Tag Archives: bookshelves

When Books Attack

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Running a bookstore is dangerous. Books can become downright murderous–especially during shelving season. Revealed here are the top six book assassin techniques. Be aware!

The Center Shoot: You push a mass of shelved books to one side to insert something in alphabetical order, and a book sticks, causing those headed toward it to strike hard, and those on the other side to shoot forward with 0-60 velocity. It’s not unlike the physics behind popping a pimple. This is an equal opportunity accident, occurring with tall, short, paperback and hardcover tomes with no preference. It doesn’t matter for the victim; it hurts when books slam into your tum.

The Side Slide: A stack of pocket paperbacks (the little ones) are lying sideways on the shelf. The one you want is 2/3 down the stack. You know your physics, and tilt the stack up, so page edges lean against the shelf’s back. And then the gremlins come: the stack you are holding diagonally up, tilted AWAY from you, moves without rhyme or reason–but with considerable force–toward your breasts, where they strike without mercy.  The Side Slide can happen in any genre but only at specific heights: to the female bookslinger breasts, non-gender-specific to the bridge of the nose, and male bookslingers considerably lower.

The Fiction Faux Stack: Popular with trade- or pocket-sized fiction. You lift a stack of these miscreants, maneuvering them in your arms backwards to brace against your stomach–but one wobbles and the whole thing explodes like a firework. For some reason, most booksellers attempting this lift are barefoot; hardbacks unfailingly strike the arches and ankles. For extra points, smaller books may flip upward and come down after the first layer have fallen, prolonging the effect.

The Soloist: When working above one’s head, it is not uncommon to place a book in a tightly-packed shelf, only to have it leap from its assigned position in a goodbye-cruel-world way–usually onto the shelver’s upturned nose. For some reason, larger books from the history section do this more often. Perhaps they cannot bear to be reminded of the company they keep for all eternity.

Cookbook Crumble: Nicer cookbooks are often printed on heavy paper to absorb color photographs. A stack of cookbooks weighs double what other, similar sized books might punch. Hence the unsuspecting newbie’s surprise when, attempting to shelve a cookbook with one hand, she braces the others between her arm and the shelf. Think very heavy, unstable see-saw. If the bone does not break outright, pain will cause the shelver to flex, sending books to the floor, where–you guessed it–the barefoot toes receive the brunt of the sharp-hardcover-corner action.

The Top Shelf Textbook Stacking Fail: You raise a small stack of large volumes, usually textbooks, to the level of a shelf higher than your shoulders, but the edge of the final book catches on the shelf’s bottom as your arms struggle for that last centimeter. This book slides into your face as the rest fall behind the shelf–if you’re lucky. Otherwise the whole stack drop onto your head.

Books are insidious and have many ways to torment their keepers. These are just a few – but Jack says they are proof that a disorderly shop is safer. Or maybe he said justification….

101 Creative Curses for Bookshop Handymen

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Regular followers of this blog may remember that I discovered a hidden staircase in our basement. Three rooms of unused space, accessible from inside the house? It was inevitable: Wendy “requested” that the stair be re-opened, and (my) work commenced. I said at the time that I should have kept my mouth firmly shut, but – hey, ho – I never was any good at that!basement stair

Other part-time DIYers will nod knowingly when I say that any project is a voyage of discovery, because things rarely go as expected. My first step down the path of the absurd was to decide that the basement’s four hopper windows needed replacing. Original to this 1903 house, they were rotten and falling apart.

“It won’t take long, and it will keep the basement watertight,” I told Wendy as I unloaded window frames from our pick-up, “Unnecessary” (That’s the truck’s name. Don’t ask.)

Ah, the best-laid plans of mice and men…. The closest size of ready-made window almost fit the first opening; none of the openings were quite the same dimension. Adjustments were required, usually involving a hammer, lumber, and curse words strung inventively together.

The next “not to plan” moment: water pipes in the underfloor staircase space had to be removed and the washing machine relocated to the garage and plumbed in again. Luckily our good friends Leroy and Witold were on hand when sealing off the old pipes proved difficult and frustrating. I hate water leaks!

But I was yet to meet the bigger leak (and further plan diversion): four days of continuous rain led to the discovery that rainwater simply ran off into the yard, and that our bone-dry basement wasn’t always so clear as I’d thought. There will be digging to do, if this bloody rain ever stops. I have been concerned by the parade of spider species exiting the basement in pairs; rumor has it that Noah picked them up.

IMG_3513Finally, windowsills, torrential rains, pipes and all, I got to the grand re-opening of the staircase (which we promptly christened Tutankhamen’s tomb). No steps were the same size; the old washing machine pipes proved near impossible to cut out; all the electrical cables running through the space had to be maneuvered to the side where they can be boxed in.

With all that done, at last I could re-build the steps using the old ones as supports. This will not be public bookshop space, as we originally envisioned. Wendy is making noises about moving our bedroom down there.

Renovations reveal all kinds of hints at the history of the house, and conducting friends around the work (where we found yet another hidden staircase; no, Wendy, no) has proved fascinating—although speaking of conducting, we found yet another problem: old electric cables down there are live, despite going nowhere, which will mean yet more scary stuff further along.

Did I mention spiders?