posted by M.L. Sanico
Our trip to Vegas wasn’t exactly filled with fear and loathing. My goodluck rituals didn’t pay off since Alex was much luckier than I was and he only did half of the rituals. At least lady luck wasn’t so fickle with him and we were able to get back most of what we put in. Foreseeably, I had more fun doing things that cost nothing at all– like going to the library, checking out cool book stores and evaluating the LV Publishing Community… fun, right!? Heck yeah it was! First let me say how incredibly thankful I am that Alex also finds enjoyment in geekish things and that I have at least one bookish cousin who was willing to tag along. Speaking of…
My extended family was clueless as to why I would want to spend precious vacation time visiting the public library, Borders Bookstore and some fancy pants literary antiquities boutique that I could never possibly afford to purchase anything in. But I was desperately curious to find out more about the Vegas book scene and see if it was as active and vibrant as ours here in Hawai’i.
In short, we have a larger variety of local publishers and authors resulting in a substantive literary culture that should be could be the envy of all other states. However, when it comes to the care and execution of the public library system, Vegas has got us beat…hands down, royal flush. In fact, the libraries there aren’t run by the state of Nevada, it’s all by county and since Clark County is the beneficiary of lucrative Las Vegas, their facilities and programs are nothing less than drool-worthy. Most locations are new or newly renovated.
The picture to the right is the outside of the main library (you can see my two cousins there in the black shirt and green tunic walking in). It’s right next to the Children’s Discovery Museum and the building is massive, twice the size of our State Library with Aiea Library added on! There’s two floors with one whole floor dedicated to kids and teens, not to mention a giant study room with desks and audio visual stations for the kids to use. Wide open spaces, everything state of the art, lots of computers available…you name it, they had it. Except for a Hawaiiana section of course.
Don’t get me wrong, we were able to find a fair number of books written by Hawaii authors, they were just spread out through the entire Clark County system, scattered like grains of desert sand. So, if our 9th islanders want to read the latest Chris McKinney novel they’d have to wait in a very long line to borrow it. Or if they wanted to check out the latest Watermark book, it’d be a week or two while the book is in transition to the nearest location from somewhere else in the system. We’re so lucky to live Hawai’i and have our books close by!
The photo on the left was taken in the lobby before the entrance to the book stacks, it’s blurry because a rather burly, strict looking security guard was watching me take photos and oggle over how much space there was. Nope, that’s not suspicious at all! He made angry looking faces and pointed in my direction. I was intimidated at the lack of aloha (really, all the security guards we’ve met at the libraries here in Hawaii, have been so nice!). I’m fidgety in the presence of overbearing law-persons, and now I have smudgy photos to show for it. I could never be a gansta.
Later, we visited the Borders “Concept Store” in the Towne Square shopping center. It’s basically a Borders Bookstore with media stations in different sections where you can watch videos or explore programs on the computer. For example, in the Food & Nutrition section of the store they had all the cook books and healthy eating guides, but in the middle of that section was a computer terminal where you can watch cooking videos or mess around with meal/calorie trackers on the computer. Nearly every section had a media station that allows you to experience more than just the books (as if we needed further reason to waste a day in Borders). At the center of the store they had a cluster of computers where you could burn your own CD’s, publish your own photo books or small personal brag books, even research and print out genealogy info–all at a fee of course. It’s nothing hugely unique, but still a novelty.
Tucked away in the back corner, near the coffee shop I saw a sign “Literature of Las Vegas”… bingo! This is what I wanted to see. Each Borders location customizes it’s stock to fit the community, there were some interesting non-fiction books about the history of Vegas and the mob, some cultural books about American Indians and the desert, a few kids books, some really nice photo-books of ghost towns and Old Las Vegas… but mostly books about how to play poker, or baccarat, or the betting strategies of craps. I was disappointed to discover that the topic pool of Vegas literature was just as shallow as the canals at the Venetian Hotel & Casino. Again, I say we are so lucky to have active publishers and passionate authors living here in our beautiful state.
At the end of our trip was the piece de resistance…a visit to Bauman’s Rare Books in the Shops at the Palazzo. But I’ll save that for later, it deserves a post of it’s own– how I fell in love with the fancy pants literary antiquities boutique where I couldn’t possibly afford anything.
