Tag Archives: independent bookstores

Pottering Happily About

Posted on by
3

This morning I woke up at home, next to Jack, with two cats piled atop me and a dog jackknifed against my knees. Crooked sleep under my own duvet…. {blissful sigh}.

Shopsitter Andrew’s parents arrived unexpectedly last night–you should have seen that lad’s face–so we gave him the day off to run about and see the bright light of Wise County. (There’s a new traffic light on the four-lane.)

Jack had prison visits this morning with the Quaker ministry, so that left me in the bookstore with its pristine shelves Andrew’s been sorting day by day, and some odd jobs we never bothered to show him because they don’t come up that often.

With gusto, I tied my hair back and tackled the list: rolling coins from the change drawer; investigating the odd smell coming from one corner of the mystery room (an air freshener had fallen behind a shelf and gone septic); gathering all the odds and ends of crackers and cookies into the bread tin. Jack and I live above the shop, so one half of our downstairs kitchen is bookstore, the other half functioning as a staff room with fridge and microwave. Imagine if the public could see your staff room. :[

In short, I reveled in the quiet pottering of a nesting bird, re-establishing herself on home turf. Bookstore, sweet bookstore, and it’s all mine–well, mine and Jack’s, and now part Andrew’s too, bless the boy. (He’s 27; I’m only calling him a boy for poetic purposes.)

One of the things people have asked about, on the book tour, is what it’s like to own a bookshop. Over and over again I found myself describing a theme that recurs in the book and in our lives: not renting inside one’s own skin. The bookstores we are visiting are independent ones, like ours, for the most part. They don’t have corporate manuals that tell you how things are done. The problems, the challenges, running out of shelf space and trying to find a way to categorize a particular book and figuring out the best use of your limited wall display area, etc.: all these belong to you.

Sometimes I wonder if Americans are taught to despise smallness, not intentionally, just in the daily messages we absorb. We’re encouraged to lead big, “Madmen” kind of lives, vying for the top of the food chain, ladder, whatever.

But let me tell you, there is nothing like rolling the change you collected one customer at a time, from people whose names and reading tastes you know, and putting their dirty coffee cups in the dishwasher after they’ve left, in the bookstore you own. Living large comes in many forms, and some lives– like the Tardises of Dr. Who fame– are larger inside than they appear at a glance.
My day is passing in a contented haze of small chores that will keep our shop cozy and functional.

It don’t get no better’n this.

 

 

Malaprop’s Sweet Malaprop’s

Posted on by
10

One of the fun things about running around touring a book is all the great bookslingers you meet in shops you’ve not seen before: Ann at Spiral Bookcase, Ruth of Book People.

Then there are the old familiars, like Malaprop’s.

I’ve been going to Malaprop’s since college, when I discovered the South’s San Francisco in Asheville, North Carolina. For those who haven’t been, Asheville is a city full of hats, dogs and same sex couples. It’s one of the best places to eat for 400 miles. And it’s got Malaprop’s.

Thirty years old this year, Malaprop’s is one of those Dr. Who bookstores that’s bigger inside than out. It’s got a cafe that serves things with long names ending in “o” made by guys who take their work waaaay too seriously. It’s got floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves in old dark wood, and cool staff. You can buy just about any snarky magnet or bumper sticker you ever imagined.

It’s got style.

Malaprop’s was a book talk I really looked forward to giving, and it did not disappoint–not even when I arrived to find myself advertised (next to Barbara Kingsolver and Ron Rash) for NOVEMBER 28th. See the woman between Jack and me? That’s Elizabeth. She runs events at Malaprop’s. That’s why she’s grinning like that.

Elizabeth was lovely, and that one piece of card had the only errant date. Their copious mailing list, the flyers on the windows, even the one on the back of the toilet stall door, gave the correct date, and I am pleased to say we had a capacity crowd: a new author whose book debuts in February, an Atlanta businessman retiring to the mountains, two couples from the town, some bookstore lovers, and–wonder of wonders–our dear friends the Volks from Big Stone Gap! They’d decided to surprise us and make a weekend of it in Asheville.

Jack and I talked about the world we live in now, full of convenience over community, one-click shopping and easy choices whose consequences lay buried behind time and media messages. I repeated my mantra that I don’t object to Amazon wanting to be the biggest, but to their wanting to be the only. We talked about Malaprop’s online service–one click, but still part of the big picture, not its whole. And we reminded ourselves, as an audience in the Q&A afterward, that what Malaprop’s and the other independents offer is a sense of place, an anchor for the place to go and enjoy oneself on a Saturday. Take away Malaprop’s and the yarn store next door, the chocolate shop across the street, the Himalayan Imports store will lose business, and wither. Malaprop’s is big and strong. It pulls customers up the street past other enticing store windows, creating commerce: commerce that sustains the heart of a downtown community.

Convenience is nice, the assembly agreed, but it’s a commodity, not a virtue. It behooves us as American bibliophiles to remember that.

Thanks, Malaprop’s (and Elizabeth) for having me there, and for being there.