[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 5]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 5993-5994]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         BOOKSELLER OF THE YEAR--HONORING A VERMONT INSTITUTION

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                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 25, 2006

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend Northshire Books, honored 
as this year's Bookseller of The Year. The selection and award was made 
by Publisher's Weekly.
  Northshire Books is located in the small town of Manchester, Vermont. 
Owned by Ed and Barbara Morrow, it is a wonderful example of a locally-
owned bookstore. It boasts a handsome environment for browsing books 
and a huge selection of titles. The selection it carries is not chosen 
by corporate giants seeking maximum sales, or by a central office 
following national trends. Quite the contrary, Northshire's wonderful 
inventory of books is the result of the informed knowledge of its 
staff: people who read and value books.
  Northshire Books regularly presents readings by authors, allowing it 
to serve as a rich cultural resource for all of southwestern Vermont. 
It introduces young people to reading, through its fine children's 
section, and ``Story times'' for young readers.
  Vermont authors value this wonderful store. ``Northshire is 
everything one could want in a bookstore,'' said Vermont novelist Chris 
Bohjalian. ``It's a huge gift to the state.'' And best-selling novelist 
John Irving agreed: ``What's remarkable about the quality and range of 
the Northshire Bookstore is that Manchester isn't a college town, or 
even a very big town, yet the store is both broad and deep--it is 
literary, friendly to children, and welcoming to tourists. I love the 
place.'' Novelist Howard Frank Mosher said, ``Every time I walk through 
there, the first thing I see is a dozen or so of my favorite 
contemporary novels and non-fiction books. He continued, ``Then, the 
booksellers that the Morrows have hired over the years are, I think, 
the most knowledgeable booksellers I've ever met. They've actually read 
the books they sell and know an enormous amount about them.''
  Northshire has not been purely commercial. In 2003 its owners 
sponsored ``Cry Out: Poets Protest the War,'' a collection of the anti-
war

[[Page 5994]]

poems were read by eleven renowned poets, including Galway Kinnell, 
Grace Paley and Jamaica Kincaid, to an overflow crowd of 500 in 
Manchester's First Congregational Church. That event was announced 
after the White House canceled a poetry reading out of a fear that 
poems critical of the war in Iraq might be read. The poems read were 
subsequently published by Braziller. And when the Patriot Act 
eliminated reader privacy--making it easy for investigators to check 
bookstore purchases without judicial oversight--Northshire actively 
opposed the law with American Booksellers Foundation for Free 
Expression. As a result, a petition with 185,000 signatures was sent to 
Congress, asking that it restore protections for reader privacy which 
were eliminated by Section 215 of the act.
  Small, local business is the heart of the American economy. Local 
bookstores are, and have been ever since the times of Benjamin Franklin 
(a bookshop owner), a center of American learning. Congratulations to 
Northshire bookstore, to owners Ed and Barbara Morrow, to its manager 
Chris Morrow, to its staff, and to its dedicated and supportive 
patrons.

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