Tag Archives: Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap

OK, That was FUN!

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DSCN0400Nothing clears the air like a good murder. So we had one last night at the bookstore–although I thought I might have to kill someone before it began.

It started badly: the victim (a secret to the rest of the participants) hadn’t gotten his character information, nor asked us to send it again. He arrived knowing nothing of what he was to do in his complex role.

The girl detective and her mom were detained by a few road adventures and pulled in ten minutes after start time – but we hadn’t started because another character with a big important part thought it was Saturday night, as he explained when my husband called him to ask, “Dude, WTH ARE YOU?”

In the midst of it all, Our Good Chef Kelley hauled me into the kitchen with a crestfallen look on her face. One of the desserts she’d made for the killing had failed – and the plot needed all three.

So Jack raced to Food City to buy a cake while the rest of us did some impromptu introductory activities waiting on the last character, and the victim locked himself in the bathroom to read through his part.

DSCN0402And then it all just came together. One woman used a fake French accent, and the first time she turned “Li’l Bubba” (the victim’s nickname) into “Leetil Boo-Boo” the group fell out laughing. The girl detective had to outline the body, and as she rounded his bum, the victim said, “Hey, that tickles!” Chalk and guffaws flew everywhere.

There were insider jokes (How many Mullinses does it take to change a light bulb?) as Garden Club President Lady Smythe was exposed as a fake from Bold Camp (uhhh, sorry, but Bold Camp is just too hard to explain if you don’t live here) and Guy Smiley’s oration from GOD BLESS THE CROOKED ROAD OF AMERICA was funnier each time he re-started it. (So was the aging ingenue’s audition line, “I don’t know nothing about birthing no babies.” Her husband in real life is an OB-GYN.)

And there were obvious jokes. Annie DoGood, chief protestor, held up a sign demanding “Reusable sanitary napkins” just as everyone was tucking into their dessert jellies. You never saw so many spoons hit the table at once. (But she had others. “Equal rights for cows” during the cheesecakes was generally acclaimed as the crowd favorite.) And then the rival chefs–Kellie Piercing of Third Time’s the Charm Cafe versus Lisa Cupcake of Gerry’s Deli: serving Big Crooked Road for forty years–bonded over a turkey baster.

DSCN0405At least, we think it was turkey baster….

The gang sorted Bulgarian prefab chocolate sauce from Bavarian chocolate sauce, and the poisoner got caught– except there were two poisoners working independently, and oh, who cares, it was ever so much fun!

Besides our terror that the whole thing was falling apart at the opening, some of the characters had arrived in full stress mode. One had a nasty altercation with her daughter’s coach. Another has such a high-powered job, a stress-less day would signal a coup d’etat. A third has been dealing with the terrible illness of a loved one.

So it’s true what I always say: nothing beats stress like a good murder. And last night’s was a real hoot. Just ask Leetil Boo-Boo.DSCN0403

Caretaking the Eternal Library of Humanity

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My friend Anita out in Kansas is looking to relocate the bookshop she manages, Al’s Old and New Books. She has discovered that some people think used bookshops are…. downmarket, while others prefer the term “passe.”

Bollocks!

Jack and I have often commented that we oversee a library of ever-changing leftovers, some of which have mass appeal, some of which have esoteric appeal. But the reason we like what we do is that we’re not full of the latest bestseller, face outward on the aisle so mega-shoppers walking to the mall can be enticed by “Oh, I heard about that on Twitter!” impulse moments.

We have the long-term, hardcore stuff. The 1970s classics on Marxism, the Leif Ungers and Robert Fords and Lisa Changes. People who write well but disappeared into the well of marketing madness with nary a splash. My agent Pamela and I were talking one day about the “nebulous” position of used book stores in the publishing world. “After all, NYC doesn’t make any money from them,” she said, but then added, “but we all benefit from them. You are the caretakers of humanity’s eternal library, aren’t you? Like a benevolent dragon trying to get the gold horde out there instead of sit on it.”

Used book stores are the place where the sounds of silence outweigh the shrieks of hawkers telling you why THIS BOOK is the Next Great Thing. You can look for yourself–and thus see for yourself–in a used books shop. In a society that equates old with “has been” rather than “wisdom,” used books shops are a place for those who know when not to swallow a line.

We love running one. And this week, we’ve sold an amazing number of  what from a mainstream point of view would be “nobody’s gonna buy these” books. We sold about 20 volumes of philosophy. No, really, PHILOSOPHY! Mostly 1960s textbooks and treatises.

We sold a great wheen of French novels, both translated and in the original language. And we sold a set of plays written in the 1700s. A cheap, simple copy for someone who wanted to look at their structure. $3.20 and out the door she went.

This is part of why used book shops matter. It’s nice to have big well-lit shops with the bestsellers in them at full retail, but it’s also nice to have a dowdy little community center where you can think for yourself. That, and the $1.50 cuppa and the comfy couches and the cat option and the fact that if you come in and say, “Oh crap, I left my wallet at home,” we will say, “Fine, we’ll write it in the ledger and you can pay us next time you come.” And the customer, who only gets down from Ohio four times a year, stares at you like you’ve gone mad, and comes back two months later and pays up.

This is why it’s important for us to be here. Downmarket, my arse. Up the caretakers of the eternal library of humanity!