Tag Archives: used book stores

Small Town Secrets: an oxymoron

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If you want to know what’s going on in a small town, visit the laundromat, the hairdresser, or the bookstore.

Actually, skip the hairdresser; they’re too smart to tell all they know. But in the bookstore, nobody has to speak a word for some cats to slip out of the bag and into the mainstream gossip currents.

The other day someone was trolling our Religion section, and picked up a book by Elaine Pagels. The customer frowned; since Pagels is a scholar first, Christian apologist not at all, we’re used to people in the Bible belt’s buckle sometimes finding fault with her theological standpoints. But this guy was frowning at the inside cover.

“Price not marked?” I smiled, reaching for the volume.

The customer glared at me. “Where’d you get this book?”

“Uhhh, we get most of our books in trade. People bring in books they’re done reading, and swap them for others.”

He turned the glare on the book in his hand. “Hmmph. I gave this to my pastor as a Christmas present three years ago.” His finger traced the inscription inside the book. “To Pastor X, in hopes this will spark some lively sermon topics.”

One could see why the good reverend might have parted with it….

Such “oops” conversations are infrequent, but memorable. The worst “small town bookstore” moment is actually in my book coming out in October, so I’ll leave that one for later; running a close second was the time an older woman came in and browsed–again–religion. (There’s just something about churches and secrets….)

On the “family” shelf sat several books on raising Christian kids, keeping love alive in marriages, etc. The woman’s eyes scanned the shelf, then her hand darted in and plucked out a volume. Opening it, she heaved a sigh, and placed it back on the shelf, opened another nearby, repeated the sigh and replacement.

I was about to offer to help her find whatever she was looking for, but she turned to where I sat at the laptop and said, as if we were continuing a conversation, “I knew they were having trouble. He wouldn’t tell me–my son, I mean–but they’re getting divorced. He’s brought in all their marriage books from when they went to counseling.”

Her face was tight with tears she wouldn’t let out. I put the kettle on.

The funniest secret slip was a few years ago, when a woman browsing cookbooks got excited and called her mother. “There’s a soup cookbook in here that used to belong to Paxton Allgyer,” she said into the cell phone. “What was that stuff she always brought to the church social that everybody liked so much, but she never would give out the recipe? …Seafood bisque?” She turned to the index in the back, searching, then shouted into the phone, “It’s here! Yes! ‘Bye.”

She bought the cookbook with a smirk. I have no idea what happened at the next church social, and I like it that way.

People sometimes ask Jack and me, “What do you need to run a bookstore?”

A sense of humor, a functioning tea kettle, and a large supply of whiteout.

We Happy Few, We Band of Booksellers

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Sometimes the little guy does win. Or at least holds her own.

I’m not quite sure what’s happening with bookstores these days – small, independently owned bookstores, I mean; we can all see what’s happening to the giants; Amazon is closing them. But what I begin to suspect (okay, hope for and daydream about) is that we’re gaining ground.

Bookstores are magic places, but I don’t have to tell you that. The watering holes of like-minded souls, the gathering spot for the tribe, they come pretty close to sacred. And it seems to me that, like farmers markets ten years ago, small bookstores are entering a period of rejuvenation and revitalization, even as people decry their loss.  Readers have begun noticing how much more fun it is to shop with real people than online. Realization is dawning that—like breaded, fried fast food versus a slow-cooked home supper—faster and cheaper is not always better (and that the price difference might not be as high as one might think, either).

That’s why I wrote The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap: to celebrate this way of life that some proclaim dead or dying.  And that’s why I cried in the middle of Ann Patchett’s acceptance speech for “Most Engaging Author” at BookExpo America, when she recited the St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V while all these pictures of people who run bookstores flashed on the screen. Sweet people. People standing behind messy counters, in front of orderly shelves, hippies in scarves and skirts standing next to well-coiffed people in tailored suits, people who dress and think completely different from one another, arms entwined and smiling.

God love us, we are the ones who keep the barbarians from the gates. We keep a stall in the marketplace for stuff that lets people think for themselves. We take the financial risks of hand-selling things we think are good, even if they’re not commercially viable. We take trade-ins; we make staff pick shelves; we listen, listen, listen to our customers, and offer suggestions based on what they said, rather than who paid us for  a pop-up ad.

We can’t be bought, but boy-o can we sell.

I cried the whole time those pictures flashed. We are the little guys, the reeds still standing in the wind because we’re flexible, smart, and fast. What we do is so important: we help people think; we help them express themselves. And when they express themselves in particularly charming, compelling ways, we give other people a chance to hear those words that never will get made into movies.

What Ann Patchett and William Shakespeare say is true; sometimes the little guys win. Here’s tae us!