Adams Walls of Books stands out in a time of corporate booksellers

One of Columbia’s longest-running businesses is also among its least lucrative.

In the sign plastered above its display window, Adams Walls of Books is missing a critical “O,” the first one of “Books.” The front door is battered, its paint flaking off and its overall health lacking. Business hours are exclusively 1-4 p.m. on Saturdays. Herein lies the character of owner Nancy Duncan’s bookstore - a quirky reader's haven whose dilapidated physical structure belies a successful family-owned business.

The history

The two passageways are stocked primarily with classic works and authors. Noam Chomsky stares down Ayn Rand from the opposite bookshelf. Charles Bukowski’s boozy words are juxtaposed with the more proper 19th- and 18th-century British literature a row over. Doris Lessing and Ursula Le Guin sit side by side. Shakespeare looms as Saul Bellow, Zora Neale Hurston, Graham Greene and Jack Kerouac display their distinction.

It’s hard to believe this immense amassment began in earnest with a personal collection of natural history and ornithology texts belonging to Duncan’s father, the store’s previous owner.

Ira Adams was the store’s original owner in the 1920s. During his tenure, it was known as Adams Jewelry. It has been passed down for generations, from her grandfather, Ira Adams, to her father, Ike Adams, to her.

Under Ike Adams, whose time at the helm lasted 57 years, the shop was known as Adams Books and Hobbies and later Adams Walls of Books. Part of its merchandise included firearms. Duncan, who assumed ownership in 2002, kept the name Adams Walls of Books.

The guns, stamps, jewelry and knick-knacks are gone. The words remain.

“I think I’ve changed the character in the customer base from what my dad had," Duncan said. "He had more of a middle-aged male crowd, which was maybe a hangover from when he sold guns and stamps and coins. My average customer is male but much younger. I sell a lot more fiction and literature and art and music.”

When Duncan’s mother died, Ike Adams grieved for a while and closed his store temporarily. Duncan convinced him to come to the shop for short periods of time on Saturdays, explaining the enduring odd hours. While she was in the process of helping her father, she caught what she calls “the book bug.”

While it has undergone minor alterations, Adams Walls of Books is a Columbia mainstay. Duncan admits to having an idiosyncratic business model and acknowledges the store’s connection to the community, noting a vibrant downtown sporting more than “Applebee’s and Barnes & Noble.”

Adams Walls of Books is bursting with heart. It also happens to be Duncan’s lifeblood.

“You have to have an interest in life,” Duncan said. “I’m retired, and I can’t tell you how many people I see who retire and don’t do anything. I can’t imagine doing that. But I also can’t imagine what I would be doing if I wasn’t buying books. To me, I look at it as something that’s kept me moving and grooving.”

“It's a personal vested interest for me … it’s my thing,” Duncan added.

The business

Standing in the shadow of the Boone County Courthouse and adjacent to The Social Room, Adams Walls of Books on 214 N. Eighth St. has been upright since 1926, though Duncan admits she's unsure of the exact year of its opening and feels more confident saying "the 1920s."

To what does Duncan owe her business's continued existence?

“I own the building,” Duncan said. The resulting low overhead doesn't hurt.

But money, she says, is beside the point. Outside buyers have attempted to lift Duncan’s real estate from her multiple times. She’s not selling until “I’m tired of it or I’m through,” she said. “The day that I hesitate is the day I'll have to sit down and think.”

Thus far, though, it’s been a blanket “no” from Duncan to anyone who wants to acquire the store. Still, she admits to the appeal of selling everything and retiring to the warmth of a location like Florida.

Duncan bemoans booksellers whose only motivation is money. She criticizes “scanners” who walk around events such as book auctions with scanners brandished, solely seeking the value of each product.

“Their only drive is profit,” Duncan said. “They buy this humongous amount of books, then ship them off to huge online book people.”

Duncan does not have eye-grabbing book sections with signs. She merely has books - more than 60,000 of them. The books are held by bookshelves that tower to the ceiling, then piled on top of those bookshelves and nestled between them, and stowed in back of Duncan’s desk, and on the floor, and stored in the depths of a hallway that no one can access without her help.

Today, the book market is more competitive than it was in the past. E-books have complicated matters: According to Forbes, e-books account for more than 20 percent of overall book sales. The Open Education Database reports that bookstore sales have decreased by 9.6 percent since 2007, when they reached $17.18 billion.

The most books Duncan gained in a short period of time was near the millennium.

“There was a windfall period 15 years ago,” Duncan said. “It was a windfall period because it was much easier to sell books. It was before people were buying books online.”

Still, Duncan says she's lucky to be based in Columbia, because a book business can thrive in a big university town. Fall is a popular time for Adams Walls of Books, Duncan said. There are always consistent customers, whom Duncan “very much appreciates.” She considers the shop a destination store, because you have to pocket that time on Saturday to come.

A few years ago, a professor in an MU English class informed their students they could go to Adams Walls of Books to get their assigned readings, Duncan said. One student asked what establishment the professor was referring to. “It’s the secret bookstore,” another student replied.

“There are those who know and those who don't know,” Duncan said.

The Saturday shift

Duncan unloads a couple boxes from her car at 12:55 p.m. She steps outside and waves to a man waiting in a nearby parking lot who obediently files into the store. Turns out, they used to be neighbors, and he didn’t know until recently she was the owner.

Whether a customer knows Duncan or doesn’t, she is open to banter about literature, politics, religion or the weather. Her wide-ranging interests are reflected in some of the sections in the store: Caves, Nautical, Jewish History, Indiana History, Mountaineering, Horses and Pirates and Treasure, among others.

“When I come in here, it’s like a treasure hunt,” James Foster, a customer since 1990, said. “Typically it’s history, philosophy and then just anything that catches my eye, like Eastern religion books. I just have an eclectic interest and this bookstore - it covers all the angles.”

“Other bookstores, it’s like a commando raid. I’ll know what I want and I’ll get out,” he said. “Here, I’ll sit inside for an hour or two or three and just kind of root around.”

Michael Mattia, a veterinary student at MU and steady customer, is an example of a buyer Duncan caters to.

“I’m looking for anything about my historical interests, and I also collect Everyman’s Library,” Mattia said. “I only found out about this store this August, but I lived here for two years, and when I finally found out it was here and it was open one day a week I said, 'Wow, I probably missed a lot of neat stuff over the course of the last two years.'"

A collector herself, Duncan believes she caught the gene from her family. She can’t resist “the lure of the hunt.”

“Everyone collects something,” Duncan said. “A lot of people collect every edition of one book. As a kid I was a collector. I collected rocks, coins, baseball cards.”

The more expensive collector’s books are behind the counter. Customers must ask Duncan to see one if they’re interested, and some are her personal favorites. “If you sell it, you don’t have it anymore,” Duncan said.

Duncan’s least favorites are straightforward. Someone donated a litany of Sarah Palin books to her, and she disliked them so much she wished she could eradicate them from existence.

“I’m going to buy them all just to get rid of them,” she joked.

Duncan doesn't know everything about every book.

"There's just no way you can know it all," she said. "That realization kind of culminated for me in the adrenaline rush you get when you go out to buy books. Also, I wasn’t financially dependent upon it, so I didn't feel stress that way.”

This is a place for people who live to read, and Duncan is its exemplar. When she has “reader’s block” and can’t find a book she likes, she resorts to Mark Twain and nonfiction writing. She doesn’t discriminate between modern and older books, and, of course, she has those books that spawn “a need to read repeatedly.”

It’s 4 p.m. all too quickly, and Foster is the last to leave. Duncan has asked each customer - all eight of them - if she can help with their search. She has spoken openly with most, and she has inevitably heard the quiet conversations in the aisles. The store's size makes it impossible not to hear every word and impossible not to meet new people.

Adams Walls of Books becomes silent once the door creaks shut behind Duncan. It’ll reopen in six days and 21 hours.

Supervising editor is Ron Stodghill.