Bookmarks and Bookshops

Three unique Bookmarks and the Bookshops Behind Them

Over the 50 plus years of my bookselling career, I’ve made it a habit to collect bookmarks I’ve found that were left inside books. I have a huge collection of well over 100 that are still in good condition.

I thought I’d share some of them with you, my dear readers, along with a bit of background on the bookshops themselves. In this first post (I plan on sharing a lot of them over the next year), I concentrate on California bookshops. Two stores have gone out of business (Aleph and Odyssey Bookshops), but one (Overland) is still going strong.

Bookshops are more than just a place that sells books; they are also a nexus for the community and a place where people go to talk and share ideas.

The Great Overland Book Company - Sausalito, California.

Eleven years ago, Beau Beausoleil named his used bookstore, The Great Overland Book Co., after Gold Rush merchants who brought goods to San Francisco from eastern cities. “Any two-bit, fly-by-night operation would call themselves the ‘great overland fill in the blank’” he said. “We picked the burro [for our logo] to keep ourselves humble.”

Customers browse vintage newspapers and $1 titles on the store’s sidewalk rack near Judah and 9th Avenue before being drawn inside. “We have a wide spectrum of customers from their 20s to 70s who all, for their own personal reasons, want to hold a book and want to turn a page,” said Beausoleil. “Part of the fun of used book-selling is you never know who’s walking in the front door, what story it’s going to lead to. It’s an unexpected wonderfulness.”

-Hoodline, San Francisco

The Odyssey Bookshop- San Rafael, CA.

Peter McMillan, 63, said his business was most successful when it opened in San Rafael about the time the Rafael Theater was revived (1999). At the time, there were 11 used-book stores downtown, and he was open seven days a week and three nights because business was thriving.

He moved to Novato after a rent hike just two months before Sept. 11, 2001.

“It started going downhill,” McMillan said. “Small businesses got hit by the Internet.”

He is trying to sell all of the inventory in the store by offering all books at $2 or less.

“It was a good run, but I’m sad to see what’s happened to used-book stores and bookstores,” McMillan said.

-Martin Independent Journal

Aleph Books and Gifts- Glendale, CA.

A Unique metaphysical store. Friday nights were an “open house” hangout until midnight, with free classes on astrology, Tarot, and palmistry ~ all held in the adjacent auditorium. Free psychic readings, coffee, and cookies. Very bohemian. Owners were former beatniks from Berkeley and their resident cat, who greeted customers. Room after room of classic metaphysical books, priceless in today’s world, and many of them now out of print. It was where I first became acquainted with the enlightening Alice Bailey book series. Brilliant astrology teachers hung out there, including those who had studied at Los Angeles’ First Temple of Astrology, founded in 1941. Sadly, Aleph closed in 1979.

-Donna Bible Larsen