I got a little thrill this afternoon when I clicked on a link in the sidebar of the New York Times site, “In the Valley of the Literate”, and was confronted with a big picture of the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

The Odyssey is right across the street from Mount Holyoke College, my alma mater. It’s a big, lovely independent bookstore (the biggest in western Massachusetts, apparently) which has, amazingly, been around for almost 45 years. I spent many an hour in the Odyssey as a student. I also spent many a dollar in there; despite having more than enough books to read for my classes, I could never resist the temptation of some shiny new tome or other. I remember feeling terribly sophisticated and intellectual as I purchased my bilingual copies of Rilke and Baudelaire in there.

The New York Times article is largely about all of the book-related events which take place in the Pioneer Valley, that stretch of western Massachusetts along the Connecticut River which is home not only to Mount Holyoke College, but also Smith College, Amherst College, Hampshire College and the University of Massachusetts. The article describes the Pioneer Valley as “arguably the most author-saturated, book-cherishing, literature-celebrating place in the nation”, which would make sense considering the Valley’s incredibly high concentration of outstanding institutions of higher education.

I have to admit that I don’t remember attending many book-related events while I was studying in the Valley. In fact, it’s only since moving to Brighton that I’ve gone to see a number of author readings, thanks mostly to City Books just around the corner from me. But during my years at Mount Holyoke, I certainly spent a lot of my time lingering in bookstores and bookstore/cafés, as one is wont to do as a student.

Besides the Odyssey, I often frequented a bookstore and café called the Haymarket in Northampton, which was always slightly hipper-than-thou but a really cool place nonetheless. I particularly recall one night at the Haymarket when my friend Suzanne and I lingered so long to ogle the cute barista that we missed the last bus back to Mount Holyoke and went to UMass instead, where I had to wake up a friend to drive us back to school in the middle of the night (he wasn’t terribly pleased). Fun times. The Web tells me that the Haymarket now has free WiFi, which means it’s probably even harder to get a seat in there now than it was back when I was a student.

Another really special bookstore around those parts is the Book Mill in Montague. The Book Mill is exactly the type of place you would expect to find in the Massachusetts countryside: a bookshop housed in a 19th-century mill on the banks of a river, with comfy sofas, a café and a whole lot of second-hand books. I have a vivid recollection of whiling away a chilly autumn afternoon at the Book Mill, the scent of coffee drifting up from the café, the wooden floorboards squeaking as I clomped around the bookshelves. I didn’t go to the Book Mill terribly often because you needed a car to get to it, but in my memory it’s one of the best bookshops ever, similar in feel to the fantastic Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle. I see now that the Book Mill sells merchandise with an absolutely brilliant slogan: “Books you don’t need in a place you can’t find”. I think I’m gonna have to buy a tote bag from them.

Reading about all these bookstores has made me rather nostalgic for my college days, and for the Pioneer Valley. I wonder what it would be like going back there now. Would it be as idyllic as it is in my memories? I suspect that if the day was crisp and bright, with the New England trees in their full autumnal glory, and I was sitting in a cozy corner of the Book Mill with a steamy latte and a big old book, it would be.