I don’t usually write about adult books in this column, but every once in a while I just have to. It’s not every day that a customer I’ve known for the entire almost 17-year life of the bookstore writes a novel. Stephen Kiernan has been shopping at the store forever. I’ve seen him go from Polk Award-winning journalist to a wonderful non-fiction writer. His first two books, Last Rites and Authentic Patriotism, were great sellers for us. We hosted launch parties for these books and celebrated with him.

A week from today, Stephen’s debut novel, The Curiosity, comes out. I read a lot of galleys, my staffers read a lot of galley, and we’ve all come to the conclusion that this has bestseller written all over it. Beautifully written, with a unique idea, this book is just, well, damn good. Told from different perspectives (this conceit only works when those voices all sound unique, and they do here) it’s a complex story about scientific discovery, love and greed. A man has been found, frozen in Arctic ice, by Dr. Kate Philo, who has worked on reanimating smaller things found in the ice. Moral questions come into play: should she reanimate him, what are the consequences and what happens when Kate falls for the man she brought back to life, and how long can he live, and what are the motivations of all involved when the media circus starts.
This book reads like a great film, so it’s not surprising the film rights have already been snapped up by some very smart producers. Here’s what amazes me: I’ve known Stephen for years, his eldest son even worked for us one summer, and I had no idea that he could write so beautifully. Fiction and non-fiction are extremely different animals, and Stephen has shown versatility with both. The Curiosity grabbed me from the first page and I was riveted until the last. I cannot wait to celebrate this achievement with him at our event for him in August.
In the meantime, I will happily sell this wonderful book and watch, hopefully, as it hits the bestseller list.

As is common in summer, several groups of families and visitors overlapped at the Flying Pig at the same time the other day. It was immediately clear who was local and who was from out of town. Sometimes we can tell when tourists aren’t familiar with small, personal bookstores; they are surprised and sometimes initially uncomfortable when we call out a greeting, then warm up when they realize we aren’t going to hover obsessively nearby while they browse.
One of the families – parents with their two daughters – was from a big city in the west, and they seemed to be having a rough day. Their older daughter, 11 or 12, was in a bad mood and taking it out on the rest of the family: scorning her father for trying to recommend books to her, complaining about every aspect of their Vermont trip, ridiculing her little sister for showing enthusiasm about anything. It was hard to want to initiate conversation because her behavior was so off-putting, but I wanted to try to break through her bad mood and help her have a better day. My experience with kids is that, even if they seem crabby and difficult — maybe especially when they are crabby and difficult – they are still hoping to connect to something or someone in a positive way. So I did my best to be friendly and kind and show her books I thought she might like. Can’t say I succeeded in completely turning her day around, but I did my best. At least she and her sister did find books they wanted to read.
Meanwhile, three kids ranging in age from 10 to 12, unaccompanied by grownups, were also in the store. They spent a lot of time in the fantasy section, which is near the cash-wrap area, so we could hear a lot of their conversation. They were a well-read trio, and helped each other recall titles and authors. They were having fun, testing out some of the toys (and informing us of a little bin of bouncing balls that had gone flat). At first I thought they might be siblings close in age, but it turned out they were just pals who had biked to the store. We got into a lively conversation about books we loved, and they kept exclaiming enthusiastically about new titles they wanted to read. “We biked over here without our wallets,” said the 12-year-old girl. “I thought it was going to be fine coming in without our money, but this is hard!” She said it good-naturedly. All three kids were so relaxed and cheerful, I kept wishing some of their good juju would transmit itself to the girl who was having the tough day.
I couldn’t bear for them to leave empty-handed, so I went to the office and pulled out six advance reading copies. I showed them the books and invited them each to choose one to take home and read. “Pick a book,” I said. “We’d love your opinion. No time pressure; just read whichever book strikes your interest and come back and let us know what you think of it.” Their eyes were huge with the unexpected delight as I left to go help some of our other customers.
About 15 minutes later, they came over to me. “We have a plan!” they said. “What we’re going to do is, we’re going to start our books July 1, and then when we’re done, we’re going to have a book club and tell each other about them. And then we’re going to come back here and tell you what we thought.” They were as excited as kids getting ready to build a fort. “We want to show you that we’re worth this,” said the 12-year-old girl. How touching is that? How appreciative and earnest and wonderful! And how cool is it that my job allows me to be Santa Claus now and again?
Exchanges like that always renew my own enthusiasm for bookselling – especially children’s bookselling – and make me wish that all kids’ days could be as easily enlivened by that simplest of items, a book.

I know I’ve gently teased bookstore customer who come in and ask for a particular book by describing it. Often the description of a book is not all that helpful in finding it, especially if said book was last seen by the customer six months ago in a display.
But yesterday found me working alone, and very busy. A lovely customer wanted two books, both of which the computer said we had. They were hardcover picture books. So, already that limits where these should theoretically be found. As any bookseller knows, books, even picture books, can roam far and wide in a store, so they can still hard to find. Looking for a book when the store is full can be a vexing issue, if the book is nowhere to be found.
As I scoured the shelves for Ain’t Gonna Paint No More by Karen Beaumont, I grew increasingly frustrated. It wasn’t until the very patient customer said, “It’s bright yellow,” that I was able to find it, shelved in with the F’s. Sometimes having a color to look for is actually helpful. Our inventory system gives a lot of information: type of book, hard or soft cover, what section it should be in, and what kind of book it is: history, fiction, etc. If there’s time, we’ll often go to our books in print database to get an image of what the book looks like. It’s enormously helpful to know not only the words of what you’re looking for, but the color of the spine as well.
So, the next time you come to a bookstore with sketchy title information, just know that knowing the color of the book sometimes is really helpful. Except when the yellow book is actually blue.
 

When most people imagine a day working in a bookstore, they have a somewhat idyllic notion of a quiet workplace involving customer service, shelving, and a little paperwork. Perhaps there’s a cat, and a comfy chair, and some reading during the quiet moments. The real thing is more like handling triage in a lively E.R. without (one hopes) the life-or-death consequences.
Yesterday was a busy day at The Flying Pig. There were three of us on the afternoon shift from 2-6 pm, and the constant, if mostly controlled, whirlwind of activity made me wish everyone knew what a day at the store really looked like from the inside. At the end of the day, I mentioned this to my cohorts on the floor, Sandy and PJ, and asked them to try to remember all of the things they had done during their shift.
The following is what we actually remembered doing. Note: this is an incomplete list; the task was much like trying to name all of the contents of one’s refrigerator. We got the majority of items, but there are of course bunches of parsley and half-limes and hunks of Parmesan and foil-wrapped lasagne leftovers and A-1 sauce forgotten on the backs of shelves and the corners of drawers.
Sandy’s list was from a full day; PJ and Elizabeth’s lists each covered a four-hour period.
Sandy’s list

• Pick books for Story Hour
• Recommend for 5-year-old girl with older brothers a book that “has beautiful language and illustrations and is good for girls but not too girly”
• Recommend great vacation read that is “very well written but not too heavy” for a woman “who has read everything”
• Give directions to Massachusetts (Mapquest, print out)
• Track down why a customer’s order did not come in as expected
• Talk with drop-in magazine writers about why Shelburne is a great place to live and visit
• Read to children at Story Hour
• Help a mother find where her daughter had dropped her toy
• Receive a book order shipment
• Shelve the books that have come in
• Call customers to let them know their orders are in
•  Recommend birthday gift books for a husband “who already buys everything he wants to read”
• Ring up customers
• Wrap gifts
• Change burned-out light bulbs
• Help a visiting family locate a nearby playground
• Field promotional cold calls for “owner or manager”
• Answer multiple calls asking about book availability
• Call Ingram to find out when they expect to get in a backordered title
• Help a group of children who love books and have read many of the best ones find new volumes
• Try to figure out why inventory says we have –2 (negative 2) copies of a title when we actually have 3 on the shelf
• Help a father find books for his preteen daughter who “hates to read” and automatically loathes anything her father suggests
• Make recommendations to a young woman who wants “a good romance.” After getting excited about several books, she states she does not want any today, just wanted ideas
• Clean up the mess left by a large group
• Try to figure out the order of a series that has no numbers and a child wants #8-10
• Help a customer find a massage in the area
• Print out this week’s bestseller list
• Rearrange bestseller shelves accordingly
• Code discounts for books new to bestseller list and remove code from those not on bestseller list any more
• Check on-hand quantities of all bestsellers and place books from the list that we are in short supply of on purchase orders, deciding how from the distributor and how many from publisher
• Find good choices for the holes in: Book Group Picks, Great Summer Reads, Staff Picks, adult, youth, and picture books
• Research best audiobooks to have on hand for the summer
• Check the cash, credit card, check, and gift card numbers and make sure everything adds up correctly
• Take trash to dumpster
• Close

PJ’s list

• Re-did four window. displays: spring reads to summer, spring kids picture books to summer picture books, grad gifts to outdoor books and gifts, recent fiction to great books for camp
• Helped customer find book for two-year-old (loved Flora and the Flamingo)
• Re-shelved tons of picture books left out by two large families
• Rang up customers
• Helped a great-grandmother find a book for her great-grandson (Loren Long’s illustrated version of Watty Piper’s The Little Engine That Could)
• Called publisher to report receiving 4 copies of a book we’d ordered 2 of
• Shelved receiving
• Wrapped gifts
• Re-did display on Flying Pig table and front case by window
• Recycling to dumpster

Elizabeth’s list

• Review applications for events and marketing position to determine next steps for each candidate
• Talk with author dropping in to sell hiking/nature books
• Recommend books to well-read kids looking for new fantasy titles
• Get catalog online from puzzle vendor; sort through puzzle styles and difficulty ranges to build opening order; email rep to ask about per-style minimums and pricing
• Take three avid, articulate, enterprising young readers to ARC shelves to choose books to take home and read, then share their opinions with us
• Open and receive six envelopes from publishers, each holding two copies of various titles we’d ordered
• Call publisher to report paperback damaged in shipment
• Peruse Above the Treeline to look at indie top sellers for April-June 2013 and place titles we’re out of and want to restock on orders — titles we need by the weekend on distributor order; titles we can wait a few days for on publisher orders
• Welcome longtime customer who lives two hours away, chat about books
• Edit series titles in database to make recent series additions consistent with title and volume information
• Help customer figure out title of book she heard about on the radio
• Call sideline vendor to get our freight charge for a received order to reconcile and post
• Fix price gun (labels sticking)
• Review day’s customer online orders, place titles on purchase order and tag for customers
• Finish pricing greeting card order
• Check on-hand availability of books for phoning customers
• Intervene with new customer whose two children are teetering on tantrum because they are allowed one book each but want several, by offering to children to record the titles of all of the extra books they want in a wish list for future reference; offer accepted; peace ensues
• Gently redirect unsupervised toddlers pulling books off shelves; reshelve books
• Look up and share with customer reviews for two books staff had not yet read that customer was interested in
• Field summer job inquiry by high school student
• Field inquiry by local author about number of copies of their books sold
• Set aside Game of Thrones series for customer Josie ran into at the grocery store and called store about

As you can see, working at a bookstore is a little like making a Chinese papercut; you snip away at  dozens of disparate areas and hope by the end of the day you’ve unfolded something that holds together, something you hope, disregarding the bits on the floor, that’s maybe even a little bit pretty. And as you drive home, your mind is filled with tomorrow’s partially planned papercut: the event fliers and press releases you hope to design and post, the new book orders and teacher requests that will be coming in, emails and phone calls that need answering, titles to request from Netgalley, reviews to read, sections that need updating, series book that need restocking before the influx of weekend tourists, and so on and so forth, until the end of time. Suffice it to say, if there’s a comfy chair in the store, it’s unlikely to be occupied by the bookseller. We are more than delighted to see you in it, enjoying a book.

I’m not sure if it was the heat and humidity yesterday, but nary a person in the bookstore could remember a title. I thought I’d share some of them.
– The Pow Pow Dog
– The Red Head was the only thing I had to go on. She thought it was an adult mystery. Turns she wanted The Hare with Amber Eyes.
– Brothers and Sisters, the customer emphatically stated. Turns out he was looking for Team of Rivals. I think this says more about his siblings than anything else.
– “Something about cities. I heard it on PBS” turned out to be The Metropolitan Revolution.  This was only made possible by the customer actually remembering the name of the PBS show.
– “You know, the one. That one.” The exasperated customer was getting irritated. I asked if maybe she could tell me anything about the book, anything at all, so I might be able to help her.  All she said was this, “I can’t believe you don’t know.”
– “Something about mice. You sold it to me last summer.” I sold a lot of books last summer, and a surprising number of them actually had to do with mice. I was stumped, until I looked up her customer record (we track customers only for our frequent buyer program where you get $10 off every $100 you spend – it comes in handy at moments like these) and could see she was talking about Tum Tum and Nutmeg. Turns out she didn’t want it, she just wanted to know.
So, what crazy garbled titles have you gotten this summer?
 

Yesterday was a slow Sunday at the bookstore. The warm and sunny weather had taken most of our customers to the lake, so it was quiet. This quiet, though, allowed me to really talk to everyone.
One young man came in and strode with purpose to the science fiction/fantasy section. He came back with George RR Martin’s book, A Dance with Dragons. He plopped the massive hardcover down and asked if it came in paperback. I told him, not until October. He looked so disappointed. I asked a few questions. Was he desperate for this book today? Why yes, yes he was. Honestly, a 22-year-old man who freely admits he’s desperate to read a 1152-page book is very endearing to me. I asked what his budget was. He said, “I was expecting $9, not $35.” Andrew, by now we were on a first name basis, started rapidly drumming his fingers on the counter, almost like he was counting pennies he had in a jar back at home.
I quickly looked at my inventory for the book and sales have slowed way down for it. I also really liked this kid. He seemed like an avid reader. In fact, one of the reasons he couldn’t just buy the book was he had already spent $20 on a book earlier in the day. I offered him a 20% discount, to get the book below $30. I could tell that was making a difference, but not enough. And he looked so sad to not be able to leave with the book, that I said, “Okay, how’s 25% off? For a total of $27.83.” His eyes lit up. I rang him up and he practically clutched the book to his chest as he left.
“I get paid tomorrow,” he said as he left. Anyone, especially, a young adult, who is allocating part of his paycheck to books is someone who should get a discount. And I was thrilled to help him out.

Ahh, I well remember my long-ago Fridays in publishing, when we sat at our desks until noon and then hopped a jitney out of town or flew to Tortola. (Well, people with houses in the Hamptons hopped a jitney; I took the train back to Brooklyn and spent the weekend looking out my third-floor window into the inaccessible row of back gardens behind my apartment, but same-same.)
In deference to that most noble tradition, Summer Fridays, this post will be readable in a few short chunks as the wi-fi on the bus flickers in and out or the captain makes you turn off your electronic device.
First, a simple haiku (actually, a senryu, since, unlike true haiku, this one doesn’t hint at the season):
Opening a book
before take-off: real paper
never powers down.
Next, a lowku (so-called because I couldn’t even stick to the simple traditional U.S. haiku rules of 5-7-5, but instead had to borrow a syllable from the first line to use in the third). And I don’t so much hint at the season as hurl it out there, but hey, it’s Friday morning and I have an imaginary jitney to catch:
Ingredients
for a perfect summer day:
Lemonade. Hammock. Book.
Finally, a comic-strip musing on the recent buzz that dystopia is dead, long live mysteries or contemporary realistic YA fiction or cowboy space opera or whatever genre will next explode/resurge:
Bookselling Life #3: The End of Dystopia? by Elizabeth Bluemle
by: EHB

(My previous bookselling life movies can be found here and here.)

I know I often write about the seasonal changes I feel at the bookstore. These are not weather-driven, but people-driven. I only see certain people during certain seasons. Summer is the time when I see the most people for the briefest amount of time.
Our town is nestled right next to Lake Champlain, and Charlotte, our old town, has camps, as they’re called are beautiful houses right on the lake. These camps, on Thompson’s Point, are only lived in between May and October, but generally they aren’t full until the weather is warm enough to not need heat at night, as none of the camps are properly insulated or have a means to heat. So, June into July is when folks start streaming into the store.
I love that these visitors make it a point to stop at the store and let us know they’re here. Some folks are here for a week, some are here for the summer. One customer lives in Cape Town, South Africa and she announces her arrival every year by emailing a list of books she’d like us to have on hand for her when she arrives. I got the email Monday. She wants a book by Sarah Churchwell. I’ve ordered it and it should be here when she comes to the store. Kathryn has been shopping with us since 1998 when she and her husband first came back to Charlotte from London, where they met. He attended Middlebury College and went to work overseas.
The first time they came they had their little girl, Alice, who was all of two and a half. She asked oh so politely, “Where’s the loo?” and I’ve loved her ever since. Subsequently, they’ve had two more children and each is just as delightful. This family could shop anywhere, and yet, year after year, they start their vacation with us. To be part of a vacation preparation list is pretty awesome.
Other vacationers give us their whole summer’s book group picks. One group, again on Thompson’s Point, reads a book a week. They email us the list right after their first meeting the first week of July. We stock their books and even create a shelf for them, so they can more easily find all the books they’ll be reading during the summer.
We sometimes take our seasonal customers for granted. We just always expect them to be there. Two years in a row, Kathryn and her family didn’t come to the store, and I was practically bereft. I had come to count on their arrival to somehow complete my summer and without them, it felt strange. Sometimes kids no longer vacation here because they’ve gone to college out west and stayed. I miss these kids. I always love getting caught up on the past year’s activities and changes. The customers who always stun me are the ones who plan their road trip to coincide with our open hours. They come in, usually with lists at the ready, and stock up for the rest of their journey.
These people shop at bookstores all over the country during the summer. These book lovers understand the value of indies and how we can enrich their lives. But what they might not know is how much they enrich our lives.

A longtime Burlington business, a wonderful independent movie rental store boasting around 30,000 eclectic, interesting titles, closed recently. It was a loss, and the other night, a friend was bemoaning its demise. “It was a community gathering place,” Christopher said. “It was a landmark. We’ve shopped there since it actually was down on the waterfront, and then after its move.” He loved the sense of community the video store offered. “You’d always run into someone there,” he said. Now his family doesn’t watch nearly as many movies together. They miss the staff recommendations, the serendipity of finding something unexpected on the shelf, the broad, curated collection. The loss of the indie movie rental store is personal for Christopher and his family.
It all sounded so familiar. Those things apply, of course, to the pleasures of bookstores and the many kinds of value and experiences they provide. At our own store, especially at this tourist-filled time of year, we hear frequent lamentations of bookshops lost and sorely missed in communities all over the country. I like to think the pendulum will swing back toward the bricks-and-mortar store (smartly updated and thoughtfully positioned) as gadget-hype settles down, solar flares remind us of the fallibility of electronics, and people realize how much they miss the smell and feel and satisfaction of looking at shelves of books they’ve loved. (Remember how people were tossing vinyl records when CDs and then digital tracks came in? And now, well, vinyl is back, baby!) Judging from the number of young people we see who have e-readers but continue to savor real physical books, I am very hopeful. For example:
A 14-year-old boy was browsing the fantasy section. He was one of those great kids who is initially a little shy but lights up when talking about books. An avid reader, he had a gift card burning a hole in his pocket. He’d already found a couple of books: a thick Stephen King paperback and a copy of Prodigy, the sequel to Marie Lu’s Legacy. We struck up a conversation about Legacy, which we’d both enjoyed, and I showed him a few other books, including The 5th Wave. He was so luminously happy with his thick stack of books, and while he waited patiently for his relatives to finish their own shopping, I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions.
“Do you have an e-reader?” I asked him.
“I have a Nook and an iPad, if that’s what you mean,” he said. I loved the twinkle in this kid’s eye.
“So here you are with a stack of books. What is it about actual books you like, since you aren’t doing all your reading electronically?”
“For one thing, you don’t have to stop reading while the plane takes off,” he said. (I am in full agreement with him there.)
Then he picked up Prodigy and riffled the pages back and forth. “And it’s just easier to do this,” he said. “You know?” (I do.)
Then he picked up the stack, all three books different thicknesses and trim sizes, with distinct covers and textures, and sort of bounced them up and down in his hands, feeling the weight. “And you don’t get this.”
I knew exactly what he meant. That boy is my future, and if you have a bricks-and-mortar store with pulp and paper books, he is yours, too.
 

Friday was the last day of school for all public schools in my county. Since Monday, we have sold well over $4000 in gift cards, almost all of them going to teachers as thanks.
Every year I’m blown away by how much parents give to teachers at the end of the year. I’m not talking a $10 gift card, although there are plenty of those, but $50 or $100 and in one case $200! These teachers are clearly doing something right by their students and it’s great that parents are getting them practical gifts as thanks. What’s also great is that the shop local theme is big this year. We are the only bookstore near five schools and our gift card purchasers are reinforcing that it’s important to go to local stores for gifts.
All teachers work so hard that it’s great to see them being thanked with the promise of books. I love the cycle that this perpetuates. Reading is so important for everyone, but especially those involved with education. It makes me happy to know that there are so many teachers, some of whom might not be regular customers, who now have a great reason to come in and get some books.
Yesterday, several eager teachers already came in with their gift cards to get books, not for themselves to read during the summer, but for their classroom libraries.