Category Archives: folklore and ethnography

Little Brown Jug

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The weekly guest blog from Jack

Wendy has blogged more than once about the particularities of living above the bookstore and the overlap between our personal lives and our bookstore lives. To be honest we don’t see a division – the bookstore is a big part of our lives and it’s hard to imagine living any other way now.

Having someone walk in when we’ve forgotten to lock the door and we’re eating breakfast or dinner at the bookstore table is only a problem when we have to grab the dogs before they make the dash for freedom – or we’re not exactly dressed for the occasion.

But there’s coziness about all this that we haven’t really touched on before and it struck me anew just a few mornings ago in the form of our ‘the little brown jug’, or to be precise our ‘little brown sugar bowl’.

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Most mornings I wander sleepily down to the shop accompanied by dogs and cats to our little downstairs semi-kitchen to set up the coffee, switch on the lap-top and examine the breakfast options (for humans and animals). On this particular morning my eyes focused on the sugar bowl in all its familiarity and I was suddenly struck by the power of objects to give us context and comfort.

That humble brown bowl talks to me without words. It says “how did you sleep?” and “what do you have planned today?” and “we all live here together and that’s most satisfying.”

Ah – satisfying! That’s the word I was looking for. It is satisfying to wake up surrounded by a movable feast downstairs with some immovable objects in it. The little brown sugar bowl (and some of its friends) give us that.

Bibliophiles versus Book Snobs

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Within a year of opening Tales of the Lonesome Pine Used Books, Jack and I had learned the difference between bibliophiles and book snobs.

Bibliophiles will read anything; these are the people who know the ingredients in cereal because they’ve read the box. You see them at airports, closing a book with a sigh and a smile, followed by panic as they realize boarding won’t start for another fifteen minutes. You watch as they get up and read the fine print on the emergency procedure posters.

Book snobs are seen in airports with the latest Hot Topic book: a presidential autobiography; a presidential hopeful’s autobiography; whatever Michael Pollan’s done now (not that there’s anything wrong with him). Book snobs read because they are supposed to have read something, or because they want bragging rights. They read the same things as Everyone Else, or the same concepts in different packages over and over, to prove they are right.

A few months ago I happened to be at a conference with a lot of medical professionals. One of the doctors said every American needed to be required to read the Constitution and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. These were, in his opinion, the foundational documents for the future of a country that must be led by “the best and the brightest, people like us.”

He mispronounced Rand’s first name. Also, the movie had just come out. I’ve come to believe that anyone who discovers an intellectual source of wisdom in a great classic right after the movie debuts might be compensating for something.

We’ve seen it often here at the shop: people looking for a specific book tell you why it’s what everyone must read. These snobs choose books the way they choose their wine, as if incorrectness were possible and could mar enjoyment. Hey, it’s WINE!

Other people come looking for a specific book and tell you why it interests them, and while they’re in they pick up half a dozen others. These bibliophiles choose books based on what they think they’d like, or what they want to know about, not to reinforce things they already know. These are interesting people to converse with. If some are not considered society’s “best and brightest,” well, I’ve never yet met a bibliophile who wasn’t a bright light in a dim world, always putting his or her best foot forward.

And they can tell you all the ingredients in breakfast cereal.