Malaprop's Bookstore

Malaprops Bookstore, Asheville, NC

This past Saturday, our family decided to go to downtown Asheville to hang out and see the sites. It's telling that the place our family decided to go was to Malaprop's bookstore. Malaprops is a great independent bookstore in the heart of downtown. (Not far from the downtown public library, incidentally.)

Our family is a lover of books. Everyone from Carolyn on up has a love affair with books. We each have our own interests, but it's not uncommon for the same book to pass through several hands before our family is through with it. (This Christmas break, Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series passed through our family. My favorite book was The King of Attolia, the third book in the series.)

Back to Malaprop's though. The bookstore has been at the bedrock of Asheville from the downtown revitalization that began back in the 1980's. In fact the owner of Malaprop's, Emoke B'Racz, indicates that when she first opened the bookstore she was able to spend most of her capital on books rather than on rent. At that time, she says, "you could walk 3 blocks in any direction before you found a door not nailed down."

Her purpose in starting Malaprop's was to create "a place where poetry matters, where women’s words are as important as men’s, where one is surprised by excellence, where good writing has a home, where I could nurture my addiction to literature, and play, enjoy, and entertain people drawn to quality books."

On our trip to the bookstore Saturday night, I noted as the family ambled through the rows of bookshelves that the store embodied the essence of the quirkiness and homeliness of Asheville--current, suburban, with an emphasis on conscious living.

I found a whole bookshelf on Yoga. While next to it was the business section which only had a few books.

When we lived in Seattle, there were bookstores focused on computers and technology. In Asheville, there is a bookstore that is dedicated to poetry, consciousness, and sustainable living.

While our family is not the most liberal, we enjoyed our trip to Malaprop's and will be back for more.