Ann Arbor Institutions: Literati
Even with football back on a lot of our favorite places in Ann Arbor are hurting. Hoping to soften the blow a bit, we're partnering this fall with Underground Printing to do a t-shirt a week for the places we love. All proceeds go to the restaurant/bar/whatever.
Limited time offer: We'll keep the order open for a week (because ordering bulk means more for the institution), but we've extended that by a day, so TODAY is now the last chance to get the Mr. Spots shirt.
Previously: Good Time Charley's, the Brown Jug, the Blind Pig the State and Michigan Theaters, and Mr. Spots.
This week: Literati.
On some deep intellectual level, I, having been alive the last 20 years, intuit that books are unnecessary. We have Kindles. We have Mobile Devices. Beyond "makes a great Zoom background," one by one my justifications for the things I fill our limited shelf space with fall apart on close inspection.
Like for as long as this has sat on my coffee table, I've never smelled it:
I won't claim this strains my eyes less than an e-reader.
I could have found this activity online:
Or given him a tablet:
Or gotten her a subscription of some kind.
["No you can't use that picture of me with the cookbook; just tell them it's a picture of your wife with a cookbook"]
These aren't making it through a zombie apocalypse either.
And I guess somebody else could have put these together.
I don't have an explanation for why I need books. I just like books. And Ann Arbor has literally the best bookstore that's been very supportive of MGoBlog and the other things you like around town. Let's keep Literati around.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:49 PM ^
Just out of curiosity, how do you feel about The Dawn Treader? I went there almost once a week when I was in grad school. I love that place.
October 9th, 2020 at 2:55 PM ^
I went in there almost as many times as I walked by it, but I just liked looking around, pretending I was some sort of magnificently well-read historian who could appreciate everything around me, and pull things off the shelves that I thought were interesting. I only ever actually bought something a few times but I have them all still:
- Henry II by WL Warren. This is what comes from the above: I found something I actually liked and then dove into this extremely dry academic work, reading every ibid and pipe rolls reference because two or three early nuggets about 12th c. tax collection Pavlov'd me.
- Lord of the Rings. My friend bought it actually, but I have it (it's mine; it came to me!) . It's a really old looking version that had all three books in one volume.
- Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. Just because I saw a Vonnegut I hadn't read.
- Serendipitously, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I read my old set to the pain, and ultimately my favorite needed replacing in the early 2000s (several others have recently as I read the series to my daughter). They actually had the only one I could find that matched my particular set.
October 9th, 2020 at 3:02 PM ^
It seems like your literary aims were much higher than mine (although I did pick up some nice sci-fi, like "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", "2001: A Space Odyssey", and "Altered Carbon"). My most common purchases were comic book trade paperbacks (buying them used in good condition at half price too good of a deal for me to pass up). My wife still hates it when I buy comic books, to be honest.
October 9th, 2020 at 3:03 PM ^
Oh and a really nice illustrated copy of The Hobbit, too!
October 9th, 2020 at 4:52 PM ^
Dawn Treader was also my first thought when I saw this. I must've bought hundreds of books from that place over the years. The owner wisely bought my loyalty very early on: he told me to just take a book one day and pay for it some other time. By risking $3.50, he made more than $1000 eventually.
I gather that people like Literati because it supports the community the way that Shaman Drum used to. It opened late in my Michigan career so I think I only went inside it once myself. Too clean for me, but it's good they're around.
October 9th, 2020 at 7:49 PM ^
I can't even say how long I spent there, wedged into the little SF corner downstairs. I tried to limit my buying to complete series by authors I knew I'd like so as not to mortgage my parents house. I got my first Michael Moorcock books there, which I still have (behind me on a shelf as I type this, in fact). And only a few blocks from the library, which made it a nice two-fer for me on a weekend afternoon.
October 9th, 2020 at 3:15 PM ^
I'm more of a Shaman Drum man, myself.
October 10th, 2020 at 8:19 AM ^
I bought a lot of my books at Shaman Drum back in the day, and I'm not familiar with Literati. I guess "which independent bookstore did you frequent" is a good way to figure out the age of a given MGo user.
October 12th, 2020 at 9:55 AM ^
I'm not familiar with Literati
I don't know it either. If you read the linked article to Publisher's Weekly, you'll see that they opened up in 2013. If you went to UM before that time or haven't spent significant amounts of time in AA since then, it's probably new to you.
October 9th, 2020 at 3:16 PM ^
Dawn Treader.
October 9th, 2020 at 3:28 PM ^
Have to look for the elusive signed copy of The Search for the Unified Field Theory (Football Version).
October 9th, 2020 at 3:39 PM ^
I do most of my reading on the Kindle nowadays. It's a minor nuisance to get epubs on it (convert to mobi, copy onto the device) but the screen is nice, it gets great battery life and it is fantastic for travel.
Having said that, I still buy physical books. They're still just better. Books with a lot of illustrations look okay on my ipad, but they're better on a real book.
I am more selective, though. I've made an effort to support new writers, writers I really like and to buy signed copies when I can.
Anyway, despite having not been to Ann Arbor since I think before Literati opened and never having lived in Ann Arbor as an adult, I love this series. Keep it coming!
October 9th, 2020 at 3:42 PM ^
As someone who is fully a Kindle (on my phone more than anything) reader and audio book listener, I still love Literati. And gift cards from there are a regular gift exchange in my family, so whenever I'm in town I will buy something with the accumulated gift cards.
October 9th, 2020 at 4:02 PM ^
When I was in Paris last year, I was able to stop by Shakespeare & Co. That was like a pilgrimage for me. Anyway, we do need books--especially since I'm currently working on novel I'd very much like to sell and have printed on paper.
October 9th, 2020 at 4:54 PM ^
This is a good place. I bought one of Leonard Cohen's novels there. (The store is better than the book was.) I wish I'd gone for it and lived there for a while before having kids.
October 9th, 2020 at 8:04 PM ^
I lived there. Shakespeare & Co was such a tourist trap with long lines that I ended up going to a corporate British chain for next installments of Wheel of Time and other fantasy series, and a place on Ste Germain near Cluny for comics/graphic novels. Not to knock S&C because the history there is incredible and worth seeing once. But it's like Zingerman's if you live in Ann Arbor.
I'll tell you what is overrated and it's those green kiosks along the Seine River. I never found anything at one of those that wasn't just tourist schlock. Bet they were cool in the 60s and 70 is when they were book traders for self-published and small run stuff, but now they carry whatever they think nostalgic Americans might buy.
The Red Wheelbarrow opened shortly before I left so I only went there once, but the expat community swore by it and that's where my parents would go. I recently learned they reopened it next to the Jardin du Luxembourg, which was my favorite place to read. So many afternoons after school around the fountain, with a bottle of cheap red and a baguette in my backpack.
If you're spending any time in Paris, I suggest you give a day to picking out a book (a good sailing novel perhaps) and a good leanback chair.
October 11th, 2020 at 5:19 AM ^
I hear you on it being a tourist trap. I was doing a mini-James Baldwin tour, so that wasn't an issue for me. I stopped by Deux Magots because Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Chester Himes met on there once.
October 11th, 2020 at 8:18 AM ^
The funny thing about the Deux Magots is it's just another cafe that those guys all hung out at because the coffee was cheap. But the area is amazing. St-Germain des Pres is the oldest church in the city. And there's an underrated museum--one of those rich houses that were turned into an art museum things--for Delacroix behind it. If you go South you'll see St Sulpice and then the Jardin du Luxembourg. If you go north you'll hit the best bridge, the Pont des Arts, and that's a straight shot to the Cour Caree of the Louvre.
This was the walk I took my wife on when we got engaged. I meant to do it on the Pont des Arts but nature interfered and we got engaged in the Cour Caree instead. There was a jewelry store she found and started looking at engagement rings--you know: hint hint buddy--but we'd done this a few times this trip and at malls at home already. My wife doesn't speak French though, so she wanted me to translate to the shopkeeper. So I told the shopkeeper I've got her engagement ring in my pocket and I'll be on my knee within the hour but she doesn't know so please play along. The lady squeaked a bit but brought out some engagement rings. And there's a ring that looked almost exactly like the one I had in my pocket for $14,000 euro. So flash forward a few hours and she's like "wait...you didn't..."
October 13th, 2020 at 11:22 AM ^
Well, this was a weird Seth fact I did not know.
I've never run into a crowd at Shakespeare & Co in the 3 or 4 times I've wandered through it. But the employees were sort of uninterested in customers in a way that supports the tourist trap idea.
I have also never found anything interesting in those kiosks, but I thought it was because I didn't read French. (I think I never saw anything interesting enough to even stop and look to see whether most of the books were in English or French...)
We haven't been to Paris since last year because of the pandemic, but our routine is pretty set. We have a cheap hotel with a family room setup on a square with a large playground within walking distance of Paris Nord, where our train comes in, and Montmartre, because I always like to walk up to Sacré-Cœur for the view. I think longer trips to France will never include enough time in Paris for a day of this, but it does sound nice.
October 13th, 2020 at 7:10 PM ^
That was my first time so I hit the touristy stuff. I walked from Shakespeare & Co past Notre Dame to...where the Bastille was. Then I walked all the way back to the Tuileries. I came back another day to walk up the Champs Elysee to the arch, so could stand under it. You see these places in images, films. Amazing to finally be there. My girlfriend at the time bought us tickets to a show at the Garnier. We subsisted on little more than cheese, bread, and cheap but awesome red wine. And so much sex. It was the greatest week of my life.
October 20th, 2020 at 7:30 AM ^
Good times. The first couple of times my wife and I went to Paris, we would go to a cafe on Place de la Bastille and share a cheese plate. We're overdue for another trip. Can't wait for this stupid pandemic to be over.
October 9th, 2020 at 7:07 PM ^
I have a cool and oddly sourced story about this business. The guy I bought one of my properties from is the landlord for The Literati. He also owns like half of Kerrytown, some Main Street properties, and a bunch of student housing. The guy is clearly one of the major landlords of Ann Arbor. The upstairs of the bookstore apparently used to be his personal office, but he agreed to give the space up and lease it to the owner of Literati because, as he put it, "she is SO passionate about books." He said he'd never met someone with such a passion for books and he just couldn't say no to her.
October 9th, 2020 at 9:42 PM ^
When is ricks?
October 9th, 2020 at 10:18 PM ^
The more adult fun activity of diving raisins includes Fox River Brewery Blubobber Ale and Fresh Blueberries.
Going to Wisky in a couple of weeks to stock up!
October 10th, 2020 at 8:03 AM ^
Actual books matter because John U. Bacon ain't signing a damn Kindle.
October 10th, 2020 at 9:49 AM ^
I too never quite felt like I deserved to be able to shop there, thinking I was far less of an intellectual than needed to shop there but still a favorite place in Ann Arbor lore
October 10th, 2020 at 6:51 PM ^
At the A-squared Bookstore
Called "Literati"
Don't be a schnook—buy more
And be a hottie
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