On Saturday, Adams Avenue Bookstore, an excellent used bookstore stocked with knowledgeable staffers and a pair of roaming cats, closed its doors for the last time after serving the Normal Heights neighborhood for 53 years. (I visited a week earlier when everything was 75 percent off, and I picked up a signed Philip Roth book for $8, among other gems.) It follows the closure of similar bookish haunts such as Wahrenbrock’s Book House downtown (a space that remains vacant after many years) and Fifth Avenue Books in Hillcrest.
And yet there are green shoots of a bricks-and-mortar literary revival: The Book Catapult in the former West Grove Collective space in South Park, the quirky Verbatim Books in North Park, and La Playa Books in Point Loma. Such places are typically much more willing to champion local authors’ books and host readings and other events than larger stores and certainly chains like Barnes & Noble. As such, they can evolve into important community centers and marketplaces for ideas. Perhaps the future of bookselling is in these small shops that take the time to understand the tastes of the neighborhoods they serve.