ACCORD – This is not the age of the bookshop. And there are very few bookshops, other than the Barnes & Noble chain, left in our region. Indeed, independent book stores like the Golden Notebook in Woodstock are becoming rare birds indeed.

Yet tucked away on Route 209, near Alligerville, there lies a gem of a bookshop that will likely soon be gone. Its owner, Andrew Curtis, passed away last Tuesday of a heart attack at the age of 61. He and his store, Get Real Books, will be greatly missed by the devoted tribe of book lovers who knew him and loved exploring his great bookshop.

Curtis started Get Real Books in 2011 after a lifetime of selling books, which he claimed started when he was twelve in Queens. He started coming to High Falls in 1995 and moved up permanently in 2003. He previously owned Big Bang Books there, which eventually settled in Astoria for a long run before he started selling most of his wares on Amazon.

Due to ever harder financial circumstances for those who love and sell books, Curtis was actually in the process of suing the City of Kingston for the right to sell books from a stall on the street or sidewalk. He feared that he would soon be forced to close his bookshop and was seeking an alternative way of continuing what he had spent his life doing — collecting and selling books — and by doing so, turning people on to everything from Virginia Woolf to Rimbaud, from Asimov to Zola, Dostoevsky to Elmore Leonard.

Curtis had discovered, to his dismay, that Kingston's peddling ordinance meant that to sell books he would have to provide license fees, a surety bond, and show proof of a minimum of $100,000 in liability insurance. The license, he claimed in his lawsuit, would cost $150 a year.

Curtis further noted that newspaper and magazine vendors are exempt from the peddling law, as are milkmen, farmers and charitable solicitors.

Books, it seems, are considered more dangerous, more likely to cause trouble. And there are currents in our society that, indeed, think exactly that way, and would prefer restrictions on the right to read. The coming age which will contain few, if any books, will likely suit them fine.

Curtis claimed that when he inquired about getting the necessary license, the police detective in charge of those asked him specifically about the content of the books he wanted to sell. He was told he could not operate in front of any businesses, including on the far side of a parking lot from a strip mall.

Thus is literature driven to the margins, and thence to extinction.

Curtis said the city ordinance violated the First and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution, as well as the New York State Constitution; he sought to have it enjoined.

On Get Real Books' Facebook page, his partner and companion, Judy Lotto Dorman, wrote, "My dearest Andy Curtis, owner of Get Real Books, passed away on Tuesday. He loved his bookstore, all his customers and the joy you brought to his face when you found the book you wanted. He sat at the first window as you look at the store behind the word books waiting for his customers to come visit and find their special books. He will be forever missed, I will carry him in my heart and soul forever."

There will be a memorial service for Andrew Curtis at the Unitarian Universalist Church at 320 Sawkill Avenue, Kingston, this Thursday, August 28 at 6:30 p.m.

As of press time there was no word on the fate of the many thousands of books in Andrew Curtis's remarkable collection. For more info visit www.getrealbooks.com.