The plan was coffee and a quick lap around a Nebraska downtown, nothing more. Then a narrow storefront with a cat asleep in the window pulled me in, and two hours disappeared between shelves stacked clear to the ceiling.
Somewhere in a basement room packed with history titles, I stopped checking my phone entirely. Some places quietly take the whole afternoon, and you hand it over without much of a fight.
A Narrow Storefront on Lincoln’s 14th Street
Traffic on 14th Street rolls past the University of Nebraska campus and a row of downtown storefronts, which makes it easy to blow right by a doorway this narrow. A Novel Idea Bookstore holds a slim spot in that stretch of Lancaster County, selling mostly used books with a steady supply of new ones mixed in.
The front window does most of the advertising. A cat tree sits in the sunlight there, usually occupied, and behind it the shelves start climbing…