A recent Associated Press article reported about used bookstores along Route 66.
Specifically cited in the article are 5th Street Books in Kingman, Arizona; Downtown Books and The Book Case in Albuquerque; Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena, California; and Selected Works Used Books and Sheet Music in Chicago — all of which are on Route 66 or a couple of blocks from it.
An inspiration for the article was the 66 Bookstores on Route 66 listing by Abebooks.com, a premiere website for buying used books.
Abebooks contacted me some months ago about a possible article. However, a problem quickly emerged once I perused the list.
Even when I used a loose criteria of a bookstore having to be within a mile of a Route 66 alignment, I was hard-pressed to even find half of the listed stores on the Mother Road.
The listing included far-flung bookstores in Evanston, Illinois; Nixa, Missouri; Pineville, Missouri; Sand Springs, Oklahoma; and Prescott, Arizona — cities that never were on 66. A couple of them are 40, 50 miles away. And Texas is left off the list entirely.
The AP report also said Abebooks “faced angry comments for leaving off others.” Many of those can be read in the original Abebooks article.
So I declined on doing an article at the time.
Good on the Associated Press reporter to seek bookstores that are on or very close to Route 66 — even a few that didn’t make the Abebooks list.
Look … I really like independent bookstores, and I like to hang around one as much as anybody. But when someone proclaims they have a listing of “66 Bookstores on Route 66,” I expect nominal accuracy.
(Sign for a bookstore along Route 66 in Oatman, Arizona, by Anthony Viviano via Flickr)