BookStacks
BookStacks was born in 1997. You’re an independent bookstore that boasts more than 5,000 new titles, more than 1,000 periodicals, and—as if that weren’t enough—even sell wine and serve “pretty good coffee.” Have you become a hub for your community north of the Penobscot River?
The numbers have changed since the last time I mentioned them to… somebody. We have 8,208 tiles on hand now and probably 750 periodicals. Not sure I could get away with calling BookStacks the hub of Bucksport because reading is such a niche market, and little independents like me account for something like 3% of that market, the same share as grocery stores and pharmacies.
Your owner, Andrew Lacher, moved to Maine in the early 1980s after reading Helen and Scott Nearing’s The Good Life and Louise Dickinson Rich’s We Took to the Woods. After three decades of living in Maine, what books have become Andy’s favorite about the state?
I don’t have a favorite Maine title, maybe Chris Van Dusen’s Circus Ship. A Pocket Full of Names, by Joe Coomer, was pretty good.
Does it bother you when people take a book off your shelf and then put it somewhere else? How does it feel to have so many strangers moving parts of you around all day?
I love it when strangers come in to see the store for the first time. Any bookseller will tell you how irksome it is to go to get a book for somebody and it’s not where it belongs, but that’s baseball. I’ve got the best job on earth.
