Avol's Books, off State Street in Madison, Wisconsin, is a very large used bookstore with a decent collection of books, especially academic titles. The first thing I wondered in visiting the store was why I had never visited this store when I lived in Madison in the 90s. And strangely, I couldn't even remember if the store was there in the 90s! This time around, now in 2009, I was actually trying to locate A Room of One's Own and happened to come across Avol's first. Well, what the hell, I thought, I might as well enter and check the place out. I can't believe I would say this, but State Street seems to have almost too many independent bookstores! How can they all survive?!
In entering Avol's, the person working the front desk asked for me to take off my backpack and place it behind the counter. I don't have a knee-jerk reaction against this requirement, understanding that there might be problems with shoplifting. And it was nice not having to cart that huge backpack around as I browsed! I asked the front counter person if this was a new store, out of my ignorance, and she said it had been there as Avol's for five years and before that it was Canterbury's. Yeah, that's right, Canterbury's! (I asked an old Wisconsin friend why we had never visited Canterbury's, and he thought that in our youth the store might have given off a bourgie feel that would have turned off our radical sensibilities. Probably so.)
In browsing the titles, I wished I would've visited in my youth. The store was big, like all Madison indies. Indeed, living in downtown Madison, there would be no need for visiting the Barnes and Borders. State Street alone has, at the least, 5 quality indie bookstores! And that doesn't include other niche stores, such as Shakti, a store specializing in spirituality. Besides the very big collection at Avol's, including a rows and rows of academic titles, I noticed that it has a community life with talks and discussions. All in all, it seemed like a nice store.
Avol's
315 W. Gorham Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53703
(608) 255-2730
http://avolsbookstore.com
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