Let's face it: You want to buy everyone on your holiday gift list an iPad Mini so they have can access to 1.5 million books, a slew of games, and the Geek—I mean Genius—Bar. But you can't afford to spend $464, or even $70 (the price of a standard Kindle) on everyone on your list.
So why not consider a single serving of literature?
A book is a special kind of gift. It's one of the few gifts that doesn't have to be very expensive, but can still be intensely personal. If you care about the recipient, and spend a few minutes thinking about the book you buy him or her, a good book can be one of the most well-chosen gifts of the season.
One of the most moving books I ever received was Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, a short book about the people of a small town as told through the eyes of a novice journalist. Considering how few pages the book is, and how small the copy is, she probably paid less than $10 for it, but that didn't lessen the impact it had on me when I was slogging my way through college.
Since I tend to buy books as gifts for my friends (if you know me, this is not exactly a spoiler), I started thinking about where I could get the best selection. My first thought was the Barnes and Noble near Route 33 (allegedly located in Easton, but that's gotta be Palmer, right?). But while driving through Downtown Bethlehem, I remembered the Moravian Book Shop, a place sometimes cited as the oldest bookstore in the world, where you can get your coffee and nick-knacks and a broad selection of Christmas decorations even as you're ostensibly looking for books.
I wanted to know which store was a better place to buy books, so I created three lists of five books each: New York Times best sellers as of December 2, 2012, classics and works by local authors.
Turns out both Moravian and Barnes and Noble had every book on the classics list and the bestsellers list. The best-sellers included books such as Merry Christmas, Alex Cross, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Zombie Survival Guide and the biography of Thomas Jefferson by Jon Meacham—a fairly wide spectrum of choices, so neither of the stores seem to restrict themselves on content. The classics I picked were East of Eden, The Jungle, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, For Whom the Bell Tolls and Voltaire. Again, both bookstores had all the titles I picked.
The only point of difference was in the selection of books by local authors, and, here, Moravian won the day.
While Barnes and Noble had the book Love Me or Else by my colleagues at The Express-Times Colin McEvoy and Lynn Olanoff, they didn't have The President was Here by Morning Call reporter Daniel Patrick Sheehan.
That's because McEvoy and Olanoff were published by St. Martin's Press, a national true crime publisher. Sheehan's book is published by The Morning Call. It exposes one of the weaknesses of the big box model, according to one Barnes and Noble associate, who said Barnes and Noble and The Call don't have a retail distribution agreement. Moravian buyers can stock any book they'd like; Barnes and Noble buyers have to stick to certain established publishers.
Both Barnes and Noble and Moravian had Images of America: South Bethlehem by Kenneth Raniere and Karen Samuels, but Barnes and Noble didn't have Life Can't All be Serious by local attorney William Zaun.
It's a small point. It really is. It's not really that Moravian has an advantage because of the local selection. The two are about equal. For someone who lives in Bethlehem Township, such as myself, they're essentially the same distance apart. So when the shops are equal in terms of selection, why not go to the one that's locally owned? Recently while speaking to Megan McBride of Easton's Main Street Initiative, she mentioned that most people do their early shopping at the mall and their last-minute shopping at local stores. Why not just skip the mall entirely this year?
There's a lot of talk these days about the future of the publishing industry, and the future of books. Maybe I'm someone who spent too much time in the moldy used bookstores of Mexico City and Easton, but I believe there will always be a niche market for books, compressed as that market may one day be. A beautifully-printed book with a well-designed cover can be as much of a piece of your home decorating as any piece of art.
For the little guys, like Moravian and Easton's Quadrant Bookstore and Delaware River Books, this is actually a good thing.
With the size of most Barnes and Noble stores, the company very well could have trouble in an age where most information is consumed electronically. Either that, or they'll devote increasingly large amounts of space to e-readers and Starbucks. And while that change is happening, the independent bookstores will still chug along, not making many of their owners rich, but allowing them to play a role in the local community.
The Moravian owners are no dummies when it comes to online sales, either. You can buy a large selection of e-books, for multiple readers, at moravian.indiebound.com, but it's hard to imagine the bookstore shrinking or even scaling back their selection any time soon.
Barnes and Noble is not a completely irresponsible company. The development they bring to an area often creates wealth. They and Starbucks have helped to make social issues regular parts of the corporate conversation. They're not the Great Satan. But they're also not your neighbors, and there's something to be said for helping your neighbors.
