It always amazes me how the weather drives business at the bookstore. The unseasonably warm weather in Vermont has had a very interesting effect on our shoppers.
The first is, folks are coming with creemees. Creemees,Vermont’s soft-serve ice cream, are a seasonal favorite, usually available only in the summer, not March. The Country Store next to us has fired up its machine and is doing a brisk business. Kids have been flocking there for their after-school  treats and then they come here to browse. It’s easy to tell who’s had a creemee, they tend to wear it on their shirt, have sprinkles on their chin or more cutely for the younger ones, have a dot of ice cream on their noses. As much as I like the creemees and what they usually symbolize, there’s something profoundly wrong about people having them in the middle of March. But kids who’ve just had a creemee are more patient browsers and happier with their books.
The gardeners are having a hard time with the warmth. They come in the store and are practically twitching with their need to dig in the dirt. No one quite believes that they can actually begin to get their gardens ready. Usually, this time of year, all the gardens are still covered in snow. Memorial Day is the traditional planting time; that’s when the garden is safe from frost. Currently, the smart gardeners are spending a lot of time raking and not actually planting anything. But they want books, lots of books, about gardening and making things grow. As a non-gardener, I find their zeal adorable. Two of my co-workers are avid gardeners and they both have been finding it hard to work with the weather being so lovely. I give them credit for leaving their flower beds and coming to work on time.
The other type of customer we’ve had are the ones who’ve set up their lawn furniture and are looking for a good book. Beach reads, normally taken on vacation, are now being read in the back yard. Most customers just keep saying, “It’s March! Can you believe it?” Of course, the nature of a New Englander is to be a weather voice of doom. Some folks think it’s fun to talk about the threat of a late spring dumping of snow. Others are long-range thinkers who say we’ll have a 100-degree July.
Regardless of the long-term forecast, it’s been a pure delight to have a bit of real spring a full four weeks before normal. And, anything that gets folks reading and being outside makes me happy.

I’m not sure a bookstore event gets any better than hearing two articulate, funny, grassroots Presidential campaign veterans talk about the focal points and foibles of the current election year. Former Vermont governor / 2004 Presidential candidate Howard Dean joined his longtime aide, Kate O’Connor, in Shelburne Monday evening to talk about her chronicle of life on the campaign trail —the good, the bad, the goofy, the exhausting, the exhilarating.
Do the Impossible: My Crash Course On Presidential Politics Inside The Howard Dean Campaign is a fascinating, surprisingly entertaining journal of the game-changing effort to get American voters engaged in politics and discourse. The Dean campaign focused on the coalition of individuals rather than deep pockets and big business, and used what was then a nascent social media to get the message out. It was a revelatory approach, and paved the way for future campaigners like, oh, President Barack Obama.
And then it all blew up in Dean and O’Connor’s faces with a media frenzy  — occasioned not by hypocrisy, scandal, abuse, or deceit, but by a moment of jubilance whose rawness startled some viewers — and was played by the media more than 600 times in four days. (CNN actually apologized later for its role in that.) And that was another hard-earned lesson on the trail: the power of the media to build or destroy, fast.
These lessons and others made for riveting listening, especially when the conversation turned to the 2012 primaries. Both O’Connor and Dean were thoughtful (and very amusing) about the vast learning curve they encountered in their own campaign, and thoughtful and insightful about the new challenges facing those embarking on the quest eight Internet-changed years later.
To be able to ask questions about the political process of two people who ran a viable, even game-changing, campaign for President is a rare opportunity, and made us grateful to be booksellers so that we had an excuse to invite these guests. We also love Do the Impossible because, while it has national import, it is such a Vermont enterprise: by and about Vermonters, and published and printed in Vermont by Northshire Bookstore’s new imprint, Shire Press.
We know an event has been good when attendees seek us out to thank us for hosting it. We know it’s been great when they exhort us to contact the Speakers Bureau and get our guests on the road so that other audiences can benefit from their wisdom and inspiration. For bookstores and libraries wanting an incredible evening, we have to agree: Run, don’t walk, for this one!
 

People often have a somewhat idyllic version of the lives of booksellers, one that involves, say, lots of reading in cozy chairs with cats curled up in laps. This may happen off-hours for many folks, but the truth is much, much more lively. Even dangerous.
Take Josie; yesterday she threw out her shoulder setting up 85 chairs for an event. Or me; my shin is four shades of purple from wrestling a 60s-era wood-and-metal table across a large room.
We’ve already chronicled the lurking menace of certain distributor boxes—something we face at least a couple of times a week—but you may not be aware of the constant danger of sprained ankles as we sprint after customers who have left behind sunglasses, wallets, checkbooks, bags, receipts, and even book purchases, racing to get to them before their cars pull out into traffic.
Paper and cardboard cuts don’t really count as dangerous, but almost nothing hurts as much in a small, sharp, relentless way, and therefore they deserve some consideration here. Curling ribbon incidents are not as benign as the name suggests: one slip of the sharp scissor blade against the thumb and you’re courting stitches. Wrapping those happy little birthday presents by the boatload on Saturday mornings does not come without cost.
Tripping over toys or slide-y board books on the floor of the baby-book section when you’re walking with an armful of shelving is another risky venture, as is approaching a knot of teenage girls furtively huddled together over a book in YA. (Hey, girls can be scary when they’re laughing, probably at you.) Getting whacked in the behind by the puppy gate while dashing out from behind the counter is always fun, and there’s nothing quite like that moment when a toddler holding a ball his mother has said he cannot take home is forced to give it up. We recommend ear plugs.
Then there’s the thrill of having your nose or shoulder clouted by a book spinner that has suddenly been … activated … with vigor by a customer on the other side. Or wheeling, carefree, into a middle-grade section you can navigate with your eyes closed, only to find (via your sudden surprising impact with the floor) that a five-year-old has decided to move every bookstore chair into that section’s entrance.
When young people apply for work at the store, they think it’s going to be an easy ride. A little shelving, a lot of ARCs and galleys, and a few cute kids who need recommendations for a good read. Little do they know they might get tendonitis from re-alphabetizing the picture books or pull a glute muscle stretching to a high shelf for The Hunger Games 30 times a day.
How about the terror of confronting the unknown? And by this, of course I mean heading into the restroom after someone has just exited after a longish stint. You DO NOT KNOW what awaits you there. Similarly, opening the store refrigerator is a jeopardous enterprise; iced coffee with milk only lasts so long before curdling, and that cheese stick lodged in the back behind the yogurt? Hazmat.
You watch shows like The Deadliest Catch and think, Sure, those guys have some ice and weather to deal with in their quest for crab on the Bering Sea. But they aren’t booksellers.

This is a simple post about the power of passion in book sales. I have read and fallen in love with two adult books, The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown and Carol Anshaw’s Carry the One.  Yes, I handsell books every day, but every once in a while there are books that just captivate me to the point where I hand them to customers even before they’ve mentioned what they’re looking for.
I love this part of my job. Folks have come to rely on us for recommendations every day. But when anyone on staff has a book she just loves, well, it makes easier to sell. Passion sells books. If  I walk into another kind of store, say a kitchen store, and someone approaches me and says how much they love this new kind of pan and they’re clearly in love with the pan, I will be much more inclined to consider the pan. It doesn’t really matter that I came in to get a new spatula. It’s the same thing when the wine store owner stops me and tells me how much I’m going to love this new wine he just got in. I buy the wine because I trust him.
Bookselling works the same way. I read a lot of books, we all do, but when I wake up in the morning eager to read rather than get ready for work, well, now, that’s a good book. I think it’s good for customers to see me go crazy for an adult book or two. Too often folks forget that even though we’re children’s book specialists, we also read and adore books for adults.
What’s been great is to see how many more copies of each of these we’ve sold in the last few weeks. I came to each book differently. Carry the One is written by one my favorite writers, so I leapt at the galley when it was offered and couldn’t wait to sell when it came in. Weird Sisters, I hate to admit, had elluded me until several weeks ago. I decided to read it because so many customers had asked if it was good or not. I had a galley from last year that I just missed, and now am kicking myself for not reading it sooner. The good thing is, as with the Anshaw book, I just loved it. What is ironic is that both of these books are bestsellers and have gotten rave reviews, but my love of them has helped their sales soar and has justified buying them in carton quantities.
Are there any books that you are particularly enjoying this season?

When I was seven, eight, nine years old, the world was full of novels meant for readers my age. These books were longer than the adorable Mercy Watson series by Kate DiCamillo, perhaps a little longer than Mary Pope Osborne’s Magic Tree House books, but they had lightness and child appeal and there were endless numbers of them filling my Weekly Reader book orders. It seems to me that, as a bookseller, I’m often trying to find books like those. No, actually, I’m trying to find those particular books.
I’m thinking here of the Scott Corbett Trick series (gosh, I loved those!), the Ruth Chew magic books (ditto!), the Mrs. Coverlet titles by Mary Nash (with great characters, including older brother Malcolm with his “overactive conscience”), loads of stand-alone titles like Ruth Carlsen’s Mr. Pudgins (one of the all-time great books in the history of child-appealing younger middle-grade fiction), The Case of the Marble Monster and Other Stories by I.G. Edmonds (this one is fantastic for school and library use), The Moonball by Ursula Moray Williams, Professor Diggins’ Dragons (hello, Lisa Dugan) by Felice Holman, Ramshackle Roost by Jane Flory, and on and on and on.
As a school librarian in the early 1990s, I often wished for a set of the Ruth Chews and Scott Corbetts. The Lemonade Trick lasted the longest in print, but even it finally succumbed to the pressures of the mid-list. Publishers have tried to bring back some of these gems; Hyperion did a wonderful but I suspect financially unviable trial run bringing back “Lost Treasures,” which included the Mrs. Coverlet books and other books I had loved as a kid (The Teddy Bear Habit by James Lincoln Collier, which I read several times, though it’s for an older crowd, 10- and 11-year-olds). I think the problem with these reissues from a marketing standpoint is that they don’t get the publicity dollars of a sexy new title, so no one really knows they’re available again, and they die on the vine without ever getting the kind of big push that might ignite popularity with a whole new generation. It’s also possible that some of these books are dated in ways that are problematic and would need to be dealt with somehow, as happened with the Dr. Dolittle books and continues to be an issue with the Little House titles.
I also wish there were a way to publish lighter, shorter books for tweens. I remember absolutely loving Jean van Leeuwen’s I Was a 98-Lb. Duckling, which I read times several at age 11 or 12. Despite its brevity, it was a great friendship and budding-romance story, and it happened to be hilarious. A strong reader, I loved thick books that promised to never end, but man, was it also fun to dip in for a quick afternoon read. But I digress.
So, how about these young transitional MG books? As I think about it, it’s not so much that we have fewer of these kinds of books around. In fact, in the past six or seven years, I’d say the field is better off than it had been for many years. Perhaps it’s that the books I miss had a sparkle to them, a freshness. They lay somewhere between some of the more recent formulaic series that lack those qualities (I am not pointing to the Magic Tree House here, which kids loooove; we booksellers are very grateful for and appreciative of this series), and longer, often more serious, books that are a step too difficult for most typical seven- or eight-year-olds. I’d like to see more brief, sprightly, wonderfully written, delightful, funny stories for this age. Dick King-Smith has loads of them, but even many of those are starting to vanish into OP land.
Publishers, why DO these excellent series drop off and go OP indefinitely? Could you see bringing one or more of these backlist titles back into print and promoting them with activity kits and posters? If there are no new advances to be paid, could that money not go toward some creative publicity?
Teachers and booksellers and librarians, which transitional chapter books (young middle grade books) would you most like to see back in print?

It started happening Sunday afternoon. We were getting calls from women wondering if we were carrying the book Fifty Shades of Grey. I’m not sure how many women read the New York Times article about the supposedly erotic novel that’s sweeping the nation. I was thankful for that article, because I at least knew what folks were talking about. What they wanted to know was: when was I getting the book? Well, of course right now the book  is impossible to get. Random House bought the trilogy for a whopping seven-figure deal. That amount alone tells me this book is going to fly off the shelf, because of the marketing money they’ll put towards it. It’s not coming out until April 3rd, and people are counting the days.
But then I started to think about the book and the nature of living in a small town. Would folks feel comfortable coming to our small, very personal bookstore and getting a sexually explicit book from us? Judging by the special orders we’ve taken in the last three days, I’d have to say yes. Of course we are talking it up because there hasn’t been the kind of book before: a book that has been dubbed “mommy porn” and that has entered the mainstream with such fanfare. We certainly aren’t going to judge any customer for wanting the book. The great thing is the book doesn’t have a bare chested man on the cover. It’s just a tie. So, it doesn’t look like “that kind of book.” The buzz is fantastic, and there is an almost triumphant sense that it’s about time for this kind of book to be readily available for women to read. Men who want erotica have things to read in magazines that are available everywhere. Women who want to read erotica have to search a little harder. To have an erotic book be at the local bookstore, one that doesn’t generally sell erotica, could be a very liberating experience.
We have already ordered 15 copies of each of the trilogy, and I know that’s not going to be enough. It’s been really fun to talk about the book with customers who’ve heard about it. The only thing that’s difficult for us is we haven’t read the book yet, but all of us at the store have vowed to “take one for the team” and read it so we can more knowledgeably talk about it with our customers.
One thing that I know is going to be loads of fun with this book is the array of mangled titles and descriptions we’ll see. I can hear them now: Fifty Colors of Grey, Five Grey Ties, Shades of Something, The Tie Book, You know, that book, etc.
I cannot wait.
 

I came to work early yesterday so that I could walk before I opened. It was a glorious day and I’ve been trying to get back in shape. I set out on my journey with exactly 40 minutes before I needed to hang the Open flag and get the money in the drawer.
I had barely made it down the street before someone coming out of a store wanted to ask about their special order. I couldn’t remember their order, and honestly, I was having a really hard time remembering their name. I punted and told them I would check when I got back to work.
One thing I noticed about walking a two-mile loop near the bookstore is every passing car is full of customers who all want to beep a hello. While this is lovely and actually very sweet, it can be a little unnerving when I’m deep in thought about how I can walk faster or trying to remember that customer’s name so I can look up their order.
I wasn’t going to do the two-mile loop, because, well, I’m not in the best shape and I didn’t want to have to hustle to get to work. But something about the sunshine and the warmth in the air made me go right rather than turn around. I was walking a steep hill when I checked the time. I had less than 15 minutes to make it to the store. I hustled. I kept a good rhythm in my head and suddenly out of nowhere I practically shouted, “Greenway!”  I somehow remembered the customer’s name. Feeling happy about that I walked faster. Each beep and wave spurring me on to a finish line that only I could see.
I must say, little kids waving hello from cars are adorable. They are so vigorous in their attempts to get my attention that I fear for their elbows. One little girl had a bulldog on her lap and waved and then raised her dog’s ears and waved them. I burst out laughing and was grateful for the extra speed the chuckle gave me.
So, with barely a moment to spare I arrived at the store ready to work. Luckily, the first customers came in after I had caught my breath. I remembered to call Greenway and had a great day knowing that I’d walked two miles before work. All in all, a good day.

It has been a great week for cute kids, and cute kid stories, in and around the bookstore. Last week was vacation so now I think we’re on the regular schedule of children who are too young to attend school. These little moppets are all about reading and having fun.
The first story centers on humor. A lovely mom came in with her bright-eyed, ready to smile four-year-old. After less than a minute in the store, they were ensconced on the floor surrounded by books. The boy sat close to his mom’s lap and they read stories. They were there for some time when I heard the laughter. Peals and peals of laughter emanating from the boy. Honestly, I have never heard a child laugh that hard at anything in my store. He just couldn’t stop. The more the mom read, the more he laughed and the more the mom was trying not to laugh as she read, which of course led to more laughter.

Last year, I did a blog post on terrific first lines in books, plundering ARCs to uncover some of the best of the 2011 January-June season. That was such a fun exercise, I couldn’t resist doing it again with this year’s crop.
A few things I noticed as I combed the stacks:
1) Some of my favorite books this spring turned out to have surprisingly quiet or deceptively ordinary, non-blockbuster openings, so they aren’t represented here. I suppose that leads us to the maxim that not only should one not judge a book by its cover, but by its first line(s), as well. (That said, a good first line is an endless delight.)
2) Prologues are in. There are loads of prologues, especially (but not only) in fantasy novels. Prologues are not uncommon, but there seem to be more of them this year.
3) Epigraphs are extra in. So many authors are starting their books with tasty quotes from their writerly forbears, and while there can be too much of a good thing, this is a literary device that usually adds richness and resonance to a story. I’m a sucker for a good epigraph.
4) Most of my ARCs at home (where I blog) are from a few major houses. I’m certain there are fantastic first lines in books I don’t have on hand, and I’ll be inviting you to share your favorites at the end of this post.
Without further ado, here are some of the gems – opening lines that grabbed my attention, for one reason or another –  from this season’s middle grade and YA releases:
January releases
Pete Hautman, What Boys Really Want (Scholastic):

Miz Fitz, My boyfriend is always saying stupid stuff. How can I fix him? —Angie

Miz Fitz sez: Get a dog. Fixing a dog is easier.

***
Marissa Meyer, Cinder (Feiwel and Friends):

The screw through Cinder’s ankle had rusted, the engraved cross marks worn to a mangled circle.

 ***
February releases (February seems to be witch month this year, judging by these first lines)

Alex Flinn, Bewitching (HarperTeen):

If you read fairy tales, and who doesn’t, you might believe there are witches all over the place—witches baking children into gingerbread, making princesses sleep hundreds of years, even turning normal teenage boys into hideous beasts to teach them a lesson. But, actually, there are only a few of us.

 ***
Jessica Spotswood, Born Wicked (Putnam):

Our mother was a witch, too, but she hid it better.

***
Kathryn Littlewood, Bliss (HarperCollins/Katherine Tegen Books):

It was the summer Rosemary Bliss turned ten that she saw her mother fold a lightning bolt into a bowl of batter and learned – beyond the shadow of a doubt – that her parents made magic in the Bliss bakery.

***
March releases
Carl Hiaasen, Chomp (Knopf):

Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.

***
Melissa Marr, Faery Tales & Nightmares (Harper):

The green glow of eyes and sulfurous breath shimmer in the fog as the Nightmares come into range.

***
Carley Moore, The Stalker Chronicles (FSG):

It’s not like I wanted to be a stalker.

***
April releases
Saundra Mitchell, The Springsweet (Harcourt):

That I went a little mad, I could not deny.

***
May releases
Cornelia Funke, trans. by Oliver Latsch, Ghost Knight (Little, Brown):

I was eleven when my mother sent me to boarding school in Salisbury. Yes, granted, she did have tears in her eyes as she brought me to the station. But she still put me on that train.

***
Alethea Kontis, Enchanted (Harcourt):

My name is Sunday Woodcutter, and I am doomed to a happy life.

***
Jo Knowles, See You at Harry’s (Candlewick):

The very best day of my life, I threw up four times and had a fever of 103 degrees.

***
Anna Waggener, Grim (Scholastic):

[from the Prologue] I love my youngest child more than the other two, and God bless them but they all know it.

***
Philip Pullman, Two Crafty Criminals! And How They Were Captured by the Daring Detectives of the New Cut Gang (Knopf):

[from “Thunderbolt’s Waxwork”] The criminal career of Thunderbolt Dobney began on a foggy November evening outside the Waxwork Museum.

[from “The Gas-Fitter’s Ball”] There was a terrible shortage of crime in Lambeth in the summer of 1895, and the New Cut Gang were lamenting the fact, loudly.

 ***
Christopher Healy, The Hero’s Guide to Saving the Kingdom (Walden Pond Press):

Prince Charming is afraid of old ladies. Didn’t know that, did you?

***
Martha Brockenbrough, Devine Intervention (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine):
This one has two great openings: First is a reproduction of a document titled “The Guardian Angels’ Handbook: Soul Rehab Edition,” which begins:

“Congratulations! You have been selected for membership in SRPNT, the Soul Rehabilitation Program for Nefarious Teens (Deceased).

And then Chapter One:

One Monday morning, a couple years before my cousin Mike shot me in the forehead with an arrow, my eighth-grade homeroom teacher brought two cartons of raw eggs to school.

 ***
Readers, what 2012 titles releasing in January-June have opening lines that suck you in like water on a hot pumice stone?

I got the most interesting call from a customer yesterday morning. She’s an excellent customer who I knew was in Key West until April. I thought she was calling to order a book or to talk about a new book she just loves. But no, she was calling to let me know that her favorite bookstore down there, Voltaire Books, had closed.
At first I didn’t understand why she was telling me. Then she said, “I just had to tell you, because you’d understand how sad I am.” She was really sad. I could hear the edge of tears in her voice. Honestly, by the time we got off the phone, I was close to tears myself. To hear from a customer the real void that was left with the store’s closing really got to me.
Barbara has spent six weeks a year in Key West for years. Voltaire Books was her place to go. She loved everything about it. From its eclectic selection to its being off the beaten path, Barbara adored going to the store and it made her trips to Key West even more special. She even told me before she went away how much she was looking forward to visiting the store during her time in Key West.
The store appears to have closed in July of last year and according to an article in keynews.com, co-owner Peter Rogers blamed the closure on a combination of factors. “Of course, e-books are hurting us, the Kindle and the Nook,” he said. “But you’ve also got Walmart.com selling a $28 book for $9.99.” It’s shocking to me that a place with a literary tradition as rich as Key West cannot support an independent bookstore that sells only new books.
What touched me the most about the phone call was the need to share to news with someone. Okay, there was one other motive for her call; Barbara wanted to make sure that we were not in any peril of closing before she came home. I reassured her our plan was to remain open for a long time.
The ripple effect of a store closing is vast. It’s like an expert has skimmed a rock on a pond. Every bounce caused distress to all involved. So, a store closing in Key West affects folks as far away as Vermont. I don’t know Voltaire Books, but I’m sad for them. We all fight the same fights and I hope that all bookstores can win, but it’s unrealistic to think that all of us will come out on top.
So, the moral of this story is sometimes you never know what’s going to close or when, and the best way to ensure that the store you love stays open is to keep shopping there for all your books, in all formats.