Iconic Bookstore Owner’s Passing Conjures Up Memories of a Love Affair With Books

In my past life as a one-man consulting business, I always used to say that my sales department (me) would shut down when my manufacturing department (me) had to do the work that the sales department sold.

Similarly, I always had trouble juggling my intense desire to seek out and search for my next read — often to the detriment of my interest in actually doing the reading.

At BookTrib.com, where I serve as Editorial Director, our site is all about encouraging readers to explore new books, genres and authors who they likely haven’t heard about but probably should. In fact, our soon-to-be-released new tagline is “Where Readers Come to Discover.”

So, is it any wonder that I grew up in Brookline, MA, and worshipped a life-changing (for me) independent bookstore whose tagline was “Dedicated to the Fine Art of Browsing.”

The Brookline Booksmith (then known as the Paperback Booksmith) was my idea of a kid in a candy shop, where I became hopelessly addicted to a rare legal narcotic: the smell of flipping through the pages of a brand-new paperback book.

As much as significant people in our lives help shape our love of reading, so too did this independent booksmith on Harvard Street at Coolidge Corner. It was my routine, having worked summer jobs in the neighborhood, to wash down a chocolate chip muffin with overly sweetened coffee at the Pewter Pot Muffin House and then slide down the half block to the Booksmith.

As misfortune would have it, I had reason to ponder these wonderful memories upon learning of the recent death of 90-year-old Marshall Smith, who founded the bookstore and opened its doors in the early ’60s.

I never knew the man but was enchanted with what I read about him since learning of his passing.

In an eloquent tribute, his son Jed wrote, “It was 1961 when he and Judy Smith decided that the burgeoning publication of serious literature, both fiction and non-fiction, in a paperback format, provided the opportunity to reach a whole new audience of potential readers. He left his Wall Street job when he was 29 years old and opened what they called the Paperback Booksmith. They were at the forefront of what Publishers Weekly called the Paperback Revolution.”

The store was more than just a store. It was a microcosm of our times. Jed quotes Marshall as saying, “Over the decades the Booksmith was filled with drama, outrage, sadness, excitement and great changes in the world of civilizations: The Civil Rights Movement; the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; the Black Panthers; the Hippy upheaval; the Vietnam War, assassinations of MLK, RFK; the Watergate Scandal and more … and that’s just the first decade. We reflected on all of that. We were always socially active, eager to learn and change.”

And the Booksmith survived the massive changes in book purchasing, staving off monumental challenges from the likes of Amazon and Barnes and Noble to remain a viable resource for book lovers.

Not surprisingly, Marshall was a vociferous reader. Writes Jed, “For decades he would read three or four books at a time. It was quite astonishing. Two weeks before he passed, he was proud that he read Moby Dick … again — ‘It’s 850 pages you know!’ — while also reading a non-fiction account of early Boston leaders. On his reading stand today sits a Ken Follett novel open to page 699. Just 103 pages to go.”

Thanks, Marshall Smith. You didn’t know me at all — but there are probably lots of people like me who are blessed to have discovered the joys of reading from perfecting the fine art of browsing through your store. Here’s to a life measured in how many pages to go.