J is for Joseph-Beth: A to Z Blogging Challenge

It's April and you know what that means: The AtoZ Blogging Challenge! For those who haven't played along before, the AtoZ Blogging Challenge asks bloggers to post every day during April (excepting Sundays), which works out to 26 days, one for each letter of the alphabet. In my opinion, it's the most fun if you choose a theme.

My theme this year is Places in my Heart, all about the places I've been and loved and that have mattered to me in a lasting sense.

For my regular readers, you'll see more than the usual once-a-week posts from me this month. I'm having a great time writing them, so I hope you enjoy reading them, too.

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J is for Joseph-Beth Booksellers

I went to college in the eastern part of Kentucky, at Morehead State University. Morehead, in the early 1990s, wasn't a very big town (it's grown a bit since). If you wanted city pleasures like movie theaters and shopping malls, you had to drive to either Lexington, Kentucky or Huntington, West Virginia. 

So, I often did. 

Lexington was around an hour away from campus. And one of the best things in Lexington was Joseph-Beth Booksellers. 

In this time before big box bookstores like Borders and Barnes and Noble, when B. Dalton was the best most places had on offer, Joseph-Beth was the biggest fanciest bookstore I had ever seen. I was an English major, so it wasn't hard to find friends who thought wandering a bookstore was an excellent way to spend an afternoon or evening. 

There was a beautiful kids section where I spent money I didn't have buying holiday gifts for all my young cousins, a café where I enjoyed desserts with a book, and a HUGE store full of so many books! It was like a wonderland for bookish girls. I *lived* in that poetry section. 

Joseph-Beth had the offerings and giant retail space I've come to associate with a big box bookstore, but the feel and spirit of an independent. There was a section where the sales associates put out their recommendations, and creative displays of books based on themes or eras rather than just genre. They held neat events, too. I could have lived there. Heck, I still could!