► overall feel & design Rakestraw Books has been in Danville for more than thirty years and their new Hartz Avenue location (since April '09) draws you in. With those alluring and colorful new books sitting in their big front windows, any self-respecting book lover must go inside. As you enter, you're presented with a very appealing and roomy bookstore that strongly showcases new hardcovers in every section. The store features a large main room and couple of smaller rooms for children's books at one end. On the afternoon we visited the store, the light was spilling through the front windows and warmly illuminating the store, especially the wonderful array of brightly colored walls. The bookstore's floor is simply sheets of some type of sealed OSB strand board or chipboard ... which sounds odd ... but seemed to work here, especially offset by the variety of attractive area rugs scattered throughout the store. Besides the wall shelves, there are clusters of floor cases and tables spread tastefully around the space. The fixtures are a pleasant mix of straightforward, plain bookstore shelves, others fixtures much more akin to furniture and antique, as well as some modern styled tables, and some casual props for display. It's a very good, fresh and clean look.

■ educational bookselling sidebar 
• backlist refers to titles that are older, but still in print
• frontlist titles are newly published in either hardcover or paperback
• midlist books are ones that are not bestsellers, but worthwhile to publish
• bestsellers are the titles that make publishing possible, the blockbusters that make a very few authors rich, and are sometimes of questionable worth - just a bit of opinion here