Tag Archives: literature

The Bookshelf Con

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(Jack and Wendy have headed off to the first book-signing today, leaving Andrew Whalen, shopsitter, extraordinaire in charge. Here’s Andrew’s guest blog for this weekend.)

I have a big secret:

I’m keeping a little list on the side, like a mob bookie running numbers outside of The Family. The list contains books I’ve found on the shelves here at Tales of the Lonesome Pine, and desire… AND I WILL HAVE THEM.

I wrote earlier about the perils of alphabetizing, and I’ve continued to  tackle a shelf a day. It makes me look dutiful and pragmatic. Section by section I can be sure that the shop is in an order I can navigate. It even helps me get to know the stock more, so I can help customers.

WINK.

THE-STING-NOSE-RUB.

You see, I was actually running a long con. Alphabetizing is just the excuse for eye-balling books that I super want to filch. Books that I want to transform from books into possessions.

The thing is, I could probably just hide them. But that would be unsportsmanlike. And the classic gentleman con-man values honor above all else. He also dresses really dapper. Still working on that one. Okay, no I’m not, that’s a lie… or a CON. So I’ve left them in place, visible and perfectly alphabetized. It is up to the whims of the bookstore to determine whether they get sold or not.

At first I figured that my tastes ran weird enough that I was safe. I would not hoard gold, like a dragon, but leave it out for all to see, and still I would win the day and walk away with my reward. But then, justhours after placing one of my beloveds, in comes a customer. He pulled MY book off the shelf. If he had seen me stroking the cover and purring, “YES MY SWEET YES YOU WILL BE MINE,” less than an hour earlier, well, he may have been too grossed out to touch it. But no, he flopped it onto the table and handed over his filthy lucre. “Going to use this for toilet paper… for my incontinent iguana,” he said, in my mind, where I imagined him being an awful person.

So the game’s afoot. The books are out on the shelves. I’m not going to tell you what any of them are, but there are several in the Sci-Fi section, one in General Fiction, and one in History. OR THIS IS A DOUBLE BLUFF.

And now, with this blog post, I’m definitely spilling the beans. The jig is up. Unless this blog post is all part of my elaborate ruse…

THE-STING-NOSE-RUB… AGAIN.

Pluck It….

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Okay, so I’m just a quiet little person with a happy small life who runs a sweet wee bookstore in the middle of nowhere. I like it that way. New York doesn’t know me, and DC sure doesn’t ask my opinion about anything–or, for that matter, care to hear it offered unsolicited.

I just run a bookstore. That’s enough politics–large and small “p”–for me. So let me say this one thing, and then I’ll go back to being that cheerful pudgy woman who sells books and keeps her mouth shut about the crap flying around in the real world.

“IT’S A SODDING SANDWICH AND THEY’RE BLOODY PUPPETS! NOW WOULD YOU PLEASE GET OVER YOUR TOO-EARNEST-BY-HALF SELVES!”

I understand economic sanctions. I still assign my college students the film “Food, Inc.” and ask on the final exam why bovine hormone milk got pulled off Walmart’s shelves  (Answer: D because shoppers voted with their wallets by not buying it).

But I have cousins who think I’m halfway down the slippery laundry chute to Hell because I still shop at Lowe’s (when my local hardware doesn’t have what I need) and EVERYBODY knows that Lowe’s supports “the homosexual agenda.”

I’m sorry, but I have many gay and lesbian friends, most of whom couldn’t organize their way out of a paper bag.

Yet now those friends are threatening to cut me off if I continue displaying in my shop the cow calendar from Chick-Fil-A. (They put out a very funny one with parodies of literary classics, like “Old Mooler,” and “Jack the Flipper.”)

Get over it, lads and ladies; I think those cows are cute – sometimes cuter than you. The calendar stays. I’m not taking advice on what not to eat from a pig wearing way too much mascara and bling for daytime television, nor accepting religious guilt from a cow.

Put bluntly, Chick-Fil-A and the Muppets are each corporations having a field day with the marketing boom from this gleeful exchange of crossfire. Keep playing these stupid games, you two, and I will learn to live without either of you. It’s not like you have feelings. It’s not like you’re people.

It’s more like you’re laughing all the way to the bank at how easy it is to wind up those little toys called consumers…..

Now please leave me alone to finish this chicken strips basket, so I can go back to working my bookstore. Thank you.