Borders and Joseph-Beth Books left the market, e-books dominate and bookstores adjust.
Independent booksellers like Suzanne DeGaetano didn’t exactly do a jig when larger competitors left the market twice in the past year and a half. DeGaetano’s Cleveland Heights-based Mac’s Backs gained customers following the closures of Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lyndhurst and a Borders location in Beachwood, but the avid reader and business supporter in her couldn’t allow the co-owner to rejoice. “It’s really kind of a tragedy when a big room of books is no longer there,” she said. “We know people in the publishing industry, and it’s bad for them because a lot of people got their jobs cut. A lot of books aren’t being sold now.” Borders, once the country’s second-largest bookseller, closed last summer. It employed about 10,700 people. At …
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Last Exit Books
124 E Main St, Kent, OH
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Maj Ragain speaks about his long-running Friday Open Poetry Readings
To some, poetry is something to be deciphered, a metered rhyme that masks an opaque meaning with flowery language. To others, it is something that you read in school. To Maj Ragain, “It's just saying it the best way you can.” Once a month, for the last 28 years, Ragain has been hosting a Friday Open Poetry Reading. According to Ragain, a typical Open Poetry Reading contains six or eight core participants, a dozen or so floaters who come and go, and always someone new experiencing a group reading for the first time. The poets range in age from high school students to well-seasoned adults. Some sit in the circle of readers. Some mingle around the outer edge. Some come just to listen. In short, it's an anything goes kind of event. Only a few…
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Last Exit Books
124 E Main St, Kent, OH
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Dan Sakach
7:51 am on Thursday, February 28, 2013
I've been going there for decades. Always feel like an empty cup when I miss one of these outpourings. Also, my collection dedicated to the group can be found in the Last Exit Store. Merle M., who recently passed on, lectured me many times on the right way to close the old barn door in one of my poems. I left the damn thing hanging where the next swift wind would catch it. Sorry Merle more ›