{"id":2865,"date":"2016-06-22T08:02:59","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T15:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/skagways-bookstore-where-books-are-decimated-in-a-good-way\/"},"modified":"2016-06-22T08:02:59","modified_gmt":"2016-06-22T15:02:59","slug":"skagways-bookstore-where-books-are-decimated-in-a-good-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/life\/skagways-bookstore-where-books-are-decimated-in-a-good-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Skagway’s bookstore: Where books are ‘decimated’ – in a good way"},"content":{"rendered":"

SKAGWAY \u2014<\/strong> The Skaguay News Depot & Books packs a lot into a small space with more than 750 Alaska-Yukon titles in stock, as well as contemporary literature, children\u2019s books, magazines, newspapers, calendars, journals and more.<\/p>\n

According to sales manager and book buyer Denise Welch, they can pack a lot of people in, too. During the summer months, when the town can get more than 15,000 tourists a day off cruise ships, \u201cthere\u2019ll be 35 to 40 people standing in here, can\u2019t hardly move, looking for their souvenirs,\u201d Welch said.<\/p>\n

The bookstore caters to the tourists in the summer and pivots to the locals in the winter, when Welch said four people in the town of 920 might enter the bookstore all day.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost everything in here is either about Alaska, done by an Alaskan or is Gold Rush material for our town,\u201d Welch said of their summer stock. \u201cCome October we\u2019ll move things around a little bit,\u201d put out non-Alaska themed calendars and expand their new and used sections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe used books get kind of decimated in the summer\u201d when visitors will buy six or seven at a time, \u201cbut all the local people read books and bring them in, so by the end of winter my shelves are full again,\u201d said Welch, who has worked at the store since 2000.<\/p>\n

In a town driven by its history, the bookstore fills an important role. In April, Welch was waiting for all the new tour guides and bus drivers to come in and get their \u201csupplies\u201d \u2014 the information they\u2019ll dole out to tourists on Skagway and Dyea and its connection to the Klondike Gold Rush. The hiking guides come in for plant books and the National Park Service has used the bookstore \u2014 and Welch\u2019s book-finding services \u2014 to stock a library for its own workers to use for research.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a list of about 30 books that I had to see if I could find, if they were even still in print,\u201d Welch said of that order. \u201cWe came up with most of them. There\u2019s still a few of them that I\u2019m searching for \u2026 but we\u2019ll get them a copy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Searching for books for the shop is both the hardest and her favorite part of her job.<\/p>\n

\u201cOccasionally it\u2019s like being a detective,\u201d she said, \u201ctrying to figure out which publishing company has this new book that you\u2019re trying to get. It took me three days to figure out who had (\u201cThe Queen of Heartbreak Trail\u201d by Eleanor Phillips Brackbill) that I could call up and go \u2018Yes, this is Denise from Skagway, please send me a case of twenty with an invoice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She keeps track of townspeople\u2019s favorite authors and searches each week for news on new books coming out.<\/p>\n

Ask her for her own favorite though, and she\u2019ll bow out, \u201cThere\u2019s so many of them here that I like … I would have a real hard time choosing one.\u201d<\/p>\n

When pressed, she gushes about the Alaskan children\u2019s books.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the ones that are about the dogs, \u2018Born to Pull,\u2019 \u2018Alaska\u2019s Dog Heroes,\u2019 all those are wonderful books,\u201d she said. And she raised her daughter on the Alaska versions of \u201cAesop\u2019s Fables\u201d and \u201cMother Goose,\u201d resulting in a memorable exchange when her grandmother in Oklahoma started to read the nursery rhyme over the phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not the way it goes, Nana!\u201d said her daughter, four at the time, and proceeded to recite the Alaska version from memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we had to send Nana a book,\u201d Welch said, \u201cso she could see what it was the granddaughter was actually memorizing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Skagway News Depot and Books is owned by Jeff and Dorothy Brady. It\u2019s located at 264 Broadway Street in Skagway and online at skagwaybooks.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SKAGWAY \u2014 The Skaguay News<\/a> Depot & Books packs a lot into a small space with more than 750 Alaska-Yukon titles in stock, as well as contemporary literature, children\u2019s books, magazines, newspapers, calendars, journals and more. According to sales manager and book buyer Denise Welch, they can pack a lot of people in, too. During […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":2866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2865"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}