Bookmiser, the new and used bookstore in Marietta, Ga., that suffered extensive smoke and soot damage in October from a fire at the business next door, reopened last weekend after a five-month hiatus, during which shopping had been limited to online or pop-up sales.
"Customers rolling in Saturday for a reopening event at the Bookmiser independent bookstore saw a whole new space," East Cobb News reported. "There was new flooring, rearranged bookshelves, and more open space for events... Nearly half of the store's book inventory had been damaged or destroyed, and the interior structure sustained heavy soot and smoke damage." Co-owner Annell Gerson and "her staff, along with volunteers, packed up the remaining books for storage, remediation efforts gutted what remained."
"They took out everything. Down to the cinder blocks," said Gerson, who has operated the bookstore with her husband since 2010. She added that the look and feel of the store is new and inviting, but the process took longer than she wanted it to.
Gerson and her staff, along with volunteers, packed up books in November for the temporary closure. East Cobb News noted that she had updated customers on a regular basis, and urged them to shop at Bookshop.org and Libro.fm.
"We got some benefit from that, and we saw a lot of people supporting us," she said. Pop-ups at a nearby storage facility also helped, as did local book club events. Bookmiser now offers less nonfiction than it did previously. "We're not going to have as many books as we did before," she said, noting that "a finely curated inventory is our goal."
During the reopening, Gerson was greeted warmly by customers with hugs, and she later remarked that there were "so many people, so many friends" who came by, East Cobb News wrote. "They just wanted to connect, to feed their love of books."