I like big books... and I cannot lie...
Selfie outside The Iliad.
As a dorky kid in Ohio, most of my greatest adventures began by opening up a book. With Jack London's help, I drove a dogsled and panned for gold in the Yukon gold rush. Thanks to Tolkien, I traveled out of The Shire, met elves, partied with dwarves, and fought a dragon. Later I traveled with Frodo much farther, to rid Middle Earth of Bilbo's ring. You get the idea. Every avid reader knows that adventures in the mind can be nearly as fulfilling as real life adventures.
When I first moved to North Hollywood in 1991, because I got a job at a small video duplicating business, I soon found this amazing used book store on the corner of Vineland and Lankershim. It was right next to Odyssey Video, a huge, mom and pop video store. So it was a one stop spot for pre-internet media. I loved those places.
My dad was an avid reader when I was a kid, mostly diving into spy novels and westerns. I took more to non-fiction, myself, but became a serious bookworm as well.
The "new" Iliad book shop, 5400 Cahuenga, North Hollywood, CA.
My dad was one of those guys who would stay in the bathroom for a long time, reading. If you had to go, and you knocked on the door, he'd always say, "I'll be out in a chapter." While I didn't spend that much time reading the bathroom, I did spend a lot of time reading. In a family that was more dysfunctional than most, reading was a great escape. In that environment, escape was necessary. I kept reading voluminously as a young adult, turning my attention to business, personal development, religion, philosophy, and any book I thought might help me work through my personal issues. In a lot of ways, books were a huge part of me ultimately becoming a person who now reads less, is much less shy, and has more real life adventures, than written, mental ones. OK, they're often not adventures I planned on taking, but adventures none-the-less. Now I write more than I read. Full circle.
When I landed back up here in this corner of the San Fernando Valley last Fall, I took a bus past the former site of The Iliad and Odyssey Video, to see they had closed down. I was bummed. I spent some great hours wandering in those stores, nearly 30 years ago.
I don't have the infantile vision of heaven and hell they taught us in Sunday school as a kid, these days. But if there really was a location called heaven, I'd imagine it something like this. Aisles and aisles of tall shelves, packed somewhat haphazardly with books of all kinds, where I could wander endlessly, read, and hang out, for all eternity.
A couple of months ago, I was talking with someone, I think it was another homeless guy at McDonald's. I mentioned something about The Iliad Book shop closing down. He said, "They didn't close, they moved." I was stoked. By the time I remembered to look the shop up, the Covid-19 shutdown was in full effect. So I found their location, and made a pact to go find the shop when I could. A couple of days ago, I finally made the trip.
I took the 237 bus up to Vineland and Magnolia, then walked up to the bike path a bit north. I walked a half mile or so east on the path. During that walk, I passed a whole bunch of murals I didn't know existed, which were cool. When I hit Cahuenga, I could see The Iliad, caddy-corner across the street.
I spent a good two hours or so wandering the shop. In a weird twist, I had two or three business oriented books in mind to find. The public library doesn't have the business books I most want to read, and new books are so expensive to buy. But The Iliad doesn't have a business book section. What they do have is super high shelves of paperbacks, thousands of novels of all kinds. They also have a completely insane amount of books on everything creative. This end of The Valley, the Burbank, North Hollywood, Studio City area, is the "real Hollywood," where TV shows, movies, and music get made, more than anywhere in the world. So there are art books, photo books, design books, TV books, Film books, music books. The collection is simply astounding. The huge, coffee table books are the best bargains, many dollars off their original price. I will be back at The Iliad at a regular basis, from now on. If you are a bookworm as well, and live in, or visit this area, check out The Iliad book shop, it's an epic used book store. The website link is in a caption above.
Neat looking place!
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