Garrison Keillor opened The Common Good book shop in 2006 and then he moved it to a larger location in 2012 on Snelling Avenue. This independent book shop does not stock the usual selection of items — no big table of New York Times Bestsellers. Instead the first table is simply called, “New Fiction” and “New Non-fiction.” Rather refreshing. The arbitors of taste are not famous critics or lists but the staff and Keillor. And if I am wrong here, that is totally on me since I am only giving my impression.

Behind the cashier’s counter was a huge white marker board with various cartoons, pictures, announcements. I snapped the picture because the quotation from GK gave me the distinct impression that he had just written this on the board and had walked out of the shop only moments before. In case you can read what he wrote:

Now to parse this statement, GK seems to be admonishing us not to anticipate spring or worry about when it will arrive since it will come unexpectedly. He seems to be saying that talking about spring and looking for signs of spring, won’t bring spring any faster. He also seems to be expressing a trace of annoyance or impatience regarding people who do talk about spring’s advent. I can’t quite figure out the tone of the statement but it does not seem altogether good humored.

Anyway, the store did have many copies of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s annotated autobiography called Pioneer Girl, which is rather hard to find since the small South Dakota publisher intially only produced a few thousand copies. They did not realize that interest in Laura Ingalls Wilder would spike. I bought a copy for my mom, who had read us the entire series when we were little. One chapter a night was our ration before bedtime. The store also had large annotated editions of Wuthering Heights, Sense and Sensibility, Jane Eyre, which I had never seen before but did not buy. I also found (and bought) a book of Arabic fairy tales translated from a single manuscript and these fairy stories precede The One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. And a volume of Pablo Neruda’s love poetry.

The bookshop was just the right size. Capacious enough to have books on many subjects, eclectic enough that you knew the books were selected by folks with discerning intelligence, but not so overwhelming that you leave without buying anything, stunned by too much choice.