The Old Coot is book smart?

I wandered into a “Hudson Books” store at the airport in Sandford, Fla. the other day. I didn’t know Hudson was still in business. So many bookstores have gone out of business over the past few decades; it’s a pleasure to find one still in business like Riverow Books in Owego. 

Anyhow, there I was with an hour to kill, walking around and checking things out: candy bars for $3.50, gum for $2. Airport prices are high on everything; food, booze, you name it; they clean out your wallet. Nothing like a captive audience and merchants with monopoly power. But we pay it. Have no choice. 

The bookstore drew me in. I could kill some time; see what book I might want to add to my reading list and get it from the bookstore or the library when I got back home. The display of books in the airport was the best I’d ever seen. Perfect for an old coot. The books weren’t on the shelves edgewise; they were facing front. You didn’t have to strain to read the title like you do when tilting your head to the right in libraries and bookstores. It’s even worse at a yard sale where some are right side up and others aren’t. 

All this straining because the publishers refuse to line up the letters on the spine of the book in a vertical, top-down alignment or in smaller horizontal letters. Instead, they make you crane your neck and stretch to the right to see the title and author. It’s not so bad for the top few rows, but by the time you get to the bottom you have to squat, get down on your knees, and finally lie down on the floor and do a military crawl from one end of the rack to the other. 

When I walk around in public after a book search I’m listing to the right, my neck is bent in the same direction, dust is on my knees and the rest of my clothes are soiled and rumpled, you get the look! The one that says, “What has that old coot been up to? Is he homeless?”

What is it about book publishers? Literate, educated to the point of being highbrow and with all the knowledge of the world passing through their hands, yet they haven’t figured out how to print titles on books so you can read them when they’re stacked on a bookshelf? 

And, what about the poor authors whose books end up on the bottom row. A modern-day Shakespeare could go undiscovered. Readers just don’t have the physical fortitude to squat low and risk tipping over on the off chance a book title or an author’s name might catch their eye. 

Well, at least the Hudson Books people have figured it out. Turn the books so customers can shop with ease and stack the duplicates behind them.

Comments? Send to mlessler7@gmail.com.