Support
Your Locally-Owned Bookstore: Oblong Books and Music
by
Ross Rice
Even
though everything had changed, and the world was a different place
that opening day, Herrman and Clayburgh came anyway, with their
own selections chosen in response to the tragedy of 9/11, and those
in attendance remember a poignant and cathartic evening. Hermans
says simply, “needless to say, it was a low-key opening.”
Eventually,
Rhinebeck has come to embrace Oblong. “It’s taken us
five years to get where...I felt that this summer we made great
strides, weekdays being busy. Rhinebeck’s actually a pretty
hot little town.... not many places like it. I don’t think
we could move our store out to a strip mall and expect anything
to happen. But in a community that has the chance to still perceive
itself as a community....a bookstore is a good interesting place
for people to interact, find out things, discover.”
Oblong’s
weekly guest author series also provides a bonus for book lovers
and authors alike. A recent reading featured Private First Class
Richard Boes with his book The Last Dead Soldier Left Alive, and
Derek McGee with his When I Wished I Was Here. Boes was a Vietnam
vet who survived post-traumatic stress syndrome and put his experiences
into his fictional account. McGee is a local Rhinebecker who served
in Iraq, and came home with plenty of things to write about. Both
had lived the words they had written, and neither was a polished
public speaker. According to Hermans, it was the best reading he
had ever been present for since the opening.
Oblong
is not shy about supporting local writers, from the independently
published to bigger names like James Gurney, author of the Dinotopia
series, best-selling memoirist Da Chen, and worldrenowned photographer
Annie Leibowitz...
CONTINUE...
|
