Looking Back: Erin Introduces our New Classics Section.

I chose Robert Frost because I liked his name.

In the early- to mid-90s, when we Gen X-ers blew our free time at the mall, I could most often be found in either the coffee shop that put tons of whipped cream on their mochas (complete with chocolate shavings that made teenage me feel like a Very Fancy Coffee Drinker) or staring at the classics section in the Louisville, KY Oxmoor Mall Waldenbooks, the mall bookstore of the 1990s. I never knew what I was looking for, or even what I was looking AT for that matter, but I was drawn to those books simply because they were old -- stories of a time past that I would never truly know or experience, but which captivated my curiosity for as long as I can remember.

One of the first books that I bought for myself with my own money was The Complete Poems of Robert Frost. I loved the nature imagery that his name evoked -- frosty windows in our old and marginally-insulated house; crumbling stone fences in a snowy field, the naked limbs of trees reaching to the slate winter sky. To me, Robert Frost invoked magic, so I bought the book, fully believing that one day I would be a poet much like he was. Inside I found the one poem of his with which I was slightly familiar - 'The Road Not Taken," of course - and after memorizing that one I dove headfirst into this book and became obsessed with Frost and his poetry, finding a new favorite in "Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening." Years later, I would find myself teaching this haunting poem to college undergrads, sparking intense conversations on the meaning of the last two lines. The mystery is compelling. To this day, this is one of my most favorite poems. I still own this book, now battered and torn, chewed by a rabbit, and yellowed with age.

Growing up, I was not incredibly interested in the popular books that my friends and classmates were reading, but was enamored by the stories and poems of people long gone who had unique insights about the world that I was navigating. When I was twelve years old, for example, I read Les Miserables, simply because I was fascinated by the sheer size of the book and the fact that it was old. Surely a book that size must contain a really amazing story, especially considering how long it had been around! While I skipped many sections that were in French, and I am sure that I did not understand the French Revolution bit, I finished that book lying under the front desk at my father's record shop, and I knew that I had just entered a new phase of my life, one in which literature would play a pivotal role. This would not have been possible without my deep love for old books, and the bookshop that made them accessible to me.

I wanted to create a classics section at Skylark that would have been exactly what I needed as a young teenager trying to figure out how literature would play a role in my life. I always knew that it would, but felt directionless when it came to buying these old classics, and I wanted a section for that person -- someone who had no idea what they were looking for, but who wanted to see what was available to someone interested in these ages-old texts. Our new classics section, affectionately titled "oldies but goodies," is curated for the curious, for the wanderer, for the dreamer. I wanted to create a section that someone with little to no knowledge of the literary canon could stand in front of and stare at in awe and excitement - a section that could change a life the way that the Waldenbooks' classics section did for me.

It was at this Waldenbooks that I eventually purchased Walden, the book that would influence the entire trajectory of my life and career path. The importance of that 90s mall bookstore deserves to be paid forward to the next generation of literary questioners. (I have promises to keep.) Come by and check out our new classics section in the shop. We are continuing to bring in new titles regularly, so you will see it fill out even more over time. If there is a title that you realize you never read but feel like you should, or if you just find comfort and excitement thinking about the thinkers and writers of the past, this section is for you. If you are curious about the world as it was, and appalled at how little some things have changed, this section is definitely for you. If you have no idea what it is that you like, but you feel drawn to these older texts for reasons you can not quite explain, this section is especially for you, my friend. May you find your Walden in these stacks.

With miles to go before I sleep, I wish you all happy reading.