bookstore

I love bookstores. There one of my favorite places in the world. And I like all different kinds of bookstores. I typically go to Barnes and Noble a lot, just because it's the closest "big chain" near me, and if I'm looking for a book that's kind of hard to find, they have the largest selection. Every so often for a change of pace, I will drive out to Borders and check out their selection. But the bookstores that really tickle my fancy are the ones that have a little more personality to them. While Harry W. Schwartz is still along the Barnes and Noble and Borders side of things, it has more of a personality to it. My friend and I visited one on the east side of Milwaukee last night. While she filled out an application, I sat and read children's books. I highly recommend "Punk Rock Farm" by the way. The layout of this store is amazing though. I feel as though there are all these little areas you can just plop down in and read a book. We were in the kids section, and I grabbed like 4 different books to look through, and we sat on this huge plush couch, there were HUGE stuffed animals surround me as well as a lot of other toys (including a little stuffed Albert Einstein that I wanted really bad). It had SUCH a great atmosphere. If I was a little kid, I would have rather enjoyed myself. There is another bookstore downtown that I absolutely adore - well, I used to anyway. It was my favorite place in the world when I was in high school. Downtown Books. The fiction literature was all upstairs, and you had to walk up this SUPER narrow staircase to get up there. Once you were in the fiction section, there were all these small shelves that were really close together, and then there was balcony to which you could see down over the rest of the store. It was magical. I would tuck myself up there for a while and read different books to see which old books I wanted to buy. There were some great finds in that store, that's for sure. But I absolutely LOVE bookstores.

Which brings me to the point of my post. The more I think about wanting to open a bookstore, the more excited I get. The more I think about wanting to open a CHILDREN'S bookstore, the more excited I get. I mean, my friend was so awesome to appease me and look at all the books I showed her. "Cara and Ashara", "Punk Rock Farm", "Zathura" (did anyone see this on the Apprentice?), "Black Meets White", "M is for Music"... I was reading through them, and kept saying, "This is so great!" and "I LOVE this!" and she was like, "Man, you TOTALLY need to open a store."

So, that leaves me here... Loving bookstores, and wanting to open one. I suppose the time has come to start looking into what all goes into that. Owning a business scares the crap out of me. I have enough trouble managing my own money, let alone the money of a business. Although, maybe it would be different - I have managed other budgets before. But, maybe it won't be. All I know is I think I better start reading up on what it takes to start my own business and open up my own store...