Keillor's Common Good Books Has a 'Ravishing' Weekend

Common Good Books, Garrison Keillor's new independent bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota, opened on Wednesday, November 1, to a welcoming crowd of about 400 people. "We felt ravished," said manager Sue Zumberge after a very busy weekend. "Let's just say that we went through 1,000 bags, and that was just one size."

Keillor couldn't be at the store on opening day because of a fundraising commitment, but he visited over the weekend to the delight of customers. "He did pop in Saturday morning, and I think that will be his way," said Zumberge. "When he stopped by, he signed books and talked with customers."

Common Good Books will continue its opening festivities with a "neighborhood celebration" on November 18. "We will have local authors signing and music and other things as yet undetermined," Zumberge told BTW. "But we'll wait until after the holidays to have a grand opening."

The 2,200-square-foot bookstore is at basement level in the Blair Arcade building, beneath Nina's Coffee Cafe. Original plans called for the store to be named Corner Books. However, when it was determined that the name was already being used by a sole proprietorship, Keillor chose Common Good Books, a reference to We Are Still Married, a collection of his poems and prose pieces, first published in the late-1980s, which Zumberge described as "a lovely ode to books being the common good that binds us."

Since the opening, Zumberge added, "one of the delightful, and to me somewhat unexpected, aspects is the number of local authors. We have had many just bring their books in, and we are glad to have them. Local work is selling wildly. We sold out 10 copies of the stories of street names in St. Paul the first day!"

In addition to expressing their affection for Keillor, Zumerge said, "Folks are crazy to talk and share stories of the historic [Blair Arcade] building," which was at one time a hotel, rumored to have housed a brothel. "The coffee shop above us was named after the madam, Nina," she said. --Karen Schechner