{"id":19377,"date":"2016-09-19T06:00:52","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T10:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=19377"},"modified":"2016-09-19T06:00:52","modified_gmt":"2016-09-19T10:00:52","slug":"the-soul-tap-of-book-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=19377","title":{"rendered":"The Soul Tap of Book Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The happiest sight in a bookstore is the book hug, where a customer is so overcome by excitement or nostalgia over the book in their hands that they hug it to their chest. We&#8217;ve had the pleasure of witnessing the book hug countless times over the past 20 years. It&#8217;s a gesture most often used by children, but grownups have been known to embrace their books, too. Today, I saw a new version of the book hug: the soul tap. It was an adult man&#8217;s gesture, but you can see a recreation of it here from our staffer, Emily:<!--more--><br \/>\n<iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/M_OhRsIJWpM\" width=\"448\" height=\"252\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nA\u00a0stylish couple in their mid-20s came into the Flying Pig looking for birthday presents\u00a0for an eight-year-old boy. They had direction; the female half of the couple wanted <em>Tarzan<\/em> or <em>The<\/em>\u00a0<em>Call of the Wild.<\/em>\u00a0Having not read <em>Tarzan<\/em> in years, if ever,\u00a0I wasn&#8217;t sure how eight-year-old appealing\/friendly it is, and we didn&#8217;t have any of the younger adaptations\u00a0on hand, so I was relieved that we could hand her the\u00a0fantastic family read-aloud, <em>The\u00a0Call of the Wild,<\/em> without hesitation. Then she caught sight of\u00a0the newest <em>Guinness Book of World Records\u00a0<\/em>and picked that up, as well.<br \/>\nThen her boyfriend\u00a0approached me.<br \/>\n&#8220;There&#8217;s a book I&#8217;ve been having a hard time finding,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I don&#8217;t suppose you have it, but&#8230; are you familiar with the Redwall series?&#8221;<br \/>\nI was surprised to hear that he had had trouble finding those books. Not only was I familiar with\u00a0Redwall<em> -\u2013 <\/em>a series\u00a0that\u00a0seems about due for a renaissance &#8212; but those books carry a whole host of fond memories from my days as a New York City\u00a0school librarian in the West Village. An 8th-grader named D&#8217;Artagnan absolutely loved the series, and during his class&#8217;s daily half-hour reading stints in the library, we spent a lot of time reading chapters back and forth together.<br \/>\nWhen I told our customer that we carried the series, his face lit up with inner 12-year-old glee. He became luminous. When I handed him the first volume, he held it and tapped his heart twice, brimming with joy \u2013 a twenty-something guy&#8217;s version of a book hug. I was charmed to witness the soul tap of love and the wave of reverie that accompanied it.<br \/>\n&#8220;A whole group of guys in my class bonded over these books,&#8221; he said, again tapping the book to his chest, and then\u00a0trailed off, shaking his head in a string of silent memories.<br \/>\nHow powerful and magical are stories, that they\u00a0can create\u00a0connection that lasts a lifetime. Every time a gruff old man asks for <em>Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel\u00a0<\/em>and sheds years\u00a0when we hand it over, or a grandmother reaches for <em>Anne of Green Gables\u00a0<\/em>and wonders aloud\u00a0if kids today still love it, or a great-uncle happily clasps <em>The Snowy Day\u00a0<\/em>for his nieces and nephews, we see their young faces peeking out of the old, alight once more with the love inspired by\u00a0favorite books.<br \/>\nWhether it&#8217;s a hug, a soul tap, or a smiling nod of recognition, we booksellers live to share that joy with readers.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new gesture in the catalog of bibliophilia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}