Bookstores

I decided that my comment on The Bookmark was so inadequate that I wanted to write a separate post about bookstores here in Chiriquí–more accurately, those I know about.

I’ll stand by my statement that there is no really good English language bookstore in Chiriquí (that I know of).  To me, a really good bookstore has something for everyone.  I knew many really good, independent bookstores in western Washington; the two closest to me were The Moonraker in Langley, which is where I spent all my new book money, and a used book store in Anacortes whose name, for the life of me, I now can not remember.

The Moonraker was one of the best small bookstores I have ever known.  Its owners, Josh and Earle had high-quality stock that catered to almost every taste.  I don’t think they had many of the standard Christian books, but plenty of spirituality of all kinds.  They had classics, a small although solid nonfiction section, mysteries, sci fi and fantasy, you name it.   Of course, they had been open for 30 years or more by the time we left, and they knew their clientele.  I also could get any book I wanted from them, and I ordered plenty as well as bought plenty from their stock.

The used book store in Anacortes was second only to Powell’s in Portland, OR in my experience.  It was large and had EVERYTHING.  Kevin, the man who owned it was a true bibliophile.  Any time we were up that way, we would stop in, talk with Kevin, and usually buy books.  But it wasn’t necessary to buy a book–kevin would talk books at the drop of a hat.  We considered it part of our relaxation time to visit Kevin and spend an hour or so talking books; he would show us treasures that he had, recently purchased books, and talk about them as if they were beloved members of his family–which, of course, they were.  It was where we sold most of our library when we moved to Panamá.

So these are my standards when I talk about a really good bookstore.  I never ordered a book from Amazon the whole time we lived there.  I didn’t have to.  

None of the bookstores I know of in Chiriquí fit that standard.

Hal, who owns the Bookmark, is one of a vanishing breed.  He was an early immigrant, and has had the Bookmark for many years.  His stock reflects that.  So does his personality which can be best described as that of a curmudgeon, a rare and high compliment from me–the world would be far more interesting a place with less homogenous blandness and more honest curmudgeons.  Don Ray has real potential but so far it’s just potential.  :-)

Hal has a respectable clientele, because he has an excellent stock of what I would call “light reading”–mysteries, thrillers, sci fi, fantasy–probably romances as well, although since I loathe the genre, I haven’t noticed.  He does have some good gardening books and occasionally gets in THE birding book, the classic in the field, Birds of Panama edited by Robert Ridgely and John A. Gwynne, Jr.  Every time we’re there, I scour the mystery/police procedural/thriller section and Mary scours the gardening section.  I can usually find one or two books that interest me, Mary rarely.  Since her interests are not exactly gardening but far more towards the botany line, it’s understandable.  Most of what she’s interested in are highly specialized books.

Mary says that Hal has a lot of romance books, and that he’s stopped buying  that genre because he has a hard time selling them–he has a real glut.  He does try to get rid of them during his sales.  So, if you like that genre, head to the Bookmark.

However, when we first came here, even the mystery sections weren’t that good.  We introduced him–avid mystery fans that we are–to a number of modern authors he’d never even heard of.  To his credit, he started bringing in a more diversified line of that type of book.  As more people have come here, that section–clearly as popular with immigrants as it is in the US, anyway–has expanded and includes most of the popular authors in that genre–Michael Connelly, Ian Rankin, Tom Clancy, Daniel Silva, Donna Leon, Janet Ivanovich, Sue Grafton and others.  Naturally, given the nature of a used bookstore, the stock will vary from visit to visit, but it’s respectable by any standard.  While I don’t buy much sci fi or fantasy now (with the exception of Harry Potter and George Martin’s series), I used to, and I recognize many fine names in the sci fi/fantasy area of the Bookmark.

The Bookmark also has a pretty good selection of books about the Panama Canal, but at least one title is again outdated by more recent scholarship.  Still, it’s a good seller in the field.  Mary wants to read it because she’s interested in the myth that glorifies Panamanian involvement; it’s always good to know what the people around you are thinking, and it’s the story that most Panamanians believe.  The truth is uglier.

I don’t want to sound negative here because I want to give the Bookmark as much credit as I can for carrying what stock it does in the light reading section.  Unfortunately, the nonficiton area is, for me, completely inadequate. I have pretty broad interests in history and theology, in particular, and in those areas that I know best, almost all of the Bookmark’s stock is hopelessly out of date.  Nonfiction is a particular problem, it seems to me, because someone like me is going to buy a book, say, on the battle of Antietam or Matthew Brady’s collection of Civil War photos–and keep it.  So, there’s not a good turnover in the nonfiction stock.

Last year, I was planning a trip to Ecuador, and went to the Bookmark to check out travel books on Ecuador.  I found some–but again, out of date.  Anyone who does any traveling in the area knows that the situation in Latin America changes rapidly with respect to accommodations in particular, and you need the latest guides.  Every time I’m there, I see pretty much the same books.  It also may be that the more recent editions get snapped up.  But I know the older stock isn’t moving that much.

Be that as it may, it could be that a book collector, who is interested in old editions, could find whatever he or she is looking for, and I don’t want to discourage anyone from browsing through ANY bookstore!  And I’m sure that Hal can order anything you want.  For a price.  As I’ll show later, you can do better, I’m afraid, at Amazon.

OK enough on The Bookmark.

Read and Relax in Boquete is a bookstore that carries new books in both Spanish and English.  It’s hampered by being in a small area and having to cater to both language tastes.  However, it’s worth checking out.  When it first opened up, we bought a beautiful birding book there, an Illustrated Field Guide to the Birds of Panama; Guía de Campo Ilustrada de las Aves de Panamá , edited by Ernesto Ponce and Giselle Muschett, which is a great companion volume to Birds of Panama.  Both books have their strong points and their limitations, but together, they’re invaluable.  

Last year, of course, was the publication of the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  Read and Relax held a Harry Potter party, where kids were encouraged to come in costume, and at midnight, they all opened the boxes that held the books and got their copies.  I think about a half dozen kids with their accompanying adults, were there.

We found out about it because we were waiting for a copy from Amazon that would take at least another 7-9 days to arrive, and on July 22, we simply couldn’t stand it.  Mary called Read and Relax, found that they had a copy available, and drove over to Boquete to get it!  We read it by alternating chapters–first she would read one, then I would.  But she actually is a reading wimp–she gave up about 10 pm and fell asleep; I stayed up all night and finished it. (Yes, we now have two copies).

We paid either $37 or $39 for that copy.  Hal had it available for about the same price as a pre-order.

My copy from Amazon, which arrived a week later, cost just under $18.  Even with shipping, the total cost was no more than $30 and if I remember correctly, was less.

For an occasional reader, that difference might be negligible.  For me, multiply that across even 10 books per month, and you see why I choose to import.

Read and Relax does not have the world’s best selection of English language books, and is slanted as to what she thinks the English-speaking community is most likely to buy–gardening books, things like that.  A few best sellers.  Last time I was there,  I bought a Young Adult book, translated into English, by Isabel Allende, written I think for young relatives, about the Amazon region of Brasil.   It was fun and excellent in its portrayal of conditions in the Amazon.

But her Spanish section is more interesting to me.  I’ve been slowly adding books in the original Spanish that I already have in English translation–titles by Allende, Arturo Perez-Reverte and others.  It’s a way to improve my fluency and see the differences between the translations and the originals.  I also want to pick up, next time I’m there, the poetry of Dimas Pittí.

Man of La Mancha in Chiriquí Mall. Nothing exciting in the way of English language books–a few, but very, very few.  Again, more interesting to me is the Spanish language fiction section.  I picked up a Spanish translation from the Portuguese of Paulo Coelho’s Fifth Mountain there (which I’ve already lent to the (Espinosas) and Mary bought Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in Spanish.  We almost never go there, mostly because we’re almost never at the Chiriquí Mall.

Romero’s in Boquete has one of those supermarket racks of used books that are mostly mystery/thriller stuff and that you can trade at the Bookmark.

I don’t know anything at all about the used bookstore in Boquete but have a feeling it isn’t going to be that much different from the Bookmark.  However, it’s undoubtedly more convenient for boqueteños.  The Bookmark is far more convenient for us; its location, just south of the divide in the carretera for Boquete and Potrerillos, means that we pass it on every trip to David and many trips to Dolega.

These opinions are mine, of course, but I’ve tried to give as objective an overview as I can of what’s available here in Chiriquí as far as bookstores are concerned.  Still, there’s nothing like personal exploration.  Check them all out.  Leave no book unturned!