Category Archives: book repair

Shelving What Matters Most

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Last night, with about a hundred things to do to get ready for tonight’s murder mystery in the bookstore (starts at 7, if you’re in the neighborhood) I wound up culling our online inventory.

You know the drill; it’s a form of avoidance therapy we’ve all practiced, this sudden need to do a job that’s been sitting around for weeks and has nothing to do with the urgent things before you, but just at that moment the planets align and there could be no better thing to do with one’s time than….

…reconcile the printed inventory list of 452 books with the titles on the online shelf. Mostly these books are hard to find for some reason and thus in high demand. The list being very dynamic, it’s a tussle to keep the right books on that shelf. Hard to find cuts both ways.

So I went at it. With my husband one floor below me installing a floor for our new bedroom (took him only eight hours; we’re very proud!) and foster kittens sullying the mystery room with every passing moment, despite baking and cleaning and last minute “how did this get there” tidying to be done, I grasped the list of titles firmly and spent 2 glorious hours playing a game of solitaire with books.

Is the book on the shelf? Fine, mark it off the paper list. Is the book on the list but not the shelf? Search the bookstore section it should be in. Is the book AWOL? Make another list. After all, tomorrow is another day.

When it was over, the bookstore was in chaos. Piles of mis-categorized books on the table. Gaping holes in the online shelf where books were falling over, falling off. Dust from ancient tomes everywhere.

Most satisfying. I cleaned up the debris, then made a half-hearted start at my “to do” list for the murder. As it turned out, things weren’t nearly so awful as I’d supposed. Pick up a dog toy here, straighten a shelf there: twenty minutes, and the place looked good. Screw the baking; we’ll serve ice cream sundaes.

Work expands to fill the time allotted it. If I’d given it two hours, I’d have found two hours’ worth of tidying. But you know, the time spent among the books, happily alphabetizing and culling and imposing a sweet sense of order on a random corner of the universe – well, sometimes it just does a body good to putter. Let the mad world whirl by; the books and I had a grand evening.

Bargain Basements, Backlists and All

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Our bookstore now has a bargain basement. Considering that we’re a second-hand bookshop in the first place (heh heh) it’s pretty cheap.  From now on, the books on the floor under any bookshelf are $1.

I was talking with another bookstore owner, Ann at Over the Moon, in Crozet, VA, about the difference between a second-hand and new books shop. We agreed that for a new shop, books get a brief period of handselling, a window of advertising opportunity via publishers and publicists, and then, if they haven’t done their duty, syanara. Maybe a year, maybe two. In a second-hand book store, people come looking for things they liked twenty years ago, titles they want to own in hardback, or a cheap, low-investment airplane read.

Completely different approach. “Backlist” becomes “bargain classic.” It’s one of the things Jack and I love about running a read-it-again (or get a chance to read it for the first time, two generations later): offering people access.

It comes back to that flash-in-the-pan bright star versus the long, steady light of those who, if not quite classics, are telling human stories that are timeless enough to endure. Diane Johnson. E.L. Doctorow. Delderfield. Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, Larry McMurtry. James Michener.

Oh lordy, the Micheners. I still remember my dad’s comment: “Any novel that starts with the volcano that formed the island on which the main characters conduct their business might be called thorough.”

Although American/British/Irish literature classes in future centuries may or may not study every single one of these lads and ladettes, they are part of the eternal library of humanity. And people may not make movies or write theses about them all, but they’ve influenced the way people think, commented on the way society runs.

Old books never die; they just get tape on their covers and dust on their spines, and they go into the bargain basement. Where smart people find them, and their ideas and stories live again, and again, and again, interesting and enduring.