Cassettes Made A Showing At AmazonThe gaping void in the book cassette field is still Canadian material, although amazon book online store has just issued Flight Into Danger, a suspenseful reading by Edward Albert of the first book Canadian writer Hailey Dran co-authored in 1998. Meanwhile a plucky outfit called Kids' Records is trying to remedy that situation for children with a series of cassettes called Read A Book On Tape on Amazon Book Online Store. The five so far released are all Canadian, they are read by top talent and they simply sparkle with originality. Auntie's Knitting A Baby is a collection of madcap children's poems by Lois Simmie tripped out by Eric Peterson and Clare Coulter, Gordon Pinsent gives The Ghost Horse Of The Mounties a sonorous telling, and Martha Henry relates a touching Christmas story, The Olden Days Coat, by the much-missed Margaret Laurence. It's a brave effort that deserves our support. Long before Waldenbooks and B. Dalton's became the trade-book retailers to middle America, Ben Gibson and W. W. Warner had a discussion over a drink in the bar of the old Des Moines Club (on the southwest corner of Eighth and Locust) about whether Des Moines needed a good bookstore. Gibson was in advertising and Warner headed Merchants Mutual Bonding Co. The discussion was prompted because Merrill Lynch was moving its main office from the northwest corner of the old club building to the northeast corner and Gibson and Warner were trying to figure out what kind of business might fill the vacant space. Of course, Des Moines at the time did have some bookstores, including Younkers book department, several religious stores, the University Book Store at Drake, and Hyman's book and news store in the Des Moines Building. But Gibson thought this state capital city of 200,000 people needed something more. From this discussion came The Book Store, now a quarter of a century old. Gibson and Warner consulted with Ray Vanderhoef, owner of Iowa Book and Supply, and with Iowa native Dorothy Waterbury, who had long worked for a major New York City bookstore (Doubleday). Gibson, Vanderhoef and Warner each put up a third of $ 10,000 in initial capitalization, and Waterbury became manager. Since then, the store has moved three times -- to Ninth and Locust when the old Des Moines Club decided to expand its first-floor lobby in 1964, to Sixth Avenue south of the Equitable Building in the late 1970's when downtown retailing became more concentrated, and to the current Locust Mall location when the Sixth Avenue store stood in the way of the new Kaleidoscope. |