Bookseller Profile

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Dickson Street Bookshop

Don Choffel and Charles O' Donnell started the business 22 years ago. Now, the store employs 7 people, plus Don and Charles, who work 6 of the 7 days a week we are open. Bernadette, Emily, and John Mark run the computer department (internet sales), and Bernadette also is in charge of the (very large!) History section. Dan has the intimidating job of organizing the mass-market paperback room, and Melanie has the Liberal Arts sections--Religion, Natural History, Travel/Foreign Language, Law, etc. Katy takes care of our extensive Literature collection , and Heidi has Music, Poli-Sci, Women's Studies, Psychology/Health, children's books and some of the collectibles. Everyone is in charge of cleaning/pricing, and we all have night shifts.

We all work here because we love books, and bookselling is a noble profession. If we had to name our specialty, we would say Literature, Poetry, Arkansas, and Ireland, but now those subjects are equalled by most other subjects in the store. Our large, general, stock happened by default--I don't think we've ever seen either Don or Charles turn down the opportunity to look at and/or buy good books, whatever the subject. David and Susan Siegel, in The Used Book Lover's Guide to the Central States puts it this way, "The Dickson Street Bookshop...is truly a fabulous establishment with books in scholarly and technical areas as well as popular culture categorized in sub categories of sub categories. This is one of those establishments where you could spend hours if only your partner weren't reminding you about other obligations." We thought that was a nice description.

As far as collecting goes, Don has an Antiques/Books/Collectibles business on the side, but isn't a collector, he just buys and sells.

Emily collects LPs and antique cameras, but only if she can use them to take pictures--no paperweights.

Katy collects platform shoes, but doesn't wear them very often. And we all collect books!

Lots of people have "shop pets". Do you have one? Several?
Emily says that John Mark is the store pet, and Don says that Emily is the store pet, so I guess there is some disagreement there. Sometimes dogs bring their owners in to hang out for a bit. And sometimes a swallow will crawl in the ceiling space, then proceed to fly about and bash into everything in the store. When we catch one, it's somewhat of an event to take it outside and let it go, with lots of cheering and such.

Do you have any legendary stories you tell about incidents in your store?
One time, Charles saw a man go to the occult section, close his eyes, then wave his arms around like he was dowsing for a book, and that's how he decided what to buy. But we are mostly remembered for little things. Our music gets a lot of comment: classic rock, blues, jazz, folk, soothing hipster electronica stuff, classical, etc. We really like Bob Marley, Woody Guthrie, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Billie, Ella, Aretha, Josephine Baker and Patsy Cline, Iris DeMent, Lucinda Williams, pretty much anything not too raucous. On most mornings, we listen to NPR. Weird facts: Don and Charles were born on the same day (Dec. 20th) in the same year (?), Charles and Emily live across the street from each other, Katy and Heidi are sisters, and we don't have a cash register, just pencil, paper, calculator, etc. We are a "floor-to-ceiling" bookstore, so we have several large and small ladders placed strategically around the aisles. We are also one of the few businesses on Dickson Street (the main drag between the U of A and downtown) that has always been open late, until 9 pm. And our building used to be a drycleaner's back in the day.

Books You've Read More Than Once!

Emily
Roald Dahl
Joseph Heller's Catch-22

Heidi
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Dan
Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49
Truman Capote's In Cold Blood
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung
On Photography by Susan Sontag
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The views of the author, expressed above, are not necessarily those of the Advanced Book Exchange