Tag Archives: shelving books

Satur-ruptus

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The past week has been incredibly busy with work away from the shop. I’ve been organizing a conference and running around trying to figure out how to channel a whole lot of powerful people with opposing agendas into a productive dialogue while not ticking anyone off, and between one thing and another, let’s just say I was REALLY looking forward to getting my head down Saturday and puttering amongst the bookshelves.

Books may have personalities and after-the-shop-closes lives, but they tend to enjoy revealing truth rather than obfuscating it. A leisurely Saturday morning coffee, followed by stacking and straightening and stocking and shelving, and for dessert, some serious contemplation of how to divide Finance, Gender Studies and the –ologies into Self-help/Career and Everything Else…ah, bliss.

When I got home and told Jack of my heart’s desire, a funny look crossed his face. “Well, you’ll have plenty of fodder to work with,” he said. “We got in a few donations while you were away.”

books in shopbooks on porchTo paraphrase Scotland’s national bard, the best-laid plans of mice and board directors and bookslingers gang aft agley (go skittering sideways). Put another way, be careful what you wish for. Inner peace,  here I come.

Spatial Sarcasm?

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Give us an inch, and we’ll build a bookshelf. Those of you who have read the book or visited our shop can picture the place: is there a space left where we could put up another? (Regular readers may recall, from our November visit to Philly, the outrage Jack expressed at finding Walk a Crooked Mile Bookshop had indeed used their bathtub.)

Yet on Thanksgiving Day, we found three. The bookshop was closed, Jack and I invited to a 4 pm dinner to which we planned to take Cookie Glass’s frozen-in-waiting cookies, so we didn’t have to log kitchen time. With the day clear before us, we swung into frenzied action.

Jack knocked together a standard “sleepbuilt” for under our last untouched window; created a special construction to slip over the counter in the half of our kitchen that is crafts and cookbooks; and built a skinny, tall bookcase—which, due to the influence of my Seattle coffee-fiend friend Cami, I can’t help thinking of as “the latte”—for just outside the bathroom door.

Surveying the latte that is two pocket paperbacks wide and six shelves high, Jack said, “That isn’t a bookshelf. That’s spatial sarcasm.”

But it worked. We now have a “BARGAIN BOOKS” section where paperbacks can go to die. $1 each, or 10 for $5, not returnable. Enjoy, folks.

And perhaps, just perhaps, this time when we stand back-to-back in the center of our store, surveying 360-degrees while saying, “OK, we’ve found the last space where we can put a bookshelf”—well, maybe this time it’s true.

Although I do keep eying the downstairs bathtub….