City Lights Bookstore

This is a message to wish all of you a peaceful and joyful holiday season and to thank you for your support over the past year.

But it is also a message to share with you some significant changes that are taking place here at City Lights.  As of the beginning of the new year Allen and I will be selling the business to Chris Wilcox.  Chris is a long-time employee and a person that most of you know as a dedicated, helpful and knowledgeable bookseller.  I cannot imagine anyone more suited to navigating the future of bookselling than Chris.

When Allen and I bought the business from Gary Carden in 1986, it would have been impossible to imagine how different our business and community would be 23 years later. It is amazing to look back and remember a bookselling world with no computers, no big box stores and no Amazon.  But with your help and support, we have managed to weather those changes and many more – including the big move from Main Street to the current location in Dr. Ralph Morgan’s old clinic on the hill.  

Chris and his employees will also be facing many changes.  Some are beginning to affect not only the face of the bookselling world, but even the book itself.  It will take hard work, a constant acquisition of new information, flexibility and most of all, your continuing support to carry City Lights into the new decade.  

Many independent bookstores across the country are closing in these economic hard times, but you have continued to say with your dollars that having a real bookstore in Sylva is important to you.  It is essential that you continue that commitment, not only to City Lights, but to all the independent businesses in downtown Sylva.

Being a friend and neighbor to you has been an important and satisfying part of my life during the past two decades.  I want to thank you for allowing me to share many of your own personal stories as well as the stories in the books on our shelves.  I have often said that you must be the best customers of any store in town.  All of us have to go to the grocery store, but only some choose to buy and read books.  

Over the years, I have been fortunate to work with a staff of people who share my love of books and commitment to the community.  City Lights could not have survived without their support. 

I wish I could thank individually all the authors and musicians and artists who have visited City Lights over the years to share their work, their songs, their books and their lives with us.  These creative folks and those of you who have come to meet them and share their stories have been and will continue to be the heart of the bookstore.

As I begin my 66th year and a new decade, I feel the need to slow and simplify my own life, but I believe that I am leaving the store in capable hands, well suited to dealing with the evolving complexities of the bookselling world. 

With much gratitude and best wishes,

Joyce