Category Archives: bookstore management

Sarcastic Shelf Guides involving Sexual Innuendoes we Fantasize about putting up in the Bookshop

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I’ve spent the past few days moving large masses of books around the shop, reshelving sections that have shrunk or expanded, making certain like sits with like. This has included creating new overhead hanging signs, showing what’s on the shelves below.

As happens about hour three of scrutinizing books title by title, carrying armloads back and forth across the shop floor, Jack and I got the wee bit silly. We began to create “totally honest shelf guides.” Here are a few you will never see in a bookstore. Not if it wants to stay in business, anyway.

Celebrity biographies

Biographies of people who have actually done something

Memoirs

Interesting Memoirs

Classics because the school system says so

Real Classics

Science Fiction

Science Fiction involving Science

Bikini Bimbo Science Fiction

Science Fiction with an Apocalyptic Christian Twist

Science Fiction with an Apocalyptic Amish Christian Twist

Cozy Mysteries: candles, soap, needlecraft

Cozy Mysteries: medieval

Cozy Mysteries: cookery

Cozy Mysteries: cats, dogs and other animals with big brown eyes

Cozy Mysteries: someone actually cares when murder occurs

Non-Cozy Mysteries: Native American

Non-Cozy Mysteries: Everything Else

Historic Fiction

Historic Fiction with at least 30% accuracy

Poetry

Poetry that Rhymes

Christian Values

Christian Values that are in the Bible

Modern Values packaged as Christian to sell Better

Paranormal Romances: Fleas and Fangs

Paranormal Romances: three or more pages occurring before coupling (Literary)

Cookbooks by celebrities and diet fad gurus

Cookbooks by people who know what they’re doing

Guys with Big Guns, Fiction and Non

Estrogen Express (Self-help, Career and Relationships)

Hippies, Retro

Hippies, New Age

Hippies, Green

Stephen King (Horror, but we’ve stopped bothering)

Bestsellers (please stack latest Cornwall, Evanovich, Grisham or Patterson here)

War (aka American History; please note Middle East and WWII are located here)

Stephen King’s Basement?

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crime scene 003Stephen King says that writers have trap doors in their minds, and most ideas occur above them. Below the door is a basement full of sludge, hiding alligators; the secret of good horror and crime writing is to keep the gators fed, or they will break out and take over, and the world will become a real mess.

Imagine what went through my mind last night, then, when I arrived home to find these scenes in my little basement writing nook.

crime scene 010While Jack and I had a “yeah, we’re famous” three-day fun run through book festivals (Thank you, VA Festival of the Book, Clifton Forge, and Mountain Empire Community College!) the bookshop was left in the capable and devious hands of a few friends. Witness their creative touches. I may have to make that “Shining” salute my new FB profile pic.

And Bob enjoyed investigating the “blood.”

crime scene 012

The Russell Crowe poster references his unfortunate soul-searching solo at the edge of the bridge as Javert in Les Mis, six minutes so painful that, sitting alongside these same friends in the theatre, I heard myself yell at the screen, “For the love of God, somebody push him!”crime scene 015

(The guy can’t sing, and he’s really not convincing as someone who could ever doubt himself, either.)

So, keep the gators fed? Yeah, man. But keep your friends close–or you never know what they’ll do with a little cornstarch, some free time, and unfettered access to your basement.crime scene 016