Shelf Life — Scott Dickensheets: Taking a journey to bookstore heaven

Friday, May 12, 2000 | 8:55 a.m.

Scott Dickensheets' books and magazines column appears Fridays. Reach him at dickens@vegas.com or 990-2446.

Sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip. Meant to be a head-clearing family weekend in San Diego, it turned out to be that as well as a book-lover's dream jaunt.

The head-clearing was strictly necessary, for the entire family. The death of a relative, built-up job stress (my wife is a first-year teacher and I'm a glorified typist, neither a career guaranteed to keep one's nerves soothed), spring fever, the relentless march of the evil Lakers through the basketball playoffs -- all conspired to make us feel like squirrels chattering crazily in a cage. We had to bust out. So when my wife's sister invited us to visit in San Diego, we would have said yes anyway. Then her husband, Jim, mentioned Adams Avenue.

Used-book store-wise, Las Vegas has nothing like Adams Avenue. Five shops -- three of them very good, the other two merely pretty good -- are clustered within easy walking distance. Imagine Las Vegas' own Albion Books, Coas Books and Book Magician (our three best), all on the same small block with, say, Michael's Books and Deat Poet Bookstore (two of our better). Not in some dumpy prefab strip mall plunked beside a major arterial, either, but occupying comfortably aging stores along on a pedestrian-friendly street. Oh, and add your favorite Mexican cafe to this mental picture -- you'll need to refuel for the day trip Jim had in mind.

My brother-in-law was the ideal native guide for this expedition; as bookwormy as I am (although with radically different tastes), he's done Adams Avenue many times. "I used to park in a central location so I could make unloading stops during the day," he told me. Unloading stops during the day! My head swam. My pocket bulged with cash that probably should have gone to creditors but wouldn't, not a penny of it.

Jim drove. Our first stop: Budget Books, around 11 a.m. I was immediately impressed with its selection. "There are a lot of books here I'd buy if I didn't already have 'em," I told Jim. Like most quality used-book stores, this one had a serpentine aspect to it -- curling aisles, alcoves, book-lined cul-de-sacs. The shelves were creatively labeled. "People who are more interesting than you," read the sign over the biography section. Military history books were stacked under "What happened to the peace?"

The operator, Marlin, a man still very rooted in the '50s and '60s -- very rooted in those eras, if you know what I mean -- kept trying to push Beat literature on Jim, an avid science-fiction aficionado with little interest in William Burroughs. I picked up a book of literary essays, nothing I wanted too much, but a good warm-up purchase.

Should you ever happen into Budget Books, mention to Marlin that you're from Las Vegas; maybe he'll tell you about the time he and his ex-wife (who left him in the mid-'80s, as he told nearly every customer) picked up a hitchhiker near Vegas, a biker named Jingles ... We were there a good hour and a half, much of it spent in conversation. He loves to talk, Marlin does. But he knows his books.

After a leisurely lunch at nearby Cafe Sanchez we strolled through the warm afternoon to Book Broker. Hold onto you wallet, Jim warned me. This store wasn't the avocational lark that Budget Books appeared to be. "The people who run this are professionals and know exactly what everything is worth." Indeed they did, and charged accordingly. Which is why I ended up spending $30 on a relatively small armload of books, including "When the Going Gets Weird," an out-of-print biography of Hunter Thompson I'd been looking for.

Our next stop was Book Binge. Imagine a vast and unpredictable library turned upside down, its contents shaken willy-nilly into a byzantine firetrap that would set a building inspector drooling on his violations book. Which is to say, it's a great place.

It's perfect for bookworms, and I mean that literally -- you have to undulate nose-first through the clutter and teetering stacks of craziness to find the good stuff.

But you will.

Way back in an obscure corner, hunched on the floor and pawing through a tiny space formed by overlapping shelving units (I went from being a bookworm to a rooting ground rodent), I found a book I've been trying to stumble across since I was a baby journalist: Tom Wolfe's hard-to-find anthology "The New Journalism." The only one I've ever seen would have cost me about nine times the $7 I paid at Book Binge.

Dumping our purchases into the trunk of Jim's car, we went into Adams Avenue Book Store. In contrast to Book Binge, this shop was orderly and painstakingly alphabetized -- a map to subject areas was posted at the front. As was the day's first bookstore cat (finally!), a plump white fella lounging near the register.

The two-story selection was huge, easily the equal of any store here, and I immediately regretted blowing so much of my stash on impulse buys elsewhere. Later we discussed with the owner the difficulties of finding the perfect bookstore cat. "He ran out the door once," the owner said. "He went around the corner and about three feet down the sidewalk. I sat here and watched him. He got that far and decided, 'I've had enough.' He hasn't gone out since."

And so it was, six hours after we began -- necks sore from craning upward, knees throbbing from crouching on the floor -- we called it quits. The trunk was aromatic with Casa Sanchez leftovers and full of books. My tally: In addition to the books mentioned, I picked up "Travels With Myself and Another," a collectiuon of travel stories by Martha Gelhorn (the third Mrs. Hemingway); "The Glass Teat," a classic collection of TV criticism by noted science fiction writer Harlan Ellison; stories by Alexander Woolcott (one of the Algonquin Round Tablers); a volume by the great Irish writer Sean O'Casey; the prison diaries of Nigerian dissident (and Nobelist) Wole Soyinka; a few science-fiction novels for no good reason; and "The Executioner: Vegas Vendetta!" because it was only 50 cents and, hey, it's about Vegas. I also bought a batch of old magazines.

Knees and neck aside, I felt great, the grim pallor of the previous weeks dispelled.

There was still one shop left, Betty's Bookstore. But even marathoners like us have limits, and enough was enough. Exhausted, content and (in my case) $115 lighter, we headed for home base to sort our booty.

We went to Betty's the next morning, of course.