Tag Archives: Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

On the Road – Again!

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I’m in Hilton Head, South Carolina (for my sins) enjoying a great night catching up with old friends. Tomorrow all four of us will caravan down to SIBA, the Southern Independent Booksellers Association. It’s on the beach at Naples in the Waldorf Astoria hotel.

Yeah, life’s rough….

Friday I speak on a panel, and Saturday we get to run through the great hall with a bunch of other bookslingers, snapping up free galley copies and talking trade with the tribe. I’m very much looking forward to it, and there will be a lot to say once we get to the expo, but right now we’re all full of pizza, wine, and girl talk.

So in place of any meaningful blog, let me just tell you my favorite story so far from another friend at another book expo. My friend Jade is a university librarian who travels the world searching for good books for special collections. A veteran of many book conventions, she told me this story, called ARC-gate:

ARCs are advanced reader copies; publishers make them up in droves and hand them out at conventions and trade shows and such. They are coveted by librarians on tight budgets, booksellers on tight budgets, bibliophiles who managed to sneak into the expos… you get the idea. Everybody loves a freebie.

So, although the tribe of bookslingers usually consists of polite, well-mannered people, well, as Michael Moore observed, librarians–no matter how mild they look– are not to be messed with. Especially when their budgets have been cut.

At the expo my friend described, the ARCs were not so plentiful as those who sought them, and a few displays of bad behavior erupted. The word ‘fistfight’ hovered in the background as the lucky, faster few fled with bags stuffed with goodies, while the hesitant (or more polite) stared glumly at spaces where stacks of free books had been.

But the punchline came at the end of the weekend, when one of the more aggressive librarins proudly laid her stuffed-to-the-gills-with-books bag on the scale–

–and got socked with an overweight fine of $150. Which was not reclaimable on her expense form.

As my friend Deb, in whose house we rest tonight, is fond of saying, “Karma’s a bitch.”

(Don’t forget to enter caption contest VI from the August 29 blog! and potential bookshop sitters should read the blog from Friday past for details of how to apply. Thanks!)

Holding her Grandmother’s Book

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Yesterday before picking up my friend Cami from the airport I recorded a radio program for “Inside Appalachia.”

During the interview, the strange relationship between bookstores and fires came up. Most rural bookstores owners will be familiar with this phenomenon: one of the first things people replace after a house fire, once they have the basics covered, is their beloved childhood books. It was a shock, the first time a man who looked stronger than the mountains surrounding us got red about the eyes as we handed him a replacement copy of Beautiful Joe. “Had it since I was eight,” he said. “Stole it from the school library ’cause I liked it so much.”

Wayne, the radio host, laughed at this story, then nodded. “You know, the other day my daughter was looking through our bookcase, and she pulled out some books of my mom’s, things she sent us before she died, that she’d had since she was a little girl. And my daughter was just idly leafing through one of them, and I got a catch in my throat. There was something so wonderful, seeing that, her grandmother leaving this trail. They’re just objects, but objects that contain thoughts that inspired my mom all her life. And it never would have occurred to me to be that sentimental about them, but yeah, I wouldn’t have missed that moment for the world.”

Yep.

(If you want to hear the “Inside Appalachia” interview, it airs the week of Sept. 28; check your local station, or visit the WETS website for live streaming on the day. Don’t forget caption contest VI is under August 29 if you want to enter, and Big Stone Celtic Festival is Sept. 22; come one, come all!)