How many novels have you read or movies have you seen wherein there is a scene set in a strange little café or bookstore?  There are narrow aisles filled with treasures of all sorts, or, if it is a café, there are little tables and people are harboring intrigue or hatching plots in hushed tones.

Harry Potter wanders the odd and magical shops of Diagon Alley.  Sherlock Holmes’ pipe smoke wafts through the foggy night air in front of a little café on a nameless street somewhere in London.  Cliff Janeway scouts for priceless books in an out-of-the way bookstore in a little town in Colorado and-gasp! - finds murder instead. Humphrey Bogart looks at Ingrid Bergman through his cigarette smoke in his gin joint.

There is just something about places like that. It is why bookstores have added coffee shops to their buildings.  Alas, the problem is that most bookstores are new, and the coffee shops are new and glitzy, and filled with new and glitzy people playing with their new and glitzy computers.

Humphrey Bogart or Harry Potter or Miss Marple might dash in to pick up a newspaper, but none of them would stay long.  How can one possibly hatch a plot or harbour intrigue (I spelled “harbor” that way for you, Sherlock) in a place like that?  I do love the big modern bookstores, and often sit and drink a cup of high-priced coffee while browsing through a book I just want to read but don’t want to buy but end up buying anyway, because I love books.  I just never hatch a plot or harbor intrigue in one of those places.

But, right here in Albion, Michigan there is a great place to hatch, harbor and harbour, as well as to just have a great time. It is called Books and More and has a neat looking red neon coffee cup hanging out over the sidewalk, just like in the old days when shoe repair places had giant shoes and eye doctors had big spectacles hanging over the sidewalk.  www.forks.org/booksandmore

Anyway, it is this great place in an old downtown building with high ceilings.  It is a bookstore that also sells other stuff.  Old fashioned toys, for example, like balsa wood gliders and Chinese finger puzzles and fake bugs that can be used to scare your cousin Diane.

The books in the front end are new and in the back end are used. There is jelly made in Michigan and life-sized carvings of dogs and photos taken by a masseuse who lives in town and jewelry made by a woman who likes to dance frenetically with her husband. Dorothy, the owner, is a delight to talk with, and makes everyone feel at home. Customers talk to each other as they wander the narrow aisles.

“Have you read this one?”  “No, but I read one of her earlier books and like it a lot.  I saw a copy of it back there in the used section, under that Golden Retriever statue.” “Thanks!  Hey, here’s one I think you’d like….”  And so on.

All the way in the back of the store is another treasure.  There one will find a coffee shop (Real Coffee, it is called.) with REALLY, REALLY good coffee and all those frou-frou things that real men don’t drink, but if you go in there, be sure to try the peppermint mocha thingy that the barista, Rick, serves up, because it is just amazing----well, er, so I’ve heard, anyway.  A bunch of stools and old comfortable chairs are clustered around a wood burning stove, and there’s a computer there so you can look stuff up to answer the questions that come up during the conversations you’ll get dropped into because as soon as you sit down you are part of the group.

But, mostly, you’ll just spend your time there harbouring intrigue and hatching plots because that is what one is supposed to do in just such a place..

                               © by Jim Whitehouse

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