‘Hello, Bookstore’ Review: A Document of the Independent Bookstore as Oasis

variety.com:

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticThere are times in nonfiction film when daring — and magic — arrives in a surprisingly simple and quiet way. “Hello, Bookstore” is a documentary about a venerable and beloved independent bookstore in Lenox, Mass.

The place is called The Bookstore, and it first opened its doors in 1973. Ever since 1976, it has been owned and operated by Matthew Tannenbaum, a tall, solicitous, eccentric, engagingly garrulous lover of stories and words and literature who ritually answers the phone with a jaunty nerdish “Hello, bookstore!” Handsome in an eagle-ish way, with an easy smile and a full mop of gray curls, Tannenbaum, in his mid-70s, has the look and attitude of a debonair English professor, but he’s a more modest mensch than that — a boomer bibliophile without a glint of pretension, one who happily spends his days stocking shelves, poring over invoices he should have digitized years ago, and chatting away with his customers, which as often as not means trying to hook each of them up with the perfect book for them.

Independent bookstores are often places of enticing nooks and crannies, but The Bookstore is a large, rather plain one-room affair laid out like an elegant overstuffed rectangle, with a cream-colored tin ceiling, hanging globe lamps, a pair of bronze ceiling fans, and each side of the room lined with books, plus the occasional poster of someone like Kafka.

In an enclave off to one side, there is even a wine bar named Get Lit (Tannenbaum: “Our motto is you can’t drink all day unless you start in the morning”).