Category Archives: book reviews

It’s a Nice Place to Visit….

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Since Little Bookstore‘s publication, many nice people from all sorts of interesting places have written via the blog or our bookstore’s Facebook page to say thoughtful, funny, sweet things about their experience of reading it. They tell us their own stories, comment on things that resonated with them, ask insightful questions.

Yesterday a woman sent me a sweet and slightly different note: I just read your book and your description of the disastrous trip to the used “bookstores” in Indiana and after checking the phone book am sure you were in my city! Please – you were in a rotten part of town – we have a wonderful Used Book Warehouse I think you would love!

Do all towns have such pleasant defenders? Betsy is right; I was in her town, and since we’re friends I can tell you that Evansville, Indiana was indeed the home of the infamous Fulton Avenue Books and Fuquay Avenue, chronicled in the “Booking Down the Road Trip” chapter of The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap.

What I didn’t know, but do now thanks to Betsy, is that nearby in Newburgh is a Middle Eastern cafe, an ethnic cookery style I love to sink my teeth into. So next time we’re passing that way, we intend to explore its delights. Thanks, Betsy!

But there is a funny continuation to this story. One of the things they teach you in Author 101 school (the three weeks between handing in your final edits and the pre-book events cranking up in earnest) is how to make and monitor an online presence: Facebook, blog, Twitter, Pinterest. I’m a natural at FB and love the blogosphere’s interaction; Twitter and Pinterest, I’m slowly figuring out. (All pointers gratefully accepted!)

The stats on my blog include a map of where people reading it are from, and what search terms they used to find it. About every three to four days, I find that someone has landed on my (if I do say so myself) cheerful little blog about a daily life full of colorful local characters, book browsers, kittens and sweetness, by searching “porn” “Fulton Avenue Books” “adult bookstores” or “Evansville.” (Sorry, Betsy!)

Can you imagine this person’s disappointment when up pops a pic of our latest kitty fosters (NO “kitty porn” jokes, thanks!) or the now-infamous photo of Jack from his birthday party? They may never recover….

But it does explain why my stats keep rising. ;] And I look forward to the Middle Eastern food.

IMG_3526jack birthday

Food for Thought

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Living in a bookstore is cozy and fun, but also challenging. At night, trolling for a good read, my fingers ripple across the shelves, seeking back cover blurbs that make sense, authors’ names I trust.

Because I know what I like. I know what I want to hear–and what I don’t, going off in my head, voices planted by print that will chase me down hallways, seek me out in quiet moments, and start in: “Yes, but” or even the dreaded “What if?”

These voices ask us to re-examine not so much what we believe as why we believe it, a far more intense scrutiny. What did we inherit, and what did we swallow without question, and what have we observed that supports or belies these things?

A wonderful book called Women’s Ways of Knowing says the continuum of human wisdom runs from a person who “stands in her shoes and looks out” to synthesizing pieces of knowledge to create new knowledge.

Do we only read the books that agree with us? No, probably not; most bibliophiles don’t. But do we only want from books we disagree with a sense of why their argument is wrong, invalid? Or do we listen to viewpoints we would never seek out in the greater world? Is that what bookstores are for, to let us experience–at somewhat lower risk than attending a rally or visiting a friend’s church–ideas that don’t rock our world, but could sink it?

I read certain books in certain moods. Some days I want challenge; bring on Simon Schama and Jonathan Safran Foer; yes, I will try the sushi today, thanks. Other days I want comfort; yesterday, seeking familiarity, I reread Clyde Edgerton’s Walking Across Egypt. It’s as comforting as veggie lasagna, with an equal amount of thoughtful chewing.

Books make us think, and a healthy diet includes the ones that ask us to consider another’s viewpoint. I used to teach my students, back when I was teaching, that the job of the anthropologist was to help society live with ambiguity, to put two people who believe oppositional things into a room and help them shake hands and agree not to order their subjects to kill each other. Live and let live is the motto of the ethnographer.

And the bookshop owner.