byways, and even in getting lost.
But that sort of unhurried, meandering approach is becoming a lost art in today's impatient, rapid-fire culture. We want overnight delivery from one-click shopping, then we provide immediate feedback via various cyber sites. Fast food, quick links, instant karma. Even our searches are done by engines: In Google We Trust.
Yet, there is one bastion of lollygagging that remains in certain pockets of the country, and it's one that has deep roots here in Western Massachusetts: Used bookstores. Although bookstores in general are places where time seems to slow down, those that deal only in new titles sometimes still are populated with hurried shoppers who just want to find the latest bestseller and bustle along to other business. Not so with used bookstores. Enter the portals of one of the temples of tomes and you should expect to get lost in the reverie of idle browsing for a spell. And actually, a spell, in a way, is exactly what a used bookstore casts on many of its visitors.
"I'm thinking of coming up with a little award for people who browse for more than an hour," said John D. Riley, owner of Gabriel Books in Northampton. "Nothing fancy, just an acknowledgment that they browsed for over an hour."
Riley's store, nestled in the middle of a cluster of shops on Market Street, is not big, but is crammed with treasures, as well as miniature statues and busts of famous writers (Homer, Joyce) peering at you. Riley opened the store in 1993, after running several successful used book shops in California, then a few here, including Amherst's Globe Bookstore.
Riley says that while business is reasonably okay now, the glory days of used bookstores may have been in the early 1970s when he got his start. A serious recession coupled with cheap rents then made people start stores using their own book collections as the seeds for the business.
Recently however he said the Internet "put a whammy on everything," but also allowed used bookstores to start selling online themselves. He also believes that real books have an advantage over e-books in several ways, which has helped drive people back to bookstores somewhat.
"I wouldn't call it a resurgence," he said. "But maybe there's a bright spot in the future for real books. People are on their computers all day and the last thing many of them want to do is go read a book on their computer or Kindle or whatever. They want something real."
Riley added that he feels fortunate to be in the Pioneer Valley where used bookstores populate many municipalities up-and-down along the Connecticut River.
"The valley is one of the few places in the country where you'll find this many used bookstores," he said. "We're slightly rural but there's still a lot of cultured and educated people here because of the colleges. And we got a lot of tourism here in Northampton."
Across town, Raven Used Books and The Old Book Store are two more examples of venues that have succeeded in this secondhand bibliomaniac business.
Like Gabriel Books, the Raven is also celebrating its 20th anniversary. Manager Kristepher Severy agrees with Riley about why used bookstores do well in the area.
"The area is very bookish," he said. "The five colleges certainly help. We also sell things here at very reasonable prices, so we do well with almost every category. "
In a twist on the old model, where a bookstore dealing in new products may have added a few used titles to boost sales, the Raven has added some new paperback backlist titles that they can't keep in stock in used form. Most of these are classic titles such as works by James Joyce, Kurt Vonnegut, or the Brontë sisters. More recently, of course F Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" sold well because of the release of a new film version of the book.
With between 35,000 and 40,000 books stuffing the shelves at the Raven, Severy said it takes a knowledgeable staff to help customers.
"There's too much inventory and too much turnover of it to do a computer list inventory," he said. "It would just be too costly as far as time and money. So we rely on a really knowledgeable staff."
The Old Book Store is probably the most properly named of all the stores in the valley. Opened in 1958 by Carl and Bliss Walz, the "old" in the name used to refer to the books they sold, but now also can apply to the business itself.
The Walz's son Henry now runs the place and has for about three decades.
While Walz said business is "okay," he added the book business is "marginal at the best of times."
"I used to have a joke that is now more true than I care to admit," he said. "I'd say that a wife with a good job makes owning a used bookstore possible."
Walz carries about 15,000 books and says half the books he sells move in the first two weeks he gets them.
"But every so often I sell book that my dad priced years ago," he said. "I look to see the price and it's written in his handwriting."
For Walz, as much as he loves books, it's the interaction with his clientele that he enjoys most.
"The best thing is the people who come through the door," he said. "Books are wonderful and I love to read, but the people are what I really love."
Springfield used to have a landmark used bookstore in Johnson's. Johnson's Bookstore carried new books as well, but had a huge back section filled with a smorgasbord of used books. Sadly, it closed in 1998 after more than a century in business.
Now, the only used bookstore in Springfield is Red Brick Books. Owned and operated by Marcia Fuller, whose grandmother once worked at Johnson's, the store opened in 1981.
Fuller said her love of reading pushed her into the business.
"I always liked to read and when I got laid off from my job, I came up with this idea and went with it," she said.
Fuller has noticed a slight decline in business due to the growing popularity of e-books, but feels cautiously optimistic about the future.
"A lot of diehard readers will always want real books," she said.
Heading north, the Montague Bookmill has been attracting book lovers for 26 years. Susan Shilliday took over the store six years ago and said business has increased slightly during her tenure, but not remarkably so.
"We are sort of a destination," she said. "People come to go to the cafe and hang out and they also buy books. We are kind of lucky in that way."
What made Shilliday–screenwriter of works such as "Legends of the Fall" and "A Wrinkle in Time"–get into the used book game so recently, when the entire publishing industry is on tenterhooks?
"The Bookmill itself," she said. "I had no intention of ever getting into this business, but I fell in love with the place."