Starbooks

For better or for worse, Starbucks coffeehouses have become America's cultural outposts. Once you're out of America's urban centers, at least in the North East, there's town after town filled with nothing but strip malls and chain stores. In places where there's a Quiznos, Pizza Huts and Starbucks, Starbucks is only place you'll see someone crack a book.

In a way, it's heartening that there's an emerging book-friendly space like that in WalMart America. What's somewhat disconcerting is the cultural monopoly Starbucks could reap. If America wasn't growing increasingly averse to reading, there could be a serious danger that Starbucks would be in a position to dictate what America reads. And apparently, they realize that.

The burnt coffee ground giant is going to start selling books.

Well, one book: For One More Day, the latest by Oprah book club veteran and author of The Five People You Meet in Heaven and Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom. According to its Amazon description, the book "is the story of a mother and a son, and a relationship that covers a lifetime and beyond. It explores the question: What would you do if you could spend one more day with a lost loved one?" The book, which sounds like a companion piece to Tuesdays with Morrie, will no doubt require some 45 tear-absorbent tissues to crack the first chapter. Albom will also appear at a number of Starbucks stores on his book tour promoting the book.

Starbucks, who is already in the book business, via owning Seattle's Best Coffee, which has hundreds of locations in Border's Books and Music stores. Unlike Borders, Starbucks is only going to be offering one book, at least at first. Until they introduce more, which they may or may not do, For One More Day is going to be the literary representative of Starbucks. For lack of other options, the book's contents will represent the brand.

How awesome would it be if other chain restaurants picked a book to represent them? I'm thinking Ya Basta! Ten Years of the Zapatista Uprising by Subcomandante Marcos for Taco Bell. Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five would probably work at any burger joint just for the title, but there's something particularly fitting about it for McDonald's, I think. Burger King should have some dusty tome on the feudal system. Roy Roger's could offer a full range of Louis L'Amour, or offer Annie Proulx's story collection Close Range, which includes the original short story "Brokeback Mountain," in the interest of offering multicultural cowboy lit.

Wendy's has to therefore offer Gravity's Rainbow. Because somebody really should.

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/news/all/17598/Starbooks/