In her article (“Libraries among the endangered species,” Aug. 11), Malory Ensor talks about students having to travel as far as San Luis and Santa Barbara to find such books as Farewell to Manzanar and A Separate Peace, which are on their required summer reading lists for school. What saddens me is that these students and Malory are unaware of a bookstore in their hometown that had these books stocked on their shelves all summer long.
Bendele Books, located at 704 S. McClelland, right across the street from the Discovery Museum in Santa Maria, has been in business for six years and carries all the books students need for their required reading lists. If they happen to not have a book in stock, they can order it from their Oregon warehouse and have it in their store within 48 hours. This sounds a lot easier to me than driving to San Luis or even Santa Barbara.
Bendele Books was the cover story of your September 2010 issue, yet Malory failed to even mention them in her article. With a great resource like Bendele Books, and the lack of other bookstores in the area, Malory should have made this information available to those reading this article so that in the future, nobody has to drive 30 minutes to an hour for books that are sitting on shelves five to 10 minutes away.
This article appears in Sep 1-8, 2011.
