The Kids Are Alright: News from the Front Lines about Young Readers and the Health of the Independent Bookstore

I’ve heard distressing things recently about the health of American letters. First, I’ve heard that young people don’t read. Second, I’ve heard the future of independent bookstores is threatened by the robustness of the book trade online. So when I dropped in to speak to Jimmy Tatum, a 60-something who has worked at Aldine Books nearly twelve years, I half-expected to hear bleak accounts of dwindling sales and low teenage readership. But that’s not what I got.

Aldine is a small bookstore with shelves that go up to the ceiling, where new books are mixed in amongst the gently used. It’s a tight squeeze down its packed rows, but visitors will be well-rewarded for their efforts: Aldine boasts an impressive selection of books on art, photography, history and the Middle East, and has healthy fiction, biography and poetry sections too. “People have been complaining about the online affecting stores like this, but it actually saved us,” Tatum tells me. “We sell quite a few books online.”

Tatum and the store’s owner, Ira, sell some of their inventory on Amazon.com. “Actually, I get more online for certain items than I can in the store here,” Tatum tells me. “Because, you see, people that come in here, they’re competitive shoppers. They just won’t buy a book for any price you give it to them. Like that lady.” Tatum is referring to an incident I witnessed just before, when an older woman haggled the price down on a set of language tapes. “I wouldn’t even bother arguing with her,” Tatum tells me. “I’ll give her whatever she wants — but she’ll always come back.”

“Some things you just don’t argue with,” he says. “And women? No. Especially the older ones. I do not bother.” This is the sort of thing I was afraid we’d lose — small, local bookstores where patrons have relationships with proprietors. Where personal interaction still matters. When Tatum agreed to the lady’s price, he told her, “Okay, come on. Only for you.”

I ask him whether he has many teenage patrons. “Oh yeah,” he tells me. “They come in.” He tells me teens visit largely to pick up fiction. “Like that book Wicked," he says. “I can’t get enough of that book. They love that book — especially the young ladies.” I ask him what else teens are reading. He mentions Confederacy of Dunces, the works of John Fante, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut (“I think that’s because he’s dead now.”) and “a little bit of Bukowski.”

“I have a lot of young readers,” he says. “They like what they like and they know what they want. They know the books pretty good. There’s no selling them anything. They look around and find books, books I didn’t even know were here.”

“Young people do read,” he reiterates. “You just got to have the things they want to read.” I ask if he feels like they’re competing with the internet for young people’s attentions. “This is a growing and modernistic society we’re in, and this” — he indicates an old square computer monitor a few feet away — “seems to be the number one resource for education and everything, but I’m not sure what all this is leading to. Me, I’d rather see kids in books.” I tell him I would, too. “From the beginning of my time it’s always been that way. Why they want to change it, or why it is changing, I have no idea.”

I tell him I’m glad, at least, to hear that kids are buying books. And I’m glad the business is doing well. “We could do a lot better, I guess, but I’m happy as long as I’m here, and I sell a book here and there, and I have enough money to buy myself a nice book.” He laughs. “That’s the only thing I use it for,” he says.

Aldine Books
4663 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90027


-Mandy Kahn