The Literary Love of My Life

by

John J. Dunphy

I found this while going through my personal archives. It’s one of the business cards I had printed when I acquired The Second Reading Book Shop in 1987. Seeing it made me so proud and happy because it identified me as the book shop’s new owner.

Founded as Crivello’s Book Shop in the Fall of 1979, this literary treasure was located at 117 Market Street on Lincoln-Douglas Square as the card notes. I learned of its existence from an article Jim Kulp wrote about it for The Telegraph shortly after it opened and began stopping by on a regular basis. 117 Market was a small building — at one time it had been a barber shop — but Mike had crammed it floor to ceiling with used books. Mike was a true bibliophile and made the book shop a warm, welcoming place for everyone who entered the place.

I nicknamed it “The Intellectual Mecca of Metro East” and told Mike it deserved to be so known since it was a place for all the great minds of this region to gather for the purpose of acquiring intellectual sustenance. Crivello’s Book Shop, I insisted, should be as sacred to bibliophiles as Mecca is for Muslims. Mike always got a kick out of that.

Yes, it was located on Lincoln-Douglas Square, but the site had no life-size statues of those long-ago politicians. It was essentially a huge parking lot with a bus stop thrown in for good measure. Even the sidewalk in front of the book shop left much to be desired. It was cracked and broken. One hole was so large that some of Mike’s friends told him they were going to plant flowers in it and name it Crivello Park.

For me, however, Crivello’s Book Shop was a palace of knowledge where I was sure to find at least one book that I simply had to buy. It was also a nonjudgmental, welcoming place for me and other community members who didn’t fit in. 1979 and the early 1980s were not a good time for me. I wasn’t in school, didn’t hold a regular job and had not yet begun to write poetry and prose for publication. In short, I was a nobody. I had nothing going for me. At Crivello’s Book Shop, it didn’t matter. I was accepted as I was.

Mike sold the book shop in 1985. That’s when it became The Second Reading. I acquired the business in 1987, the fourth proprietor in its history. And I had these business cards printed up. The phone number listed on it didn’t connect an interested party with me at the book shop, however. It was my home number. The book shop has a phone in Mike’s day, but it was disconnected when he sold the place. I finally had a phone reinstalled. The number I was assigned is still the book shop’s number: 618–462–2830.

I was just 25 when I first walked through the door of Crivello’s Book Shop in the Fall of 1979. On December 8, 2025, I turned 72. This book shop didn’t just give me an occupation. It gave me a life.

In addition to owning a book shop, John J. Dunphy is a writer and poet.