Tag Archives: bibliophiles

Full-Circle Pleasantness

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The day before Thanksgiving, a woman called to ask if we’d be open on Black Friday.

Well, yes. “Oh good,” she said. “I’m from Memphis, and my husband and I will be in Kingsport for Thanksgiving with his parents. And I just read this book, The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap and loved it so I wanted to come up and see the shop. Will the owners be in?”

I laughed and told her that Jack and I would be spending the morning of Black Friday signing books and greeting customers outside Glen Moody’s charming shop “I Love Books” in Kingsport Mall.

“That’s a great store and my in-laws are familiar with it, but we want to come up and see Tales of the Lonesome Pine,” she said, hesitantly.

“You’ll be as welcome as Spring rain,” I replied.

We enjoyed our time at Glen and Deb’s shop in Kingsport–it’s always nice to talk trade with fellow bookslingers–then headed back to home, sweet bookstore. During our chat, Glen said something that stuck with me. “Time was that bookstores as close to each other as yours and mine are would be competitors. But not now. We’re allies.”

Yes, we are.

We’d not been back twenty minutes when the door opened and Debby came in with her mother-in-law. They were delighted to see the bookstore, and Jack was delighted to show them around. Debby had bought my book at Booksellers at Laurelwood, one of our favorite bookshops ever (Hi, Nicole!). There’s just something very full-circle-pleasant about a woman from Memphis making a casual purchase in her hometown bookstore–one that has fought hard to stay independent in its community, I might add–then visiting relatives near our store and driving up to us while we were down in her in-laws’ town, signing at a friend’s bookshop.

Jack and I have much to be thankful for this season, including a circle of new reader and bookslinger friends. Here’s to all the fun, interesting people who read Little Bookstore and searched us out on Facebook to leave nice comments, and to the new friends in the bookslinging world that this week has brought–particularly to Peregrine Books that just opened, and to ReBook out in Utah. We hope your Black Friday has been as fun and filled with full-circle pleasantness.

Wendy will be signing at Fountain Books in Richmond, VA this Monday from noon-2 pm.

The Bookselling Lexicon of handy if mildly impolite Terms

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If a person who likes to read books is a bibliophile, then perhaps …

Someone who reads a lot of trashy books is a biblio-philistine.

A student who likes to read but recently finished his dissertation, law school, or other massive text-driven project is bibliofull.

The owner of a used bookstore who buys bulk lots of books from estate sales, private libraries, etc. is a bidliophile.

The customer who enters the store and really, really wants to buy a book but can’t remember the name of it, just the picture from the cover, experiences bibliofail.

A person who likes to browse bookshops is a bibliofly (as in butterfly, not the pesky kind you swat. This one needs crowdsourcing: Letterfly? Bibterfly? Help, you wordsmiths out there!)

The first-meeting suspicion of the shop cat toward a customer who turn outs to be a creep: bibliofelinia

The first-meeting twining of the shop cat about the ankles of a customer who becomes a pleasant regular: appurrrrval

Someone who uses online sites to find books she wants to read, then buys them from her local bookshop is a bibliotech (and a saint).

And if the owner of a bookshop is a bookseller, then….

The person who consistently argues at a used bookstore that he didn’t get enough credit for his books is a booksulker.

A person who reads across genres with equal interest: booksailor

A used bookstore that is out of room for its stock has a bookcellar (and if you can get in there, you will die happy).

A self-published writer who brings you a complimentary copy of her latest book and asks you to read it, “and if you like it perhaps we can make a consignment arrangement” is a booksalter.

A self-published writer who brings you ten of his latest book that REALLY needed one more copy edit and demands that you stock it because he’s “local,” and you don’t want to force him to bad-mouth you to the regional writing community, of which he is the very core, and anyway it will sell out in a couple of weeks so he’ll be back to bring you more and collect the money, and you can thank him later: an annoying bastard

A customer leaning against a shelf asking about a book she can’t find, but which is in fact sitting near her left ear, is bookblind.

A book that turns up everywhere, mis-shelved and omnipresent, in the shop, but disappears  the moment a customer wants it: a bookslider

That odor coming from a book, indefinable and not part of the overall pleasantness of used book smells: scentipage

And, my personal favorite: a person who believes in the importance and future of bricks-and-mortar bookstores is a bookshoptimist.
Please enjoy our “50 Shades of Grey” spoof on youtube! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7-HL1WciZw