Started with a $300 loan in 1932, Harvard Book Store has been independently run ever since. Its booksellers today share their favourite reads and best regulars (including a dog)
Harvard Book Store was founded in 1932 by Mark S. Kramer, a native of Boston. With $300 borrowed from his parents, he opened a small shop selling used and bargain general interest books in Cambridge. Frank Kramer, Mark and Paulines son, entered the business in 1962 and directed the company for over 40 years before selling it to local book lovers Jeff Mayersohn and Linda Seamonson.
Harvard Book Store has been locally owned and independently runand, has spelled book store as two wordssince 1932. As Harvard Squares landmark independent bookstore, the store is renowned for its selection (of used, remaindered, and new titles), award-winning events series, and its history of innovation.
What is your favorite section of the store?
Liz (childrens buyer, bookseller): Our bountiful staff recs wall! Its the first thing you see when you walk in.
Mark (store manager): Although I love reading history/biography/politics, at a given moment a particular title/topic on our shelves might not grab me. Essays, though, are the seed catalog of books; I can open almost anything there and find a new idea (or new expression of a familiar one) that makes things look different. Its easily my favorite section. And most of the best writing Ive ever read has been in essays.
Katherine (supervisor, bookseller): My favorite section is our brand new romance section. Its tiny, but it didnt exist for the first 83 years of the store. Theres a lot of great, smart, funny, feminist romance out there that gets overlooked by a large section of the book community. Its been a lot of fun spending this summer reading books to choose some that match our bookstores personality.
Jeff (owner): Academic new arrivals. Im intrigued by the way academics think, simultaneously focusing on both very big questions and what would appear to the rest of the world to be minutiae.
Melissa (supervisor, bookseller): Fiction, because its quiet and in the back and I like eavesdropping on people on first dates.
Serena (marketing coordinator): Always changing, but I have a special place in my heart for science fiction / fantasy and our epic staff recommendations display.
Alex (events and marketing manager): New Paperbacks. Its such an exciting cross section of the entire stores selection, and you never know what you might unexpectedly pick up. Plus theres the opportunity to be extremely judgmental or intrigued by familiar titles that have unveiled a fresh look for the paperback design.
What would you do if you had infinite space in the store?
Carole (general manager): Lots of seats, a wine bar, expanded sections, a special room for kids books.
Melissa: A dance floor. Just kidding, booksellers are the most introverted people in the world.
Alex: I want the bookstore equivalent of the pool that is built into the gym floor in Its a Wonderful Life. What would the Harvard Book Store floor open up to reveal? Perhaps a 200-seat dedicated event space. And/or a huge storage space with meticulous shelf labeling for us to store overstock. And a lounge we could use for visiting authors, instead of the staff break room. And apartments for booksellers. And a staff break room foosball table with literary figures as the little players. Ahab would be a goalie.
What do you do better than any other bookstore?
Liz: Shimmying up wooden ladders holding armfuls of books.
Mark: Put it this way: no bookstore is better than we are at breaking the ice between a customer and an unfamiliar title or even whole genre. At our best and loudest and busiest theres a constant interchange among staff and customersand they feel invited to be full participants.
Jeff: Since I respect and admire our fellow indies, I dont want to compare. Particular strengths of our store are curation, combining a strong mix of academic and popular titles; events; and support for self-published authors with our Espresso Book Machine.
Alex: At Harvard Book Store there are books everywhere. The shelves tower above you, extending to the tall ceilings, with ladders making the overstock areas accessible to staff. Every wall, surface, window, and shelf is packed with books.
Who is your favorite regular?
Serena: Kristin Cashore!
Melissa: Theres a customer who comes in all the time who doesnt give us her last name and I think its because shes a witch and has been alive for 500 years. I want to be a little like her.
Jeff: We have one regular customer who is a professor; he acted in his youth and was killed by Lee Majors in an episode of Big Valley.
Katherine: Favorite regular is Chloe, a black lab with an extreme addiction to treats. The moment she comes in the store she tries to make eye contact with the people behind the desk. The second she catches you, she sits and waits for a treat. One time, she dragged a dogsitter from two blocks away to the store. The dogsitter was laughing that she had no idea why the dog was so desperate to get to the bookstore.
Whats the craziest situation youve encountered?
Alex: I was running a reading in the bookstore for the book Fire and Forget, an anthology of short stories on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were in the middle of the talk when the VERY LOUD building fire alarms went off. It wasnt a drill. My recollection is that one or two people in the room screamed in surprise. Several firetrucks pulled up as we evacuated the store. As it turns out, a tenant in one of the apartments above the store had burned dinner. After 20 minutes, we filed back into the store and picked up where we left off. I had grabbed some pens on the way out so the authors could at least sign copies of their book outside (which they did!), lit by the red flashing lights of the Cambridge Fire Department.
Jeff: A internationally known philosopher came in one night and demanded all of our Perry Mason books.
If you werent running a bookstore, what would you be doing?
Melissa: Climbing ladders somewhere else.
Jeff: Thinking about working in a bookstore.
Katherine: If I wasnt working at this bookstore, Id work at another one. I dont really function anywhere else.
The staff shelf
What are Harvard Book Stores booksellers reading?
- A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (2008). Brad (assistant store-manager) recommends: It will start as a chuckle, grow into a cackle, and finally youll be laughing so hard youre crying. People on the bus will look at you funny, your girlfriend will ask you if youre okay, and still you wont want to stop reading. This book is an absurd father/son story, a 500 page rant against the absurdity of existence, and a one helluva gut buster.
- The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop (2015). Melissa (bookseller) recommends: Heres what youre going to do: Youre gonna learn to time travel and sneak into your high school poetry class. Youre gonna leave this book on your desk with a note that says, Hey! Poetry can be fun and cool and accessible and like this. Also, wipe the drool off your face.
- Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas by Patrick Modiano (2008). Annie (bookseller) recommends: Modianos brilliance is in telling stories that arent in orderstories that are, instead, structured around places and characters. This English translation (and the translators insightful commentary) captures the beauty of imagination, nostalgia, and uncertainty that makes Modianos writing absolutely spellbinding.
