There’s a new bookstore tucked inside one of Charlotte’s neighborhood markets.

Last summer, sitting outside Tip Top Daily Market, the idea to open a small independent bookstore began percolating in Rob Banker’s brain.

Boris & Natasha – a 20-year-old Plaza Midwood boutique – had recently signed the lease to move into the space between Tip Top and Hattie’s Tap & Tavern, further signaling the area’s row of trendy independent businesses.

Banker, who will turn 50 in October, had once been a bookworm. He majored in English and reveled in tracking down hard-to-find copies of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories for his independent study. But he never got his teaching certificate or finished his Master in Education. Instead, he was hired as a technical writer at a software company just as the internet hit and spent the last 25 years as a software developer.

“When I turned 40, I’d started thinking about owning a bookstore or a record store. I wasn’t in a place to do it, but I thought about it. It was always in the back of my mind that I don’t want to go out with my nose on a computer keyboard,” he said.

With his daughters now 20 and 17, he found himself with more free time and – thanks to COVID-19 – no live entertainment and little social interaction. The solitary act of reading became the pandemic’s safest source of entertainment, yet he noticed only a handful of bookstores. Even chains like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million are at opposite ends of the city.

“For a city of almost a million people, we have a relatively small number of independent bookstores. Bookstores were the first thing Amazon destroyed. Book Buyers is great. I love Park Road Books. And Malaprops in Asheville is the ideal in my mind for the sheer number of books alone, but to start a store on that scale …” he trails off.

I’ve Read it in Books

Banker had never owned a business and only worked retail briefly. Rather than dive into a space of his own, he pitched an idea to put a few bookshelves at the vacant end of Premium Sound — the record store inside Tip Top.

“It was a month and a half between conception and opening,” he said, sitting in his shop wearing a “Reading is Freedom” T-shirt. “I always had this idea that it wasn’t going to work, but I wanted to try it anyway.”

He gutted his own collection, took friends’ suggestions, checked his favorite book stores’ Instagram accounts for ideas, and ordered bestsellers and a “decent selection” of alternative titles by asking what folks around him were reading.

He opened I’ve Read It In Books (named after an Echo & the Bunnymen lyric) inside Tip Top in October. Customers began posting about its “carefully curated” collection on social media.

“I take that as a huge compliment. It’s more from conversations than statistics. I see the value of Amazon’s (recommendations), but what they’ve never been able to replicate the same as a store is the little blip in your heart when you discover something,” he said. “I don’t know how many times that’s happened to me (shopping for records) at Tip Top or Lunchbox. I want the bookstore to give that feeling to someone.”

More than a bookstore

Banker got the opportunity to spread that feeling tenfold outside the walls of his store earlier this year. He noticed an Instagram post requesting reading material from residents of the now-vacated homeless encampment. At the time, an Instagram account called @wemadethismess posted photos of postcards sent to Mayor Vi Lyles on behalf of the people living there. These captured quotes about what it was like at the camp, and attempted to combat misinformation and assumptions about residents and why and how they ended up there, as well as simple requests for work or basic supplies.

When Banker noticed a call for graphic novels and sci-fi books, he offered to help the Mutual Aid Free Store, which set up a shopping experience for community members each month. He collected what he could from his own shelves and posted a call for donations before heading to the site. When he returned to the store a few hours later, he found 200-300 donated books waiting for him.

“It was all great,” he recalled. “The first time being out there at the wall where everyone gathers, seeing people grabbing books and their faces lighting up was amazing.”

Making deeper connections

The books served as an opening, but Banker found himself deep in conversation with some of the residents. “Things can go so horribly bad so quickly. A sick child, health problems, divorce, addiction, being rejected by family – no two people I’ve encountered have had the same path.”

He and Anthony Hubbard – the man who originally asked for graphic novels – bonded over their love of reading.

“I’ve loved to read since I learned my ABCs. I read graphic novels, sci-fi, murder mysteries, action adventure, biographies if it’s someone I’m interested in,” Hubbard said. “Once Rob found out – shoot – he was my book supplier. We just got to talking. He’s a big man with a big heart – that’s the best way to describe Rob.”

Hubbard, who has found a place to stay, now helps catalog and stock shipments a few times a month at I’ve Read It in Books. Banker said the two of them can talk for hours and often do, over a drink, hanging at the store or on Hubbard’s back porch. But Hubbard won’t accept money for helping out.

“He knows I like to be around books. Actually every time a graphic novel comes in, Rob turns a blind eye,” Hubbard said with a laugh. “Actually any book I want, he says, ‘Anthony, it’s yours.’”

For Banker, helping people who lived at the encampment has been transformative.

“There isn’t a part of my life it hasn’t had an effect on,” he said, noting his struggle with “lifelong depression.”

“I find myself listening more, it’s affected the way I interact casually, there’s even an energy going into my day job now. Doing it well adds to the resources I need to be doing what I want to be doing, which is the bookstore and my work up there (with the homeless).”

“I can’t not be involved now,” he said. “I made so many connections. I don’t feel like I have a choice anymore – in a good way. I’m not saving anyone with books, but it opened the door to finding out what they really need and getting involved.”

This story was originally published April 22, 2021 at 6:00 AM.