The DNA of books

If you’ve ever made your way into Reed Books and Museum of Fond Memories on Third Avenue North, it’s probably taken you a few hours to get back out. 

It’s that magnetic.

“It’s the great jolt when people walk in here, this great joy. It happens every day — they have an intake of breath, no matter why people are coming to this place. It’s been happening for years, this poetic jolt,” owner Jim Reed said. 

Reed, who created the store 36 years ago, spends Tuesday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. selling books and aged memorabilia at his specially created store. It might have taken 50 years to find his calling, but now, Reed said, he can’t imagine not being surrounded by thousands of books each day. 

Looking back though, he admits his life used to be a lot louder than the turning of pages and the crack of the air conditioning turning on.

Early in his career, Reed started out as an aspiring actor, which he said lent him skills he still uses today.

“When you get onto stage, everyone is paying attention to you, and I loved that. Suddenly, you’re important,” Reed said. “Then it occurred to me, back in this time when I was desperately trying to be my own boss and make a living, that when I come to work I’m still acting, I’m acting the kind, gracious, helpful bookdealer who wants people to feel good and come back.”

After going into a career in broadcasting, Reed said he quickly learned it was sink-or-swim in the world of TV performance. Over time, he fine-tuned his skills but eventually quit because even though he was writing, he knew he was only writing what other people needed him to write.

“I spent years denying it, writing for other people. Oh, I was a writer, sure, I wrote hard news, PR, for the media, but it wasn’t until I leapt out into the book world that I realized the only person I have to write for is me,” Reed said.

When he initially opened Reed Books, it wasn’t easy switching from the corporate workplace. For years he was busy creating a namesake, learning how to write for his own pleasure again and what he refers to as “opening a foster care” for all the various letters, pamphlets, postcards, photographs, cards, books, diaries and any other written material people tried to get rid of or throw away. He kept it all, adding it to his collection at the store. 

“It’s out of respect for people’s lives,” Reed said. 

To him, it represents memories he rescued and gave another chance. He encourages people to take a minute and pay homage to the words on yellowed love letters, 1940s posters or crinkly comic books. “Literally inside these books are their DNA; it may be 1,000 years old. You could be cloned one day,” Reed said, laughing. 

He further explained that two microbiologists determined that DNA can be conserved inside the pages of books. That’s why he insists his collection of more than 50,000 books, newspapers, letters and other unclassified 250,000 objects and writings is part of his personal “foster-care system.”

Even though everything at his store is for sale, he’s happy to keep all the random memorabilia at his store in the meantime. It preserves the magic and keeps the pull steady for book lovers, curious locals and Birmingham visitors shuffling around the store for hours on end. “This is the center of the universe,” he often says, smiling as both regulars and new customers head in and out of the store. 

Reading is, Reed said, essential to everyday existence. Saying he doesn’t understand why some people are proud of the fact they don’t read, he opined that some people feel like, by admitting they read a book, it makes them a geek. Or, they genuinely believe they don’t ever read. 

That’s why he likes to poke fun and ask so-called “non-readers” a few questions about what they consider reading to be. For example, what signs they read to get here, or if they don’t consider looking at a menu to be reading.

“If you hard copied every little thing you read in your life, you’d have a big, big stack of paper. If you went over to Kinko’s [FedEx] and hard copied it, it would be called a book,” he said. 

This is Reed’s third location in a five-block radius in downtown Birmingham, and he suspects that this time he’ll stay.

Reed said the key to keeping his business going is simple. 

“The book people find me,” he said. “Nowadays, people are finding us in droves.”

People often come in and request a certain rare or old copy of a book. If he doesn’t have it, he orders it for them. He said it’s not unusual for people to tear up or get emotional about finding a copy of a book that meant so much to them or a family member or friend. This connection to a story or “poetic jolt” the atmosphere the store causes them, he said, is part of the reason running Reed Books and Museum of Fond Memories is so important to him. 

His life now consists of acting the role of bookkeeper, occasionally teaching seminars to writers and continuing to publish his own books. He is also the Birmingham Arts Journal editor. “I write books; I sell books; I appraise books,” Reed said, and that is exactly how he likes it.

For more information, go to jimreedbooks.com.