Category Archives: Big Stone Gap

Because I Say So

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Some “rare yet regular” customers who visit family twice a year were here yesterday. As the husband browsed Classics, he asked, “How do you decide which books are classics? I mean, I can see anything by Nathaniel Hawthorne, but you’ve got Joyce Carol Oates here, too.”

Jack gave the usual response: “If we like them.” Which caused the husband to guffaw.

There’s nothing quite like running one’s own shop. No corporate manual: “If the book is older than 75 years and has been assigned to more than one literature department in two disparate American states, OR if the book is foreign and written within the last 20 years and has been assigned …”

Peh. We thought Eileen Goudge and Louise Erdrich had good things to say, so there they sit in perpetuity, conversing with Faulkner between them. Of course, if I had my way, John Irving would be in the bargain basement, but one does bend to certain commonly-held sensibilities.

It’s the Margaret Atwoods, Cormac McCarthys and Robert James Wallers that prove tricky. They’re in, they’re out, they’re hot, they’re not, a movie’s getting made…. We joke about putting up a revolving shelf with the heading “Your 15 Minutes Starts Now.”

But for the most part, we find few people worrying about what’s where. If you can’t find it in Southern Fiction, try Classics, then General Fiction or Historical Fiction. Most serious second-hand book  shoppers WANT to browse. It’s part of the pleasure, to crack the code and get into the heads of the bookslingers organizing that particular shop. That’s how you know you’re on the inside, when you can tell other people where to find Ludlum, Flynn, Higgins and Forsyth–Mysteries and Thrillers, or Guys with Big Guns (aka Westerns and War)?

OK, that’s a trick question, because on any given day, Jack will stick them in one category, and I in the other.

A bookshop divided against itself cannot stand. I finally put a note on the Mysteries and Thrillers room door: “If it’s a political thriller having to do with spies or war, try the Guys with Big Guns room first. Because that’s where Jack puts them.”

It’s upped traffic back there. And earned my husband sympathetic comments.

A Cuppa and a Swirling Spiral

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On Boxing Day we had a full shop: people spending their Christmas gift money; locals bringing visiting family to say hi; people who read Little Bookstore and were traveling for the holidays, who came close enough to stop in and say hi.

It’s like a gift that keeps on giving; people who have read Little Bookstore are starting to stop by, or to make plans to come in the Spring. As anyone who knows us knows, Jack and I delight in the ebb and flow of disparate people swirling around the books here. Sure, it’s nice when they buy them (helps keep the dogs in chewy sticks) but it’s also fun when they just sit and have a cuppa, and chat.

John and his missus got off the highway on their way to visit his elderly dad. John lives in Asheville, and the pair of them work in schools so underfunded they now have circuit riding librarians instead of full-timers. We had a good chat about their work with Romany prejudice in Romania, fights for library funding in North Carolina, and other acts of social justice and self-awareness.

And we’ve met other people who think differently about these things–or think about other things altogether–and enjoyed them just as much. Fellow bookslinger Glen has a radically different view of how the world should work, and we like him just fine. He made us tea and we talked ideas when we were in his Tennessee bookshop, and did the same when he visited ours.

The people enjoying Little Bookstore are varied in geography and opinion. The ones too far afield like our shop on Facebook and leave cool memes about rescuing shelter animals and other interesting topics. Some of them think armed guards should be at all American schools. Some of them think teachers should be sent once a week to all American gun stores.

It’s a wide continuum, but the part Jack and I like best is that it is less a straight line from “think this” to “think that” than people who think for themselves wanting to talk AND listen. The absolute best chats are when people debate not to win, but to gain. They want understanding of things they haven’t considered yet, points of view not from their own eyes. We’ve seen a couple such chats go down in the bookstore; we learn things; the people talking to each other learn things; we all drink tea.

Perhaps people with differing ideas don’t fall in a straight line from left to right so much as a spiral; one person’s left is another’s right; my point of no return is your slight incline to an altered viewpoint. Spirals do have beginnings and endings, but they have a lot of climbing and curving before you can find either one.

Perhaps this is what bookshops are for: to give people access to ideas in a safe environment for exploring them? And cups of tea.

coffee cup Stock Photo - 9722359