Tag Archives: second-hand books

March of the Scissors

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scissorsAs bookshop owners, Jack and I have noticed a phenomenon over the years that other managers say is common to their shop as well. Even some domestic households report it.

The March of the Scissors.

We cannot keep a pair of those sodding things around for love nor money. In the blue basket near our cashbox, we try to have at least one pair among the pencils and sales receipt books. Yet every couple of days, one of us calls out, “Honey have you seen the–?”

Jack says, at night while we sleep, the scissors creep from the handy storage spaces where we stash them, and meet at a central location, where they hide, a nest of blades and handles, until we open a door, lift a blanket, and viola! Like a mouse’s nest, there are the scissors–usually less one pair.

They get redistributed – the kitchen drawer, the blue basket, my yarn corner, the tin under the stairs: we like to have them handy for the many jobs that arise.

You may be wondering, of what need are scissors in a bookstore? Becalm yourself; we are not cutting up Patricia Cornwells. Yet. We use them to open boxes, cut off credit slips for customers, get goop off hardbacks. (Don’t try that last one at home; we’re professionals.)

In a fit of manly rage that he couldn’t find any when he needed them, the Master of the House (Jack) bought seven pairs of solid steel scissors in one go, and double-distributed the sneaky implements to all our hiding spots.

Three weeks later, he stormed through the house, screaming, “Not a single pairrrrrrr!”

You haven’t lived until you’ve watched a Scotsman rant about “S-iz-orrrrrrrrrs.” That adorable rolled r AND a glottal stop…. be still my heart.

We found them–six pair, anyway–under the sink this time, in a shameless tangled conflagration of open blades. The least they could do is make safety scissor babies.

The scissors are back in their hiding place, minus the one that got away. We can only assume that escaped scissors join the socks that found the wormhole in the back of the dryer, and are whooping it up out there somewhere in the Netherworld. An odd combination, to be sure, but then every relationship needs a softie and a sharp one, doesn’t it?

We hope they will be very happy together.

Bargain Basements, Backlists and All

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Our bookstore now has a bargain basement. Considering that we’re a second-hand bookshop in the first place (heh heh) it’s pretty cheap.  From now on, the books on the floor under any bookshelf are $1.

I was talking with another bookstore owner, Ann at Over the Moon, in Crozet, VA, about the difference between a second-hand and new books shop. We agreed that for a new shop, books get a brief period of handselling, a window of advertising opportunity via publishers and publicists, and then, if they haven’t done their duty, syanara. Maybe a year, maybe two. In a second-hand book store, people come looking for things they liked twenty years ago, titles they want to own in hardback, or a cheap, low-investment airplane read.

Completely different approach. “Backlist” becomes “bargain classic.” It’s one of the things Jack and I love about running a read-it-again (or get a chance to read it for the first time, two generations later): offering people access.

It comes back to that flash-in-the-pan bright star versus the long, steady light of those who, if not quite classics, are telling human stories that are timeless enough to endure. Diane Johnson. E.L. Doctorow. Delderfield. Anne Rice, Anne McCaffrey, Larry McMurtry. James Michener.

Oh lordy, the Micheners. I still remember my dad’s comment: “Any novel that starts with the volcano that formed the island on which the main characters conduct their business might be called thorough.”

Although American/British/Irish literature classes in future centuries may or may not study every single one of these lads and ladettes, they are part of the eternal library of humanity. And people may not make movies or write theses about them all, but they’ve influenced the way people think, commented on the way society runs.

Old books never die; they just get tape on their covers and dust on their spines, and they go into the bargain basement. Where smart people find them, and their ideas and stories live again, and again, and again, interesting and enduring.