Category Archives: Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

The Rare “Bookstore Owner Abroad” Opportunity

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That's the full moon, top right. We've been having such busy days, I keep forgetting to take photos!

That’s the full moon, top right. We’ve been having such busy days, I keep forgetting to take photos!

Jack and I don’t get out much. Owning a bookstore is very like having a 4,000-lb. two-year-old in your life. It requires constant care, feeding, and anticipation of its future needs in order to maintain a happy home.

But we are in DC this week because, wearing my other hat for the college and Southwest Virginia, I’m educating our elected officials on the need for graduate medical education (doctors who TRAIN in Coalfields Appalachia, and then practice here). It’s a wonderful thing to be involved in, and being a woman who owns a business in a small community adds a certain heft to my voice. Politicians like women who own businesses in rural areas. We’re photogenic.

Good thing I’m not cynical, eh?

But I digress. Jack’s birthday is TODAY (thank you, on behalf of Jack) and we are going to visit Williamsburg this weekend in celebration. (Yes, the next blog will be about our impressions of the place, since we’ve never been before.)

The point is, it really doesn’t matter where we go or what we do; the fact that we’re doing it outside the bookstore for a week is its own holiday. Don’t get the wrong impression. We LOVE LOVE LOVE being bookslingers. We love our work, our community, and our lifestyle.

But a change is as good as a rest, and we’re loving the days in DC. It’s a great place to visit (although, yes, the cliche is true – living here, not so much.)

There is an odd element to being out of the shop, though. Without getting TOO personal – this is a family-friendly blog – usually when I feel something moving in the bed, I assume it’s a cat, be it foster or staff. That’s never true in a hotel room.

That’s the full moon, top right. We’ve been having such busy days, I keep forgetting to take photos!

The Monday Book – A YEAR IN THE MERDE by Stephen Clarke

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Jack offers the Monday Book review this week!

I’m not sure which used book store we bought this in but I’m sure glad we did!

Stephen Clarke’s hero, Paul West, is an Englishman working on contract in Paris for a company planning to open a chain of tea-rooms in France. The interlingual puns and description of the absurd cultural clashes are hilarious.

I admit to being an enormous Francophile myself, having toured there many times with my old buddies in ‘Heritage’ and would cheerfully live there if necessary with no difficulty. But Paris is another thing – in many ways it is just like any other enormous city! So my preference would be the rural South.

The parts of Clarke’s book that depict him trying to speak French while his employers try to use English are hysterical, full of the verbal equivalent of slapstick.

Having said that, I once hitch-hiked from Scotland to Paris with a friend (back when hitch-hiking was still legal). We camped in the Bois de Boulogne and enjoyed breakfasts of paine chocolat and enormous bowls of coffee in sidewalk cafes.

Getting back to the book – I am a big fan of Peter Mayle and his series of books about an Englishman in France. Clarke takes things into another dimension and mixes corporate mischief, questionable morals, advice for tourists and a mischievous take on French chauvinism into a very worthy addition to the genre created by Mayle.I heartily recommend it to anyone who has visited, or is planning to visit Paris.

If I were a Parisian and read this book, I’d find it funny. If I were a Frenchman, I just might be insulted. This is a cheeky, irreverent look at a city people are used to treating with dignity; Clarke dances on thin ice and stops just short of blowing a rude gesture at the French.

I loved it. :]