SOON, issue 26: Visiting Every Bookstore, Part 3
Checking out a few bookshops in South Dakota and Montana, from this summer's road trip.
Welcome to Something Out of Nothing, a newsletter about meaning—making it, finding it, offering it. I talk about the writing life, teaching, thrifting, books, travel, obsessions and idle interests, and much more.
Visiting Every Bookstore is a regular series about supporting independent booksellers wherever I go. Previous entries have focused on bookshops local to the Richmond, Virginia region (where I live) but I drove 4,800 miles this summer, round-trip, visiting family in Montana. Here’s a couple bookstores from that part of the country, plus a bonus bookshop from the drive. **If this issue gets cut off in your email, be sure to click through to access the whole thing!**
Bookstore #1: Bay Books and Prints
Where? In tiny Bigfork, Montana. Just off the buzzy main strip of local shops and nestled on the harbor between Flathead Lake and Swan River. This was my second visit and it’s exactly as I remembered: low-ish ceilings, blonde wood shelves, some funny clutter (antique wooden skis!) and a few requisite piles in the two back rooms. The front rooms were more styled and tidy, full of older used books and antique copies, much of the collection related to the history, culture, and myth of the West.
But the back rooms are where I found myself leaning close to the shelves, or reaching for a random tower of books on a table, or paging through a stack of loose art and ephemera. I’ve been in far more unruly bookshops (see the next entry, actually), but there’s a randomness to the back rooms in this store that made me stand and turn in place, eyes scanning carefully. I love randomness in a bookstore—a haphazard space can sometimes mean there are books difficult to categorize, or weird books without much value except for their weirdness.
What did I buy? Mostly vintage books about making art. I found most of these hidden behind old maps propped up for sale or on a low shelf made half-unreachable by an over-sized comfy chair. Prices averaged $5/book for my purchase, but prices ranged the spectrum throughout the store.
Bookstore #2: Blacktail Mountain Books
Where? Kalispell, Montana. Claiming fame as the “biggest, oldest and best” bookstore around (per the charmingly 90s website, which is dedicated to the women in the owner’s life, each name-checked at the bottom of the site). This store is wild! A little musty, a little low-lit, with the certainly not-inventoried inventory crossing genres, decades, quality, and whims. An absolute floor-to-ceiling jungle of used books, piles and stacks all over the place, boxes open for digging, and I wandered the snaking aisles—lost, but it was that I didn’t know where to look first.
I believe the older gentleman behind the counter was the owner. He assessed my stack of books and made up a bulk price on the spot. I probably could have haggled but I didn’t feel like it. Though I’ve gotten better deals before—it came out to $8 per book—sometimes you just have to lean into the joy of discovery when it comes to used bookstores and agree to a few extra bucks in order to pay the experience forward for others. I want places like this to keep existing.
What did I buy? A mixed stack of interior design, architecture, travel, and art books. (Vintage books in these categories are a comfort buy for me in a used bookstore.)
*BONUS* Bookstore #3: Hole in the Wall Bookstore
Where? Inside the tourist trap extravaganza that is Wall Drug in Wall, South Dakota. The selection was mainly focused on regional lore, settler stories, and Native American history in the West, with a considerable number of local-ish writers represented.
What did I buy? No books, but a tote bag for me and some fake tattoos for the little kids in my life.
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