John Eklund, a field rep based in Milwaukee for three university presses (Harvard, MIT, Yale), recently wrote a wandering blog post that’s right up my alley. He begins by wondering where the Midwest technically (and spiritually) begins and ends; makes a stop in one of my favorite towns, Ithaca, and pauses for a mention of the great Collegetown Bagels; and ends with a consideration of Buffalo and the book culture there. Reading it made me want to visit smallish Northeastern (or Midwestern) towns, which I’m always sort of in the mood for anyway, and browse through a bunch of bookstores I’ve never seen.

Eklund share this moment from a dinner with the owners of Talking Leaves, a store in Buffalo:

Mention of a customer who had died recently reminded me of stories I’ve heard all over the place–the reliable art book customer, or Churchill customer, or hardcover fiction reader who first retired to Arizona but continued to faithfully order books, but then eventually, inevitably, left the scene. There’s fear that these serious book buyers which every store needs to survive are not being replaced in sufficient numbers.

(A sad ironic twist on a Milwaukee version of this story I’m familiar with: a bookaholic customer with great taste and deep pockets shopped the store daily for years. When she died, her daughter sold back her library, and now her cherished collection is back on the bookstore shelves, disaggregated and marked down, but at least with a shot at a second life.)

I’ve added his blog, Paper Over Board, to the Links page.