Page 4 -The Michigan Daily/New Student Edition-Arts-Thursday, September 9, 1993
Textbook buying and paperback browsing in Ann Arbor
by Darcy Lockman
You learned to read long ago. You
like to read. In fact, you've done alotof
it. Well, fasten your glasses boys and
girls, you're about to embark on the
biggest reading list of your life and it's
called college.
The days of two novels a semester
apd textbooks that served no other pur-
pose than to clutter up your half of the
locker ended when you shook the
principal's hand at graduation. If your
vision's 20-20 today, enjoy. Then wave
bye-bye as the early fall breezes blow it
out of your life forever. Welcome to
2,000 pages a week.
, Okay, don't pick up that phone to
gall the admissions office just yet. Ev-
eryone gets through it - well, most
everyone. You'll learn when to skim,
what to skip and yeah, how to read stuff
damn quick. But before you start on
your thirteen books for American Cul-
Used book stores dot
the Michigan campus
packed tight with
treasures surpassed
only by those in your
grandmother's attic...
and the musty odor of
their novels brings a
real sense of exotica to
the reading experience.
These aren't just bound
volumes, they're books
with a past.
ture 201 (a great class and worth every
page) you need to know where to pur-
chase these voluptuous volumes.
For class or for pleasure reading,
and sometimes the twain do meet, A-
squared is a bastion of book stores.
Expensive or cheap (a term used only
loosely in Ann Arbor), new or used,
you're coming to the right city.
Let's get the painful part out of the
way first: books for class. As a first year
student, where you'll buy your books
usually just depends on which campus
book store you stumble into first.
The same corporation owns the big
three, Ulrich's - pronounced ul-rick's
- on East University, Michigan Book
and Supply onNorth University and the
Michigan Union Book Store in the
Michigan Union, so don't bother com-
parative shopping. You'll be equally
ripped off at each of the three.
Uhrich's (clue: calling it ul-rich-es
is as telling as walking around campus
with amap, soonceagain it's ul-rick's)
wins for least difficult to figure out.
You just give the worker behind the
counter your schedule, and off they go
to find your load.
Drawbacks: the lines are long, and
you'll wait in two of them at Ulrich's
(pronounced ul-rick's), the first to get
your books, the second to purchase
said books. In addition to the double
line deal, since the workers get your
books for you, you are unable to delve
through the endless stacks looking for
the least highlighted, torn and other-
wise decrepit of the used bunch. Used
books are the same price no matter the
battered extent of use, so you might as
well get the least mauled texts for your
money.
This leads us nicely into the advan-
tages of the Union Book Store and
Michigan Book and Supply (my per-
sonal favorite, or should I say least
hated, of the big three). At these two,
the books are out on the shelves for the
picking. Neatly organized and rela-
tively easy to find (uniformed
upperclass workers lurk behind the
shelves, but don't let them scare you,
they linger only to assist), at these two
west side stores you get your books for
yourself, leaving you the choice of
which tattered or new copy to pick up,
and the time saver of having only one
line in which to wait.
For those of you enrolled in classes
just left of mainstream academia, Sha-
man Drum, located at 313 South State,
will be your campus bookstore. Tucked
away in a second floor haunt between
The Continental Restaurant and Van
Buren's Apparel and owned by a very
nice small businessman, the more avant
garde professors give their business to
this quaint magasin, the book land of
coffee houses.
One caveat: while Shaman Drum is
smaller, more personal and indeed more
personable, its prices are unfortunately
no lower than the aforementioned big
three.
So maybe now you have the im-
pression that you'll have little time or
funds for extracurricular reading. You
catch on quick. But let's say you take a
light load one term, stay a spring and
summer without taking classes, be-
come a junior and realize-that book
buying has little correlation with earned
grade average. But you'll still feel the
0
6
0
The Lou Gehrig, the Marion Brando of book stores, Border's Book Shop, quietly spins its magic web around unsuspecting book-lovers.
FILE PHOTO
need, the need to read. On your quest for
extracurricular verbiage, you'll learn
there's more to Ann Arbor than texts
Border's Book Shop ...
is the cream of the
crop, the best of the
bunch, the book store
to end all book stores.
Cliches cannot do it
justice. (It's) the ideal
place to spend a rainy
Saturday ... (and) the
most enjoyable way to
kill time between
classes.
and high prices.
Used book stores dot the Michigan
campus packed tight with treasures sur-
passed only by those in your
grandmother's attic. These stores are
inexpensive in the true sense of the
word, and the musty odor oftheir novels
brings a real sense of exotica to the
reading experience. Used books drown
in mystery. They aren't just bound vol-
umes, they're books with a past.
Dawn Treader Book Shop (at 514
East Liberty and 1202 South Univer-
sity), David's Books (622 East Liberty)
and West Side Book Shop (113 West
Liberty - it's a bit of a walk, but it's
definitely worth it) offer selections
which are as varied as the Big Three are
predictable, peppered with Herman
Wouk novels, Joan Didion essays and
New York Tunes instruction manuals.
You want it, they might have it. Go
looking for particulars, or even better
go injust to browse. Just like grandma's
house, they're hard to leave empty
handed.
Note: used book stores often have
some of the same reads in stock that
you'll find on your prof's set list. The
money you'll save if you find your
books at any of these hot spots balances
out the time you'll put in to locate them
there.
So then you've got your specialty
shops. Dave's Comics (623 East Will-
iam) has the biggest comic book selec-
tion on campus, as well as other as-
sorted collectibles. The Common Lan-
guage Book Store (214 South Fourth
Avenue) is best known for its feminist
texts, but carries other sorts of literature
as well. And any city with a mall has
your basic token book chains. Ann
Arbor's Briarwood Mall is no excep-
tion, but Doubleday and B. Dalton are
hardly worth your bus fare.
Saving the proverbial best for last,
Border's Book Shop (303 South State)
is the cream of the crop, the best of the
bunch, the book store to end all book
stores. Cliches cannot do it justice.
Border's is the ideal place to spend a
rainy Saturday, the first thing to show
your out of town guests and without a
doubt the most enjoyable way to kill
time between classes.
Border's two floors hold any book
you might ever hope to read. New titles,
psychology, history, religion, sex -
and those are just downstairs. Maga-
zines, children's books (complete with
toys and lots of room to sit down with a
good Dr. Seuss), travel, cooking, enter-
tainment books, art: all upstairs. And
my personal favorite, fiction, has its
very own room, also on the second
floor.
Don'tforgetto checkout the bargain
tables outside, too, for a great place to
buy presents for yourself and others.
You'll find yourself walking to class
and then suddenly paralyzed before the
bargain tables as the books poised there
silently, effortlessly lure you in.
Cheap plug, aside, the ecstasies of
Border's are endless. Words cannot ad-
equately describe this haven filled with
that very thing (words, that is). See it
through your own lenses.
So now you're briefed, set, ready to
move, primed for your first year at the
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Enjoy. Take time to stop and read the
pages. And remember, it's ul-rick's,
.r.
!M.TI
*Pool Tables
" Dartboards
*Multiple TV'
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A man plumbs for hidden treasures in the browser-friendly environs of the West Side Book Shop.
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