I love a compelling audiobook. I’m a sucker especially for male British narrators (bonus points if they are named Simon), followed closely by female British narrators and Lenny Henry (who actually is a male British narrator but does other accents so beautifully he gets his own category). Any narrator not in one of those three rubrics is assessed on a case-by-case basis.
I must be an aural learner, because I can recall even more detail when I’ve listened to a book than I can when I’ve read it. I wouldn’t ever choose to give up reading with my eyes — it’s hard to skim over passages of exposition in an audiobook, for one thing, and it’s a lot more difficult to locate lines you heard earlier and loved — but the pleasure of hearing someone tell a story well never gets old. We are a storytelling species, after all.
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Lots of kids see their first real taste of independence at the bookstore. Whether it’s being able to bike to the store alone, or pay with their own money (see my blog post about how the way children pay), kids enjoy a certain freedom at the store. With this freedom, and lack of prying parental eyes (or those of friends), comes the ability to choose what they really want.
Usually, these purchases are for the fiction titles. Kids will come in clamoring for the latest John Green book or the next book in a favorite series. Last week a boy, about 10 or so, came in holding a bike helmet, hair plastered to his head, and strode to the counter.
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I had thought that the sort of dark, soul-testing experiences which Wodehouse depicted in his short story, Tried in the Furnace, could only be found in fiction. Real experiences, I assumed, could not be that heart and sinew rending. I was wrong. I was naive. When you put on the clothes, and walk around town as Waldo, such illusions vanish.

This is our third year doing the Find Waldo Local event but I had been shielded from this unsavory knowledge until now. You see my son Reid, who has both the physique and the mental grit to make an outstanding Waldo, had worn the outfit the first two years, walking the town, winning the second place ribbon in last year’s fourth of July parade, being Waldo at the party, doing what had to be done. Continue reading →

After owning a bookstore for 18 years, I have seen special-order requests come in many ways. Normally, special orders come from customers who are actually in the store, or calling up. But as lives get busier the special orders have been coming to us in a variety of clever ways.
Let’s face it: people multitask just about everything now. Often this means when they see me, they remember that there was a book they wanted to order. Funnily, or irritatingly (depending on my mood and available time), they will follow me around the supermarket describing the book(s) they’d like me to order for them. Do not misunderstand me, I love that folks want to order from us and don’t just go online and order when they think of the book they need. It’s just odd to be doing bookstore business while I’m buying toilet paper and dish soap.
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Like all book lovers who hold on to loved volumes, and who have moved many times, and have inherited books from family members, I struggle with keeping my collection — well, if not pared down, at least sane. And by “sane,” I mean mainly relegated to bookcases, instead of threatening to crush me under toppling stacks.
I have moved within cities, between states, and across the country, every time with dozens and dozens of book boxes. (I think Bekins and Booska have me on a banned customer list by now.) Recently, my sister and I inherited my father’s book collection, and his books number in the several thousand. He loved to read about magic, travel, photography, loved mysteries and books about words and wordplay. He had excellent taste in these categories, and his books are beautiful. But most of them are in storage, and I cannot figure out how, without building myself a house made entirely out of books, I will be able to keep them.
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The great thing about being a bookseller: so many books to read! The terrible thing about being a bookseller: SO many books to read. They’re a mixed blessing, these stacks of advance reading copies and digital shelves filled with downloaded goodies from NetGalley and Edelweiss (booksellers’ treasure chests). With the sheer number of titles published every year, even the really good ones can start to blend together. Which makes the one-sitting reads — those books you cannot stop reading, the ones you make little bargains with yourself about trading task time for reading time, the ones you end up staying awake until 3 a.m. for — all the more memorable.
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As you may have heard, venerable children’s bookseller Carol Chittenden of Eight Cousins in Falmouth, Mass., will be retiring in January. Carol is a close pal, and we have shared many confidential communiques over the years, but I suspected that some of her best stuff was still being held in close reserve. An exit interview seemed to be the perfect cover to lure Carol into making an astonishing disclosure or two.
Kenny:  Dog years have a seven-year ratio with ordinary years. How does it work with bookstore years, would you say?
Carol: Drills, rather than dogs, are the correct metaphor here. Bookselling operates on variable speed calendars: fast when the customers are buying, endless when they’re not. To counteract this, I always feel we need to be twice as busy during the slow times, doing all the things that we won’t be able to take care of when we’re gift-wrapping and receiving and shelving double time.
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We all have them, those loose ends of our lives that occasionally make us crazy, like trying to find an old roommate from college or trying to recall the name of the book that delighted us a child. While I can’t really help find someone’s old college buddy, part of my job is trying to decipher just what the book threads might be.
On Sunday a lovely woman and her daughter came to the store. The daughter, eight, sought spooky books, and lots of them. Laura, our in-house spook-meister, was on it, finding the girl lots to choose from. While the daughter might have been utterly thrilled, her mother was vaguely dissatisfied even after we’d found her a novel about biblical women (not my strong suit).
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Okay, it’s come up again: what to actually say to customers when Amazon rears its head in the bookstore. Signage is one thing: you put it up and hope folks understand. (See Friday’s post for more on clever signs.) But having a discussion about Amazon (or big other online or big box competition) in the store can be very tricky. Emotions come on surprisingly fast from both sides and there is a very delicate balance between education and annoyance.
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Amazon made news again yesterday when it unveiled its the Fire phone (read the announcement here). That Amazon has entered the smartphone arena seems fitting for Jeff Bezos’s ego, but I doubt it will make a dent in the iPhone or Android market. But this Fire phone has some scary technology that continues to cement the closed loop of Amazon users: “…a further means of locking consumers into the Amazon ecosystem” by allowing people to snap a photo, or a jacket blurb, or even part of the text on the page and then be taken right that product’s page on Amazon’s website where they can download the book in the store. Once again, Bezos and his merry band of players are trying to take it right to the heart of the indies, although, really, as my coworker Darrilyn aptly said: “Don’t you think people who get this phone don’t set foot in a bookstore, or any store anymore?”
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