Announcing Our Summer 2022 Partner Bookstore! Gibson’s of Concord, NH (Part Two)
Announcing Our Summer 2022 Partner Bookstore! Gibson’s of Concord, NH (Part Two)
by Ann Kjellberg, editor
Gibson’s owner Michael Herrmann cutting the ribbon on Gibson’s cafe opening for in-person customers last year
Read Part One of this post here!
The presence of a bookstore in town broadens the community’s engagement with ideas. Concord has thriving local journalism, and local outlets regularly report on visiting authors and other events—redressing a bit the calamitous loss of books coverage in local newspapers (one of the reasons we started Book Post). The return of local authors to the local store, like Meredith Tate, who went to Concord High and whose father still lives locally in the house she grew up in, and who set a novel published by Penguin on the streets of the city, ties local readers to the real-life prospect of a life in books. Local institutions reinforce each other. The Concord Monitor reported on an event at Gibson’s celebrating Paul Brogan’s memoir of a lifetime working in Concord’s hometown movie theater. The Monitor said, “This story is about more than the Main Street movie house that spent sixty-one years occupying a special place in the community. It’s about how the movies brought people together.”
Perhaps Gibson’s most consequential offering is the vitality of their youth culture. Gibson has a lively TikTok presence and podcast that take an excited, inclusive, welcoming approach to the reading life. One TikTok post invites readers to take a quiz to find out which Gibson’s employee’s recommendations speak best to them. Another took a self-critical turn by featuring a young author who reminded viewers that writing good books and knowing how to promote yourself on TikTok are not the same thing. Many small cities and rural communities worry about the loss of their young people and the prospect of “brain drain.” Two recent New Hampshire reports have identified community as vital to a sustaining presence of young people in the state’s small cities and rural areas. New Hampshire Public Radio reported on a town that discovered it was not jobs, but friendships that had prompted a core group of young people to stay. A local philanthropist funded a study that concluded that it’s not just economic opportunity but a “strong civic culture and community bond and commitment” and “the important role played by youth voice” in a town’s culture that keeps young people from leaving and “protects young people who experience stress, reducing the risk of depression and substance misuse.”
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Gibson’s TikTok reaches out to young people offering the bookstore as a place of fellowship and refuge. Their Marketing Manager, Ryan Elizabeth Clark, who is also their podcast host and a frequent presence on Tiktok, tells me that this digital presence, particularly during the pandemic, has shown signs of creating a community even larger than the store’s immediate geographic range: prompting non-local orders and “visitors” to virtual events. Those of us who are parents know how few and essential these lifelines of connection were to kids during lockdown. The ingenuity of Gibson’s LGBTQ+ offerings, including a program inviting supporters to buy a book for a reader who might need it (if you are not out, they will wrap the book up for you discreetly, or even find you one “that doesn’t look outwardly queer”) and a series of bookmarks with reading lists for readers of different gender identities, reminded me of testimony that emerged from recent disputes around library book bans that many young people have found moral support for a marginalized gender identity only in the school library. When the local paper published a brave editorial by a young Asian American Concordian calling out an incident of racist harassment, where was she headed when the incident occurred? To Gibson’s with a friend. The bookstore was a destination and a meaningful point of reference for this member of Concord’s brighter future.
The political data analysts at FiveThirtyEight have dubbed New Hampshire America’s “swingiest state.” Its early primary is famous as a bellwether for the country’s shifting political leanings. Its two Democratic Senators and one of its two Democratic House members are vulnerable in the coming midterm election, which will decide the composition of the US House and Senate. New Hampshire’s local government, by contrast, is a Republican “trifecta”: Republicans hold the governorship, the state senate, and the state house of representatives. Last July New Hampshire adopted a version of its “Divisive Concepts” bill, that places constraints on the teaching of historic oppression. The New Hampshire chapter of the advocacy group “Moms for Liberty” infamously offered a $500 reward to the first person to catch a public school teacher breaking the law. New Hampshire currently allows abortions up to twenty-four weeks, though the legislature last summer banned all abortions after twenty-four weeks and required an ultrasound before ending a pregnancy. Its moderate Republican Governor Chris Sununu, however, supported mask mandates and has said Republicans should have participated in the January 6 hearings.
You may this summer find yourself driving past Concord on your way to a lake or a mountain, and if you are I encourage you to take the very quick trip off I-93 to Gibson’s. One reason to patronize Gibson’s and places like it is that New Hampshire is a place where ideas are very much in play, and Gibson’s is an institution that is bringing the full vitality of ideas—in books, in authors, in visiting public figures, in conversations—right to people’s doorstep.
Ann Kjellberg is the founder and editor of Book Post.
Book Post is a by-subscription book review service, bringing snack-sized book reviews by distinguished and engaging writers direct to your in-box, as well as free posts like this one from time to time to those who follow us. We aspire to spread the reading life across a fractured media landscape. Subscribe to support our work and receive straight-to-you book posts. Coming soon! New reviews from Emily Bernard, Peter Brook, Joy Williams, Ray Monk.
Gibson’s Bookstore is Book Post’s Summer 2022 partner bookseller! We partner with independent bookstores to link to their books, support their work, and bring you news of local book life as it happens in their communities. We’ll send a free three-month subscription to any reader who spends more than $100 with our partner bookstore during our partnership. Send your receipt to info@bookpostusa.com.
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