Rivertown Fine Books

03/15/2026

A couple hours of sleet and freezing rain passed through early this morning, concentrating my drive to work. Across the river the low clouds embraced the bluffs, concealing them, as, nearer, the fog reached down in a thin haze to just barely touch the water, softening the world. A careful, beautiful drive.

I wrote the following a few weeks ago. I include it now for no good reason:

These are suspect days on the Mississippi. While much of the main channel is open, there are still large areas of skim ice on the river, and it takes only a night or two below freezing to glaze the entire surface once again. Crossing the long, open bridge on my way to the shop. passing by a large backwater between a couple islands, I look down to see a lone, canvas-sided ice-fishing shanty sitting silently out in the snowy open. A fisherman.

I'm thinking there's probably a man inside, though she could be a woman, or anybody, really.

I see him as a devoted outdoorsman, smart, tough and experienced, though he could be just a damn fool taking reckless chances on thin ice.

Then I imagine him a contemplative of some kind, a seeker of wisdom with a tip-pole, cultivating in the dim light of his artificial cave a spiritual fulfillment, a transcendental peace. Isn't this what fishermen do, really?

It's all just brief conjecture as I zip past in my car. If I were a comic strip artist, the last panel would show me motoring serenely out of sight as a cat emerges from the shanty with a fish in its mouth, and, above the open doorway a sign: "Keep Out! Property of Schrodinger."

11/25/2025

I posted much of the following elsewhere about a month ago at the peak of the leaf season:

Fall is my favorite time of year. You scramble up the bluffs over by the river surrounded, enveloped in brilliant yellows and reds and oranges of every hue. You breathe deep, your mouth open from the effort of climb, inhaling very subtly distinct earth odors as you ascend, the air sharp on face and hands and throat. You reach the top, your heart pulsing. The sun slants at this latitude such to wash a sky of blue that does not otherwise exist, the view so clean and uncontaminated you can see to the rim of the world.

From this vantage Spring seems little more than bluster and promise. Summer but sweat and haze and guileless laughter. But Fall is the still center about which the seasons turn. Fall is the light with which the artist describes the dark. Fall says, Difficulties ahead, but for now aren't these days adazzle.

Now, today, the trees are skeletal, the bluffs a mottled brown across the way. The river has the look of polished lead, flecked, from a distance, with tiny black wavelets, the breeze just so. The shop is healthy as we enter another winter, our 25th, a season of short days and long nights when the stars shine brightest against the pitch-dark sky.

08/26/2021

One of the many great things about running a bookstore is the customers themselves. People who like books, people who read, tend to be good citizens, are generally thoughtful, interesting and open-minded. For centuries good bookstores have often been the locus of conversation and debate. As long as it remains civil I love this.

Our bookstore has been here for 20 years now, and we expect to be here long into the future. It is in our interest to provide quality stock at a fair price, to provide a clean, pleasant environment for shopping, and to treat our customers with courtesy and respect. We endeavor to do just that, and we have received thousands of positive comments over the years. But we also expect to receive that courtesy and respect in return. We are not a big box store where the bottom line is everything and the customer is always right. Pandering to the customer has never been a part of our business model.

If a customer is dissatisfied for one reason or another, he/she has a number of honorable options: To bring the issue to the attention of staff; to purchase or not purchase; to stay or to leave; to come back another time or to never return; to make his/her dissatisfaction known to family and friends. All as it should be. In the era of the internet, however, there is another, in my view less honorable option: to post a negative blast to the world, often misleading, virtually always one-sided, and with the clear intent to do financial harm to the store. Fortunately, this mean-spirited approach probably reflects worse on the complainant than on the store, and, the internet being what it is, I suspect most readers probably recognize this. The sensible approach always, as with most anything in life, is to see and to judge for yourself.

Now, all this said, our store is run by people. By human beings. Which means that in 20 years there have been moments when we have not met our own standards, when we might have handled a situation better than we did. We try to recognize these moments, try to learn from them, and always, always strive to do better. It's a fascinating business. The books, especially the scarce and rare, are endlessly interesting, and the customers generally are, too. We enjoy what we do and we hope to continue for a long, long time..

12/24/2015

12/24/2015

08/29/2012

I occasionally hear customers bemoaning the popularity of the various E-books, & the supposed deleterious effect they might have on readers, especially young readers, & on bookstores & the "real book" market. As for myself and our store, I am not worried. While there may be a smaller percentage of young people who read books than in the past, the population of young people is so overwhelmingly large that even that smaller percentage represents a healthy number. Also, all those millions of young people, readers and non-readers alike, are and will continue to be drawn to just about every new electronic device that comes out, including those dastardly e-books, and thus almost in spite of themselves will discover that reading, as an activity, is it's own reward, that it's interesting, instructive, broadening, enjoyable, inspiring and generally a marvelously rewarding way to invest one's time and energy. And a significant fraction of those who come to reading through the electronic door will want to try "real" books, and thereby discover the tactile aspect of reading, the feel, the heft of the volume, the subtle odor of paper and cloth and leather, not to mention the simple practicality of the form. And our bookstore, and thousands of others, will be here for them. We will soon celebrate our 11th year in business, and we look forward to 11 more, and still more after that. So go, E-readers! Bring more of us around!