Tag Archives: used books

Eight Needleworkers, Seven Kittens, Two Camera Crews and a Bookstore in a Pear Tree

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I really don’t know how we get ourselves into these situations. Last night a film crew came to the bookstore to film some promotional video about our shop and my book. They chose Tuesday evening because we have a weekly stitch-n-bitch in which the shop fills with lively, cheerful babes wielding long needles. VERY photogenic.

But the day before, we got a call from the animal rescue we work with: a family of shelters kitties’ number was up. Sure, of course, bring them over. Then St. Martin’s Press (my publisher) called: they needed a head shot of Jack and me together, by 11 pm. We called our friend Elissa, a pro photographer who promised to run by after work and shoot us. (You can see her massive body of work on Facebook: search for elp6n.)

That’s how two camera crews, eight Needleworking Babes, and seven identical grey fluffballs landed in our shop at more or less the same moment last night. It got a little crazy.  The kittens ran for yarn bundles and cubbyholes, mewing too loudly to leave out during the camera work. The camera crew busily set up lights larger than some of our shelves, as needleworkers ducked under and around them. Elissa had Jack and I backed against a shelf and was bracketing away. The women made boisterous jokes as they pulled out their yarn and eyed the huge camera–and the hunky cameraman. I glanced up from Elissa’s blinding flash at one point to see Tyler the Cameraman traversing the bookstore on his knees, arms extended to shepherd the septuplets into the mystery room. As he corralled errant kittens, Tyler said with a radiant smile, “This is so cool!”

The women, watching his butt wiggle across the floor, grinned too.

That’s when the door opened and a professor friend walked in, saying to someone behind him, “And you’ll love our town bookstore; it’s such a calm, elegant place.” Tyler’s backside was to her, and a kitten had just skittered past him–to be scooped up by a needlework babe, glass of wine in one hand, yarn in the other. The kitten promptly attacked the wineglass as Elissa’s camera did a rapid series of blue strobe lights in the newcomer’s face.

Witold, an academic friend featured in my book, often introduces the new professors in town to our shop as part of the community tour. He hadn’t called ahead. This was a miscalculation.

“Melanie” the new Spanish Professor watched the chaos with one raised eyebrow and a smile spread across her face like a shield. We broke from kitten-wrangling and photo ops to say hello and offer her a chair.

She waved a hand in negation. “No no, I can’t stay long, and I can see that you’re busy.”

I think her voice had an edge of panic to it.

So we got the kittens fed and enclosed and the film finished and the photos snapped and had a good time with the needleworkers, laughing and flirting and cutting up for the video. Everyone went home about 9:30. (We know how to party, but we’re old.)

And Witold sent me a text message: I asked Melanie her impression of the bookstore, and she said, “Surreal.”

Welcome aboard, Mel. Would you like a book, or a kitten?

Don’t forget to enter Caption Contest IV for a chance to win a free copy of “The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap.” Check the July 29 blog for the photo and current entries.

Dust and Ideas

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Someone asked me recently, “What’s that lovely smell, the one you get in old bookshops, made of?”

Dust and ideas, as near as I can tell. And it’s not nearly so esoteric as one might think.

This past Friday some synchronicity appeared when two very different pals from the book world forwarded information on book smells. Lara in Canada sent the above photo about a new (quite nicely packaged) perfume called “Paper Passion.” And my agency, Harold Ober, tweeted this link:

@bookstorewendy: As the authority on Old Book Smells, what do you say to this analysis? mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives…

As the mentalfloss article states, old books carry “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.” Yes, we all agree that the smell of books presents their history–and that it’s a pretty nice smell, to have inspired a perfume!

The vanilla-and-acid analysis is poetic, and as Charles Lamb said, “A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog’s ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins.” Plus, I have this somewhat silly idea that old books are heavier because they take in not only smells from their readers, but weight, from their readers’ minds.

As a college student I often helped a friend who worked in Psych Services check the meeting rooms before locking up at night. Sometimes when we opened the door of one of those little counseling cubicles, the heaviness of what had been discussed in there lingered on the very air. I don’t mean “vibes and aura” stuff, just that there was a palpable (usually dark) residue in those rooms.

Of course, not all thoughts are ponderous and ominous like thunderclouds; some are featherlight, airy as sunbeams. No matter which, it just makes sense that people reading books, pulling ideas out of them, leave a little of themselves behind–be that the breath of thought or the breadcrumbs of lunch.

All those leftovers contribute to the book’s smell, its appearance, its personality, if you will. This is something bibliophiles know and respect. In our bookstore, we often see people stop just inside the door and take a big sniff. And we know he or she is honoring the long history of humanity’s eternal library, inhaling that wafting odor of dust and ideas.