The Booksellers at Laurelwood

“Get your lit together”: That’s the motto of Grawl!x and the whole idea: an informal get-together held every few months, open to all, and headed by Matt Nixon, a bookseller at the Booksellers at Laurelwood.

The most recent meeting of Grawl!x was on August 1st, but it wasn’t inside the Booksellers. It was at Muddy’s Grind House in Midtown, which is where Nixon and others introduced deserving but overlooked new titles that have won their enthusiasm. And no, the books weren’t necessarily bestseller material. But yes, you can go ahead and label Grawl!x “a book thing.” Nixon does.

Inspired by the publishers’ reps who visit the Booksellers to promote forthcoming books, Nixon inaugurated Grawl!x (comic-book-speak for what would otherwise be an unprintable expletive) this past May on National Independent Bookstore Day, and he plans on holding it on a quarterly basis. Don’t think of it, however, as a one-man show. It’s very much, in Nixon’s words, “about community”:

“While I recognize the value I bring of having the inside scoop on off-the-beaten-path new and upcoming titles, Grawl!x is about people sharing the books they’ve recently read and found remarkable. We start with show-and-tell for everyone to share what’s blown them away before I run through my roster of books.”

What does Nixon look for in the books he features? “Books that I’ve fallen in love with or books that punch me in the face,” he said. “Books that make me want to say, ‘Oh shit!’ or books that floor me in some way. But they’re all books that I’ve found outstanding — intellectually, emotionally.”

In addition to Grawl!x, Nixon has another book thing going. It’s a book club held once a month inside the Booksellers and featuring well-known titles that members (everyone’s invited) have yet to read, Nixon included. Which is why the club’s called ICYMI — In Case You Missed It. The next meeting of ICYMI is Wednesday, August 12th, at 7:15 p.m., and the book for discussion is Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, which the Booksellers has discounted 20 percent for club members.

The book club launched a few months ago with Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, followed that up with Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, and based on the sales of Breakfast of Champions, Nixon is seeing interest in the club increasing. How do members decide on the books to read? “We plan two months in advance, and I ask everyone to bring ideas,” Nixon said. “As we grow, we’ll refine the process, but it’s certainly not me dictating. It’s collaborative.”

It also comes in the spirit of DIY. According to Nixon, “I’d never been in a book club, but I said to myself, why not? I read like a shark, always looking for the next new thing. But ICYMI is a ‘forced pause’ — a way of going back to read what people have been telling me for years that I need to read and never have. That’s appealing.” So is the interaction with fellow readers with their own catching up to do. As Nixon told the Flyer:

“The Booksellers is an independent bookstore, and we can do these types of things. I can ask myself: How can I have more interaction with people who love books the way I do? Learn from them, share with them? Nicole Yasinsky and Macon Wilson, the Booksellers’ marketing team, were in love with the idea of a book club and Grawl!x too. They said, ‘Let’s do it!'”

Nixon grew up in Louisiana, but his mother moved to Memphis when he was 8, and he remembers visiting Davis-Kidd (the store now known as the Booksellers at Laurelwood) as a boy. He’s been in Memphis now for four years after spending most of his adult life in Atlanta, and he has 15 years’ work experience as a communications professional. In addition to his job at the Booksellers, he’s director of communications for the Community Legal Center of Memphis. And maybe that explains it: Nixon’s ability to communicate his love of books is palpable, infectious.

“I had free time and thought a couple years ago, I want to work in a bookstore. I got hired at the Booksellers, and it’s like the shoes I’ve been looking for all my life. I’m like, ahhh. It’s exceeded all my expectations. But I want to clarify: Grawl!x and ICYMI are about the community. I aspire for them both to join the growing list of cool, local things in Memphis to do.”

I still hear people asking, ‘When is this place going to close?'” says Ashley Dacus, public-relations and events coordinator at what used to be Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Laurelwood shopping center.

And in case you haven’t been keeping up with the local book business this past year and especially this past spring, the answer to the question that people are still asking is: no. Davis-Kidd in Memphis hasn’t closed and isn’t planning to close after a decision in late April delivered the store’s assets into the hands of new owner Neil Van Uum (who, along with his wife, founded Davis-Kidd’s parent company, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, which in November of last year filed for bankruptcy). The Memphis store has, in fact, worked wonders with Tom Prewitt, president and owner of Laurelwood, and signed a 10-year lease with the shopping center to stay in its present location. But the store does have a new name: the Booksellers at Laurelwood. And it’s in for a few more changes beginning, according to plans, this fall.

“We’re diving in,” Van Uum says. “We suffered through the first part of this year, but we’ve been doing a lot of legwork — setting up new accounts, getting products in our system in order, the magazines back on track. Sidelines, DVDs, and bargain books … we’ve still got some work to do.”

That “work to do” includes a new logo and signage, along with new carpeting and fresh paint. And in the case of Brontë, the popular cafe inside the store, Van Uum says it’s going to get more than that:

“We’re starting from scratch, with a larger bar area being the most noticeable change.” (More than that Van Uum wouldn’t say. He’s still meeting with the architects.)

There will be some changes too in the store’s sidelines — those items for sale that go beyond books, including skin care. As Dacus says, the store wants to focus on a greater number of local products. (Among them, Apothecary Fairy, a Memphis company specializing in soaps, lotions, and balms). Dacus is also looking forward to organizing a late-summer noontime concert series inside the store, in addition to partnering with L’École Culinaire, the cooking school in Cordova, for in-store tasting events. That’s all in addition to the book fairs and fund-raisers the store has conducted with local schools over the years.

Where does that leave the main business at hand: books? According to Dacus, the Booksellers at Laurelwood will continue scheduling national and a greater number of local authors for signings. And according to Van Uum:

“All these other things — the cafe, the sidelines — need to be attended to, but we’re putting the emphasis on books.

“No question, the rise of electronic books, free content on the Internet, online retailing … they’ve wreaked havoc on traditional bookselling. Cincinnati, for example, has gone from 12 bookstores down to eight — and three of them are probably going to close. That may make the stores still standing a little healthier. Which means that the Memphis store has got to continue to be a great place, an entertaining place — a place that provides a unique experience even in the bookselling world.”

And, Van Uum believes, beyond.

He points to the successful partnership Joseph-Beth has with the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, where he introduced the hospital’s gift shop to an expanded inventory of book titles and sidelines — a business venture that’s been hugely popular with patients and staff. To arrive at the same level of success among Memphis hospitals, Van Uum says that “we’re going to be knocking on a lot doors, going pretty hard at it.”

Some things, however, don’t need changing: the booksellers themselves. That staff, throughout the byzantine proceedings of last spring’s bankruptcy hearings and weekly rumors, news of 11th-hour buyouts and possible closings (including the store here in Laurelwood), has stayed put, no layoffs; their value to the company: fully recognized.

“We’ve got an unbelievable corps of booksellers — a legacy with customers,” Van Uum says. “People have come to appreciate what’s unique, what’s individual to a store. No one wants to see that go away. After 26 years in Memphis, this store is truly an institution. Thanks to everyone for hanging in there with us.”