There’s been quite a bit of buzz about Garrison Keillor’s new bookstore in St. Paul, which, after much neighborhood and media anticipation, opened yesterday.

The bookstore, known as Common Good Books, is considered to be a powerful boost to both community building and economic development. June Berkowitz, operator of nearby Nina’s Coffee Shop, was already noticing the increased traffic.

Northfield is lucky, we didn’t need Garrison’s money to start up an independent bookstore; we’ve already got one. It’s called River City Books and it was started up by one of our own community building and economic development contributors, Carleton College. I view it as one of the beacons of vitality for downtown Northfield.

The store is open in the evenings and on Sundays, always has a variety of fascinating new and bargain books and will order any book you want, getting it to you about as quickly as Amazon and without the shipping charges. It’s a great store and we at the NDDC truly appreciate Carleton’s investment in our community and our economy.

River City Books provides a cornerstone of literature to the north end of Division Street, along with the Northfield Public Libary, while Monkey See, Monkey Read and Bookfellows provide the supports to the south. We are indeed a lucky town.

So, visit one of these four outposts of literacy today. Read to your children tonight, share the joy of a pleasureable passage with a loved one, or curl up with a hot read on a cold night by yourself. And remember how fortunate we are that books are so available here in Northfield.