Garrison Keillor’s dream of opening a bookstore goes back to his childhood days in the stacks of the Anoka public library — a dream he finally realized in 2006. Now, after six years in a lower-level space in St. Paul’s Cathedral Hill neighborhood, his Common Good Books has new digs — brighter, bigger, with room for lots more titles.
Radio host, author, and avid reader Keillor is a big fan of independently owned bookstores. Common Good Books is his opportunity to provide the kind of book-browsing experience that is more and more a rarity in our chain-store and Web-commerce world. “When you walk into an independent bookstore, you walk into the realm of love affairswith books,” he says.
Common Good Books is now open in the Lampert Building on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul, just north of Grand (around the corner from Breadsmith), and the bookstore celebrates the move with special events on the first three days of May:
• Spring Poetry Free-for-all — May 1, 7 p.m., Macalester’s Weyerhaeuser Chapel
At an open mic, audience members read aloud, backed by a jazz trio.
• Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny — May 2, 7 p.m., Common Good Books
Prairie Home Companion actors Sue Scott and Tim Russell join Garrison Keillor in a dramatized reading from Keillor’s new book, Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny. Pianist Richard Dworsky adds a murky underscore.
• Tell Garrison a Story — May 3, 7 p.m., Common Good Books
Join Keillor on stage. You get to tell a story; hegets to ask some questions.
Garrison Keillor is the host of public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac. His books include Lake Wobegon Days, The Book of Guys, Pilgrims: A Wobegon Romance, and Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny (Viking). He is the editor of several anthologies of poetry, including Good Poems: American Places (Viking).
SPECIAL EVENTS – LOCATIONS & TIMES:
Spring Poetry Free-for-all — May 1, 7 p.m., Macalester’s Weyerhaeuser Chapel
Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny (Sue Scott, Tim Russell, and Garrison Keillor with a dramatized reading from Keillor’s new book) — May 2, 7 p.m., Common Good Books
Tell Garrison a Story— May 3, 7 p.m., Common Good Books
Plus drawings, music, refreshments
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: including author events, readings, signings—and just added, a special Mother’s Day on Sunday May 13th with Garrison Keillor, Patricia Hampl, Shannon Olson and Julie Schumacher – go towww.commongoodbooks.com