Ann Witmer

PUBLISHED IN: Asbury Park Press; Bridgewater Courier News; Central PA Magazine; East Brunswick Home News Tribune; Harrisburg Patriot News; Hummelstown Sun; Marco Polo Magazine; Morristown Daily Record; Northern Virginia Magazine; Raleigh News and Observer; Small Market Meetings; Toronto Star (Canada).

SPECIALTIES: Active travel for average people, culture and heritage, literary travel, mid-Atlantic region, Baltimore, cycling, nature, destinations and offbeat angles.

AWARDS: SATW (Atlantic-Caribbean Photo/Writing) 2006

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CHARLOTTESVILLE DOES IT BY THE BOOK

by Ann Witmer, Toronto Star

Charlottesville, Virginia, is a city that loves books. Rife with bookstores and the home-of-choice to dozens of writers, even the recycling center has bookshelves.

Charlottesville's ardor peaks each March when the city hosts the weeklong Virginia Festival of the Book, cramming panelists, authors and readers into every nook and cranny.

What's with this place that defies a two-decade decline in literary reading by Americans…and claims that its residents buy more books per capita than anywhere else in the country?

Downtown Charlottesville, a city of 40,000, sits astride an eight-block-long pedestrian mall with an ice-skating rink at one end and a children's Discovery Museum at the other. It is flanked by Monticello three miles to the east and the University of Virginia (UVA) 1.5 miles to the west.

The university attracts residents who are affluent and well educated…and Monticello sets a good example. Charlottesville's favorite son, Thomas Jefferson, owned 9000 books when he lived there, claiming he "couldn't live without them."

But an eclectic mix of more than 30 book-crazed entrepreneurs who do business here also sets a literate tone.

Exploring their independent bookstores, and sampling some of the area's 267 restaurants and coffee shops, made for a fulfilling visit recently.

"Pedestrian malls don't usually do well," said Carol Troxell who has owned the New Dominion Bookshop, Virginia's oldest independent bookstore, for 16 years.

"Before the mall was here, Charlottesville had a core of creative artists who wanted to be downtown. They still have that commitment.

"Troxell sells only new books in her splendid store but also displays local art and offers extras like Irish tin whistle lessons. It is organized for efficient browsing with special troves of sea stories, children's books…and books about writing.

Still, she struggles.

"Small retail businesses are hurting. Everything favors the chains and volume sales," she said in a grudging nod to a Barnes and Noble store nearby.

Scott Fennessey, who sells mostly rare books and art-quality maps at his elegant, dark-wood-and-leather-couched Blue Whale Books, said chain stores help used book sellers.

"After Barnes and Noble opened, the number of used books skyrocketed. They were cheap, too.

"Fennessey, an expert in French cathedrals, got started in the book business in 1994 when, as a UVA graduate student, he made a low-ball offer on a Richmond bookstore and got lucky.

"Overnight I owned 34,000 books and I was in grad school. So I moved everything here," to a town he finds cultural, liberal and tolerant.

Sandy McAdams, who owns the Daedalus Bookshop in an old building just off the mall, is the dean of Charlottesville's booksellers.

"People seek me out because I'm weird," he offers, snacking on an Entenmann's cake behind his desk in the midst of what looks like -- but isn't -- book chaos.

"I have three floors and 100,000 books and I'm well organized by topic," he said handing me a little white map I used to "Explore the Labyrinth." I found sections on everything from polar exploration and bullfighting to royalty and esoteric philosophies.

McAdams is a book magnet; cartons materialize on his doorstep.

"I buy some, take some and discard some," he said, motioning to recent corrugated arrivals that clog the front of his store. Some discards go onto a Free Table outside, the rest go to charities.

Chris Oakley, owner of Oakley's Gently Used Books, was setting up for a Not So Gently Used Booksale when I arrived.

Because her store is small, Oakley is choosy, especially when it comes to science fiction, her passion.

"Small bookstores will survive because people need to explore and discover new things," she said, pointing to a prominently displayed book about snakes. "Right now there is great interest in philosophy and the spiritual…and religious books of all kinds

." Intrigued, I stopped at the Quest Bookshop whose niche is human and spiritual growth. Owner Kay Allison was just leaving -- she had to drive Mary Duty, a Cherokee psychic who does readings every Wednesday, home -- but would be back.

While I waited, people kept stopping and carting away books from boxes stacked outside the store.

For 15 years Allison has given 20,000 books a year to nursing homes, churches and prisons.

"There but for the grace of God go I," she said when I asked why. "Can you imagine being in a cage without books?

"But chain bookstores and the Internet are taking their toll, she said. "Many stores like mine are closing."

"Online is where it's at," Andy Gutterman counters.

His small bookstore, Avocado Pit, houses his real business, developing BookTrakker software to help booksellers manage their businesses.

"Online lets booksellers market books they can't sell in the store. The Internet has put some people out of business but it has let others keep their stores, providing a secondary business," he said.

Quick moving, funny and intense, Andy can't keep his hands off books. Each morning he stops at the McIntire Road Recycling Center where people help themselves to discarded books, hoping to be as lucky as Andy once was.

"I found this ratty-looking copy of James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man on the shelf one day. It was signed -- James Joyce, Paris, 1927."

Gutterman sold the book for $4000 to someone who knew that Joyce hadn't autographed many books. It was later resold for $9500.

Recycling also pays off for Dave Taylor, owner of Read It Again, Sam, where you can trade in two books for one.

The store is famous for its wall of mysteries.

"People come in and remember only a character or the setting in a mystery novel," he said. "Chances are that one of us will know what book they're talking about.

"They know their stock. Dave's partner, Gene Ford, reads eight or nine books a week and Dave reads four. They also know many popular mystery writers personally, including John Grisham who lives nearby.

"But Charlottesville doesn't impose on its writers," Taylor said. "They can walk down the street and people leave them alone."

Many well-known writers live here including Rita Mae Brown, Jan Karon, David Baldacci and Rita Dove. Another lives here in spirit.

Edgar Allen Poe was a student at the University of Virginia for one year before gambling debts forced him to withdraw. His room in the West Range (#13) will be guarded -- evermore -- by a scruffy raven you can see through the glass door.

Near the university, but independent of it (the university's official bookstore sits atop the public parking garage), is Heartwood Books, beloved by faculty and graduate students. It sells serious books, tending to classics and standards.

"Faulkner sells five times better here than Grisham does," said owner Paul Collinge who helped launch the book festival 11 years ago.

Collinge is particularly interested in very old books (which he keeps under lock and key in another building) and publisher overstocks.

"I sometimes wonder what Henry James would think if he walked into my store. Would he look at a book of his on the table and think how marvelous it is that people are still buying it after 100 years? Or would he be appalled that it was selling for $4.

"Lean and casual with a silver ponytail, Collinge also wonders about the future.

"Everyone in Charlottesville has been in the book business for 20 years or more," he said. "We're all ready to retire. Then what?"

Despite some young'uns like Bill Baldwin whose gravity lounge offers an appealing mix of books, iMacs and music every night, most of Charlottesville's venerable booksellers are veterans with battle scars inflicted by their mercurial business.

They make Charlottesville a booklover's paradise. But go soon. Nothing lasts forever.