About Ada

Ada Books is closing in August in Providence, Rhode Island after 13 years of operation. Brian Legault is the owner. It’s a particularly well-curated store — they advertise plenty of zines and I later picked up a John McPhee book and a copy of Astounding Science Fiction from 1954 for two bucks; someone writing for Bookslut noted how well curated the selection was in 2009 — and the combination of such a specific store sitting next to White Electric Coffee across the street from a high school defines the near-beginning of Federal Hill well.

I visited near the end of July. Heavy metal guitar licks play off a speaker perched in the background to compliment Legault’s work sweeping the floors and nearly overwhelm the quality of the audio recording our chat. When we sit down to chat, he’s wearing a black-and-white t-shirt done up a bit like the shirt of a heavy metal or punk band fond of Mad Magazine from the 80’s that reads, “READING IS FUN!”

The reason why Legault closing is clear: he can’t make enough money selling books. And he’s a bookseller in every sense of the word: not only did he talk for a moment about the idea of raising his kid in the bookstore (“He had two years here, and he loves books. He especially loves to play with books as physical objects — and read, obviously, but …”), but he also cares about the details, too.

That comes out when he talks about some of his favorite things at the store being “little things, stupid things, like, expediting some books, you know — pricing or putting them away, which is really boring to most…