Category Archives: bookstore management

Janelle Bailey’s Monday Book

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518IrDgn2hLAs an English teacher for 25 years, I assigned a lot of reading to a lot of kids! One of them from a few years back recently messaged me on Goodreads to start a conversation about her own reading and mine; she also made a recommendation to me of something she’d really enjoyed. I saw it as not only fair but wonderful, to have a former student “assign” me some reading.
The Marsh King’s Daughter by Karen Dionne was the book she recommended, and I am not disappointed to have taken her up on it, even though Lee Child’s cover blurb of “sensationally good psychological suspense” may have made me less likely, rather than more, to pick it up on my own.
The main character, Helena, is the product of an unusual–criminal, even–pairing. Her father kidnapped her mother at age 14 and literally “took” her for his wife; they lived together in seclusion in the northern woods of the UP (that’s the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, north of Wisconsin) and had then raised Helena there. His parenting practices are extremely questionable, yet Helena sure has little for comparison, given the circumstances. Her mother is not a lot better at it, given her young age, inexperience, and limitations placed on her by her “husband” and their lifestyle.
The novel begins, though, many years later, when Helena’s father escapes from prison. And oh, what tangled ways it moves from there, both in the current search as well as the revealing of the back story of Helena’s childhood and upbringing, chapter by chapter working through both time periods and also braiding in allusive excerpts to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale by the same title.
While some elements are completely dark and violent, others are homey, even–such as how Helena makes her living (I’ll let you learn for yourself by reading the book), and it doesn’t dwell but moves; it’s got a good share of hope and forgiveness and light.
Whether you are one who’d grab the first thriller you saw or one who would not…possibly at all, I think you’ll find the good writing and great storytelling here to be well worth your reading time.

That Moment When….

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It was inevitabljamese, but no less embarrassing for that, when a good friend who uncomplainingly looks after the bookstore regularly, arrived today thinking he was needed only for me to realize that he wasn’t.

James became our ‘go-to’ guy for shop cover a couple of years ago and has proved an absolute godsend. He knows where everything is, can sweet talk customers and ‘hand-sell’ with the best of them. Not only that but he makes sure our menagerie, including the ever-changing kitten population is well taken care of.

Ever since ‘The Little Bookstore’ was first published five years ago we have had times when we’ve been away for extended promotional tours or just on vacation and discovered that there were interesting people out there that relished the idea of running a bookstore and living in it. We’ve been fortunate to find them and give them that opportunity and some have done it more than once.

Where James fits in is when we need just two or three days and sometimes as little as a couple of hours.

However, with Wendy in WV on her writing residency, there are a few extra things for me to keep an eye on, including the afore-mentioned kitten population.

Around the middle of last week the team that runs Appalachian Feline Friends were getting geared up for a kitten transport to another rescue in MD and that can sometimes be a bit ‘changeable’ from day to day. Two of our long-term fosters here in the store are Fang and Delight and they were scheduled for updated shots today. However, they then got spaces on the transport which was leaving first thing this morning. So they got rescheduled for their shots to Monday.

This afternoon I was tending to mixed bunch of customers when James arrived. “Hello” I said – “what brings you here?” Sure enough – I’d asked him to mind the store while I took Fang and Delight for their shots and completely forgotten to tell him they’d already been! Just to complete the whole sorry story, the transport was cancelled because too few kittens were ready to travel. So Fang and Delight are happy bookstore cats with up to date shots.