You Take the Highbrow, I’ll Take the Lowbrow

Last night, I went to heaven. My husband Duke and I were driving back from dinner, when he offered to take me “someplace I’d like.” I was suspicious because this usually means a trip to a pick-your-part auto graveyard, but he parked in front of a big cheery neon marquee that topped an immense book-filled pavilion. It was the Santa Monica branch of BookStar, a nationwide chain of snazzy discount bookstores owned by Barnes & Noble.

Instantly, I was transfixed. BookStar is roomy and appealing in a clean, theme-park kind of way. The sections might well be called: “Literatureland,” “Designland,” “HealthLand,” “New Ageland,” “Science Fictionland” or “Kiddieland” (complete with little tables and chairs). The plush grey carpets are festooned with colorful scribbles and the shopper is guided by orange neon signs. I wandered aimlessly, overwhelmed by 150,000 titles: everything from “The Complete Works of Aristotle” to a biography of Tracy Austin to a paper doll book of George Bush (in jockey underwear) and his family.

Curiously, my husband was contented too. The family high-brow, he favors seedy used bookstores filled with mildewed tomes by people I’ve seldom heard of who write about things I really don’t want to know about. (A quick nightable comparison reveals the shameful truth. My side has “Among the Porcupines,” “Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook,” and “Waiting to Exhale,” while his has “Plagues and People,” Borges stories in Spanish, and “Quaternary Extinctions.”) At BookStar, “Historyland” contains more than the routine 1000 accounts of World War II and a pop-up guide to Aircraft of the World. Eventually, I bumped into Duke, who was hauling Beaglehole’s “Life Of Captain James Cook” (760 pages) and “The Isma’ilis, Their History and Doctrine” (803 pages). “Look honey,” he said happily, “A history of the order of assassins with a complete list of old men of the mountain.”

Around 11 p.m., my husband dragged me away from “How To Open and Operate a Bed and Breakfast At Home.” The store was closing, but I hadn’t finished the chapter on “How To Screen Guests.”

I’ll just have to go back to heaven tomorrow.

BookStar, 1234 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica; (310)-576-7992.