Amicable and down to earth, Faith Bell sipped tea in the rare book room that doubles as a lunch room at Bell's Books.
Bell took a moment to consider a question about the 70-year-old family business that sells antiquated, rare and used books. What is the most significant thing she's learned from all the texts?
"The broadness of human endeavor," said Bell, 50. "Right in this room, we have things going back almost 500 years. When you're handling books, you're handling the range of human knowledge."
It's been quite a summer for bookseller Bell. First, there was the state district Small Business of the Year award, which Bell received from state Sen. Joe Simitian in June. Then on Aug. 5, Bell's Books celebrated its 70th year with an anniversary bash that included cars and live music by a Dixieland band.
"Your family can be here for years and years, like mine has, but you don't really take time to step back and see what that really means," she said. On anniversary day, she found out. More than 400 people from three generations jammed the Emerson Street bookstore, sharing memories of the place where they bonded with books.
Bell's Books is a lot like being in a wealthy old uncle's personal library, with soaring shelves of books and tall ladders to reach them. Herbert Bell, an English literature teacher, opened the bookstore in 1935. The store sold college textbooks to students, and was situated on University Avenue in the building where Blockbuster now sits, Bell said.
Bell's branched out into used, rare and antiquarian books in the early 1950s, Barbara Worl, who has worked at Bell's for 55 years said. "There was no bookstore selling college texts at that time. He also had import buyers from big companies in the East come out and buy up books at the end of the school year. He started buying up other used books as a way to spread out doing business throughout the year. He bought up libraries; some things turned out to be rare," Worl said.
The used, rare and antiquated books are what Bell's is well-known for today. Textbooks now make up only a tiny fraction of the 150,000 books on its shelves. Many of the rare libraries of books are offered to Bell's by people who contact the bookstore, Worl added.
The rarest works include 16th century treatises on medicine and scarce 17th century herbals with botanical woodcuts, printed on handmade linen rag paper and illuminated manuscripts of 15th century antiphonals (music performed in cathedrals). There are also collectables, such as John Steinbeck's letters, signed limited editions of works by Joseph Conrad, Jack London and Wallace Stegner and the books of one's childhood, drawing in generations of book lovers, such as first edition copies of the "Wizard of Oz." But there are also plenty of new books including books for children, on poetry, gardening, architecture and cooking.
As a teenager, Faith Bell feather-dusted the towering edifices of rare, used and antiquarian books in her parents' bookstore. But she left the store at age 18, moving to a farm in the Canadian Rockies foothills, where she and husband Christopher Storer raised a herd of 120 goats and a family. But when her dad, Herbert, became ill with leukemia, Faith -- then 28 -- her husband and children moved back to Palo Alto to manage the bookstore.
Three generations of the Bell family have worked at the store through the years. Valeria Bell, the family matriarch, now 78, spent hours as a Stanford student nestled in a corner of the bookstore. Drawn to an obscure religious treatise, she read it over and over, trying to decide if she could afford to buy it on a student's stipend. Herbert Bell let her bond with the book and she eventually bought it, Valeria said. She still has a soft spot for students who longingly peruse books they want to possess but can ill afford, and prides herself at keeping the store a place where generations can still bond with books.
Besides Faith and Valeria, Bell's small staff currently comprises two knowledgeable women: Barbara Worl is a noted old rose specialist and horticultural book buyer; and Sally Lutz is a retired children's librarian, who helps make children's book purchases. Christopher, Faith's husband, helps out on weekends.
The Internet has had a "huge" impact on the family-run Bell's, daughter Faith conceded. But she maintains the Web doesn't give people the experience of touching the intricately tooled leather of a 250-year-old book; or of running a finger over the delicate grooves of a finely engraved children's book illustration -- to "taste" so many books, as Valeria said.
Bell's still doesn't computerize its 150,000 volume inventory. The bookstore relies on an efficient system of shelving -- and the storehouse of staff knowledge -- to find books in 500 categories for everyone from the casual browser to Nobel laureates. In this business, they need to know something about everything, according to Bell. "In a given day, you might be asked about the best translator for Dostoyevsky, or the best recipe for spanakopita," she said.
Asked if the bookstore is a viable business, Faith laughed, shaking her flowing, silver hair emphatically. "It's not -- it's just not," she said. "But it isn't all business. You can have passions."
Staff Writer Sue Dremann can be e-mailed at sdremann@paweekly.com.
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