Tag Archives: cats

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

Eight Needleworkers, Seven Kittens, Two Camera Crews and a Bookstore in a Pear Tree

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I really don’t know how we get ourselves into these situations. Last night a film crew came to the bookstore to film some promotional video about our shop and my book. They chose Tuesday evening because we have a weekly stitch-n-bitch in which the shop fills with lively, cheerful babes wielding long needles. VERY photogenic.

But the day before, we got a call from the animal rescue we work with: a family of shelters kitties’ number was up. Sure, of course, bring them over. Then St. Martin’s Press (my publisher) called: they needed a head shot of Jack and me together, by 11 pm. We called our friend Elissa, a pro photographer who promised to run by after work and shoot us. (You can see her massive body of work on Facebook: search for elp6n.)

That’s how two camera crews, eight Needleworking Babes, and seven identical grey fluffballs landed in our shop at more or less the same moment last night. It got a little crazy.  The kittens ran for yarn bundles and cubbyholes, mewing too loudly to leave out during the camera work. The camera crew busily set up lights larger than some of our shelves, as needleworkers ducked under and around them. Elissa had Jack and I backed against a shelf and was bracketing away. The women made boisterous jokes as they pulled out their yarn and eyed the huge camera–and the hunky cameraman. I glanced up from Elissa’s blinding flash at one point to see Tyler the Cameraman traversing the bookstore on his knees, arms extended to shepherd the septuplets into the mystery room. As he corralled errant kittens, Tyler said with a radiant smile, “This is so cool!”

The women, watching his butt wiggle across the floor, grinned too.

That’s when the door opened and a professor friend walked in, saying to someone behind him, “And you’ll love our town bookstore; it’s such a calm, elegant place.” Tyler’s backside was to her, and a kitten had just skittered past him–to be scooped up by a needlework babe, glass of wine in one hand, yarn in the other. The kitten promptly attacked the wineglass as Elissa’s camera did a rapid series of blue strobe lights in the newcomer’s face.

Witold, an academic friend featured in my book, often introduces the new professors in town to our shop as part of the community tour. He hadn’t called ahead. This was a miscalculation.

“Melanie” the new Spanish Professor watched the chaos with one raised eyebrow and a smile spread across her face like a shield. We broke from kitten-wrangling and photo ops to say hello and offer her a chair.

She waved a hand in negation. “No no, I can’t stay long, and I can see that you’re busy.”

I think her voice had an edge of panic to it.

So we got the kittens fed and enclosed and the film finished and the photos snapped and had a good time with the needleworkers, laughing and flirting and cutting up for the video. Everyone went home about 9:30. (We know how to party, but we’re old.)

And Witold sent me a text message: I asked Melanie her impression of the bookstore, and she said, “Surreal.”

Welcome aboard, Mel. Would you like a book, or a kitten?

Don’t forget to enter Caption Contest IV for a chance to win a free copy of “The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap.” Check the July 29 blog for the photo and current entries.