Category Archives: bookstore management

How Much Booking Does a Bookseller Book if a Bookseller Books with Books?

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Our friends Wes and Rachael were here for the annual New Year’s party, and when I mentioned that I wanted to track calories for health reasons, they downloaded Myfitnesspal for me on my iPhone.

Yeah, thanks.

It tells me I need to eat a 1200-calorie diet if I want to lose a pound a week for a goal of 20 pounds.

I told my iPhone that seemed unreasonable. In fact, I told it I didn’t appreciate it judging me. But there was no entry button for actually imputing that data.

C’mon, I live in a bookstore with one of the best cafes in the world in it, where stuff is made from scratch, not cream of soup bases. It’s WHOLESOME food.

“Wholesome’s just another word for triple left to lose,” sang Jack. (We listened to that Kris Kristofferson special on NPR last week.)

But wait, says Wes, there’s a bracelet you can wear, and it tells you how much you’re walking or running or rowing or skipping or whatever. And whatever you do for exercise earns you extra calories you can eat. Nice system, eh?

Yeah. Finding time to exercise…. I said, “Does the bracelet know when you’re carrying 12 hardbacks through the shop to the farthest points so you can shelve one in each section?”

“Hmm, let’s put that under weight lifting,” Wes said.

So we tried it. Not only does it know, but apparently that’s worth a fourth-cup of Kelley’s chicken and dumplings.

Things are looking up. Booksellers do a lot of booking when we’re booking books.

I’ll be able to eat after all.

 

A Weird yet Peaceable Coincidence….

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cabinJack and I fled to our cabin in the woods for Christmas, thanks to the glorious Jennifer Gough, who shopsat the whole month of December. I got some writing done, and we chilled.

Actually, we chilled in a warm atmosphere, because the cabin is heated by a wood-burning stove in the old stone fireplace. Jack went out every couple of days and wrestled logs into submission, turning work into heat by means of wood. From time to time I printed drafts so I could read via paper instead of screen (it really makes a difference in the editing process). Pages without notes got turned into starter paper for the morning fire; waste not, want not.

Yet therein lies an odd coincidence. Years ago, while taking a writing class at East Tennessee State University, I had to write an autobiographical piece as fiction, introducing myself to the class. At the time, without a cabin in the woods, a book, a bookstore, or Jack in my life, I wrote that in her later years, Welch and her husband secluded themselves in a cabin in the woods, fueled by the surrounding trees and her writings.

Who knew, twenty years ago, that such a silly, small detail would come true? Still, it’s a small thing in a big world, and it’s peaceable, so I’ll take it. Happy day after Christmas, everybody.