Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • F A L L 2 0 2 0 24 Put simply, there's no overestimating the importance of independent bookstores to the people of rural Montana, and that's true in times of ease and times of difficulty alike. I grew up mostly in Havre, a farming and railroad community in the Hi-Line, not too far south of the Canadian border in north-central Montana. My family moved there from Kansas City when I was eight years old, and I was nothing if not a nerdy, bookish kid. Trying to picture life in rural Montana, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I imag- ined something akin to a scene from the Westerns I watched as a kid: a sea of grass punctuated occa- sionally by cows. Bookstores did not really figure into that image. But it turned out, to my relief, that this small town had no less than four bookstores. In fact, according to a 2013 study by Publisher's Weekly, Montana has the highest rate of bookstores per capita of all 50 states—one bookstore for every 15,705 people. While we at Distinctly Montana don't want to gloat about the perceived superiority of our state, we do invite you to consider the plight of those poor New Jerseyites, who have to suffer through their lives with only one bookstore for every 40,851 people. Admittedly, our good luck is a function of what must seem (to the more metropolitan states of the union like, for instance, New Jersey) to be Mon- tana's almost astonishingly low population. But the Treasure State's booklovers are nevertheless justifi- ably proud of that statistic. There are too many wonderful bookstores in Mon- tana to give them all the justice they deserve. Mon- tana is a wonderland for bibliophiles, with a terrific variety of kinds of bookstores, from charming Ma and Pop stores in which books supply one of many supplemental streams of income to large stores completely dedicated to the printed word, quirky stores limited to specific genres to used bookstores whose libraries would be impossible to survey in a day, or maybe even a week. This is by no means an exhaustive list; consider it a modest survey from one book nut to another, dear reader. I N THE MIDDLE OF MARCH, WE WERE ALL AT THE GROCERY STORE, STOCKING UP ON CANNED FOOD, HAND SOAP, AND GOD HELP US, TOILET PAPER. You remember the images—empty store shelves, long lines, brimming shopping carts. In addition to those sundries, there were some of us, and probably quite a few, who donned our masks, pulled on our gloves and raced to the bookstore. I know that, faced with the possibility of weeks or even months inside and dreading having to watch the news, I was going to need something to read. And being as you're holding a bound copy of the printed word even now, there's a pretty good chance you're the same way. We're not alone: on March 19, Montana Public Radio reported that many "bookstores in Montana say they're seeing higher sales as more people become homebound". From One Bibliophile... ...to Ano•er Montana's Indie Bookstores by JOSEPH SHELTON

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