Logos Books
513 2nd Street
(530) 400-1083
http://logosbooks.wordpress.com/
Sir Christopher Ricks, the Oxford Professor of Poetry (and a favorite professor of mine), once told me that he gauges the quality of a city by the quantity and quality of its used bookstores. This was back in the 1980s, soon after my return from living in London, and at a time when I was living in Boston, and Professor Ricks was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. All three of these cities are famous – or were once famous – for their used bookstores, and I feel that I spent more than a year of that decade searching for, browsing, and reading books, especially used books, moving from one bookstore Mecca to another. By the time I moved to Berkeley in 1989, the size of my library rivaled that of Sir Christopher’s!
New and used bookstores helped to sustain the intellectual life of many great American and foreign cities during the 20th century, and so it was in Davis. When I moved to Davis to begin graduate work in 1990, book shoppers looking for bargains had many choices; during the 1990s one could shop at Bogey’s Books, Sweet Briar Books, The Next Chapter, and even a mystery bookstore called Capital Crimes and Coffee. Borders opened in 1997, and that changed everything. Soon after that The Next Chapter left town for Woodland, and then the other stores that sold used books – Capital Crimes, Bogeys, and then Sweet Briar – all went out of business.
Luckily for Davisites, with the new decade came a new used bookstore! In February of 2010 Logos Books opened its doors. The brainchild of Peter and Susan Linz, both retired university faculty, Logos books reminds us how important a used bookstore can be to the intellectual life of a city. Logos has succeeded because of its unusual and decidedly philanthropic business plan. All the books are donated, all the employees are volunteers, and all the profits are donated to charity. Peter and Susan have turned more than $50,000 in store profits to two charities: Save the Children and Doctors without Borders. Imagine all the people who have been helped because of the book buying (and donating) habits of Davisites and other assorted visitors to 2nd Street!
This planned focus on philanthropy would not work, however, if Logos Books were not such a fine bookstore. One can find first edition hardbacks; large coffee table books on art, photography, travel, and other rich and edifying topics; well-stocked shelves devoted to philosophy and religion; and a generous selection of poetry, criticism, and theatre books.
My children love the tiny children’s room, right behind the cashier’s area, The toddler’s board books are often arranged invitingly in baskets on the floor, the elementary school picture books on the shelves above that, and the somewhat more complex books about topics in science, history, and biography are found in the eye-level shelves. On the south wall of the children’s room one finds fiction of all sorts, including a significant number of young adult books for teenagers of all ages.
The owners and volunteers make every visit to Logos Books worthwhile. I have interacted with Susan the most, and she may be the most appreciated Logos representative by the thought workers and producers of culture in the city. She helps to post artwork by locals on the walls of the bookstore; invites local musicians to perform at the monthly Art About on the second Friday of the month; hosts culturally contextualized discussions in French, Spanish, and Italian and other languages; and, most delightfully, hosts poetry readings and other literary events at the Quinton Duval Poetry Series on the last Thursday of every month. Some people come for all the visual, spoken and performed culture that Logos Books shares several times a month, while others comes for the incredible home-baked banana bread and other delicacies that Susan provides the viewers and participants who so treasure these events.
Like the best used bookstores across the globe, Logos Books is worth a visit because of the unexpected treasures that one might find there. The store reflects the reading habits (and past habits) of Davisites, with our city’s generous book donors especially well represented. For myself, as my life brims with digital and wood-pulp based books, I have to stop myself from re-purchasing favorite works that I have on a book shelf or a boxed collection in my garage. I sometimes realize that a familiar book of poetry or essays sits on a Logos bookstore because I myself donated it after traveling with the little treasure from Charing Cross Road or Massachusetts Avenue. As long as our books are leading us to intellectual and humanizing discoveries, rather than leading us to impress our friends with our bookshelves (and I am talking mostly to my younger self here), then bookstores like Logos represent a connection to a world rich in culture and rewarding explorations.
