On Gaping Head Wounds and Ava Gardner

Note: I tried to post this yesterday morning, but Blogger just wasn’t having it. Sure it’s not the best thing I’ve ever put out there—I wrote it in ten minutes—but I didn’t appreciate the electronic slam, Mr. Blogger.

I don’t think I mention it enough that I really, truly do love most of the customers that walk through my doors. They are delightful, intelligent people who love books or magazines and love that we love them too. My regulars distinguish themselves from the crowd not only by coming back, but entertaining us with their thoughts, stories and personal reviews. If only I took decent dictation my shelves would be covered with little slips of paper denoting customer reviews and recommendations.

One of my favorite customers is an older woman (who we’ll call Nell) who grew up in the Hollywood area before WWII. Nell used to baby-sit for the rich folks in the canyon, and she always has the best stories the stars of the time period (and her own sometimes unfortunate interactions with them). Given Nell’s fascination with Old Hollywood, and our fascination with Nell, we always try to keep her apprised of the latest celeb biographies, so when the Ava Gardner biography was released, we knew we had to show her right away. Upon being presented with the book, Nell leaned over the counter and in a whisper said, “She was a nympho, you know.”

When we gasped and covered our mouths—you never expect a woman old enough to be your grandma to say the word nympho—she continued in a normal conversational tone, “But a beautiful woman to be sure.”

While Nell is always good for an amusing story or a shocking comment, some of my other customers are just more shocking. My business is in the middle of downtown and surrounded by a bus mall. I get customers of all walks of life, on all sorts of different drugs, and I thank the book gods daily that I don’t have a public bathroom for them to enjoy (I don’t get paid for haz-mat duties). I’ve received bloody money, had people tweek out in the middle of my store, and regularly had to roust people who felt it was perfectly acceptable to sleep in the corner of my store. Until the other day, though, I’ve never had anyone openly bleeding from anything more dangerous than a papercut. This customer, however, was bleeding (more an ooze at that point than anything else) from a wound on her forehead where she was missing a large chunk of skin (about an inch across). Since I wasn’t on yet, the boss handled it, took her money, made pleasant conversation, and was basically able to ignore staring. The woman was functioning fine, and didn’t seem to out of it, but the entire time I kept wondering what the protocol was for bleeding customers? Do you offer them a tissue or band aide? Do you call an ambulance? Do you ask, “Hey, did you know you are bleeding?”

I really need to figure this out because I’m sure she won’t be my last injured customer.

Blogger's done a bad, bad thing

Yesterday was full of gaping head wounds and customers who felt that "Hope to see you at the Rapture" was a completely appropriate salutation. Granted, it was 6/6/06, but c'mon people, I don't really know how to respond to either of those things. Well, not true, with the Rapture I think that "Thank you" worked fine, but "Um, did you know you're bleeding?" seemed like an understatement when the bleeding customer looked like they'd lost a fair amount of flesh.

Blogger giving me problems today is minor, I know.

The Challengers list has been updated, but Blogger will not allow me to update from Word (I have to type this directly into the post box which means typos galore).

I am not happy with Blogger at the moment.

I wanted let you know that because 23 of you commented on the Challenge thread, and 22 of those comments included book suggestions (that's approximately 110 ten books if we ignore repeats), I've closed the thread so my head won't explode. If this is successful we'll do it again some day. If it isn't, we'll pretend this never happened (and I'll fade off into anonymous obscurity). Right now, if Blogger cooperates, it looks like I'll do a few suggestions at a time, chosen from the whole list of you, grouping together books that fall into the same suggestion category to save brain power. Links will be provided to those who made the suggestion (if that information is available to me), the book chosen from said person's list (because we all know some of you will be using this as a recommended reading list long before I get around to making my recommendations), and my book suggestion.

Cool with youse guys?

Of course, none of this will happen if Blogger does not allow me to load info from Word!!!!

Maybe tonight after I help a friend move furniture it will be in a better mood and then I can update the "In Praise of Midlist" List too...and actually put a link to it in the sidebar.

Which reminds me, I'm thinking about putting together a "Favorite Columns" header with links to posts y'all enjoyed to make navigation easier. Ideally Book Sense 101 and the Doing My Homework columns would also end up with their own headers, but if you guys have particular favorites please let me know. It'll let me know what to search for.

The Challengers

The Challengers:

Marta:

A Confederacy of Dunces - O'Toole
Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter - Vargas Llosa
Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff – Moore
Decline & Fall – Waugh
Persuasion – Austen

Susan Wilbanks:

Gaudy Night - Dorothy Sayers
His Majesty's Dragon - Naomi Novik
In This House of Brede - Rumer Godden
Sharpe's Triumph - Bernard Cornwell
Guns, Germs & Steel - Jared Diamond

Penny L. Richards:

Octavia Butler, Kindred
Michael Berube, Life as We Know It
Anna Lanyon, Malinche's Conquest
Lindsay Clarke, The Chymical Wedding
Lisa See, On Gold Mountain

Andrea:

Snow Wolf- Glenn Meade
The Sculptress- Minette Walters
Lonely Hearts- John Harvey
lost boy lost girl- Peter Straub
Geek Love- Katherine Dunn

Cee:

1. Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver
2. Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
3. Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
4. An Equal Music - Vikram Seth
5. The Assassin Trilogy - Robin Hobb

Susan Adrian:

1. Seen by Moonlight, by Kathleen Eschenburg
2. If I Never Get Back, by Daryl Brock
3. Suspicion, by Barbara Rogan
4. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
5. The Dark Is Rising, by Susan Cooper

Robin Brande:

1. Polar Dream, by Helen Thayer
2. Swimming to Antarctica, by Lynne Cox
3. Road Fever, by Tim Cahill
4. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
5. The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman

Christine Fletcher:

1. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
2. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
3. Nobody's Fool, Richard Russo
4. The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton
5. Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

Web:

1) Lincoln's Dreams - Connie Willis
2) Then She Found Me - Elinor Lipman
3) The Easy Way Out - Stephen McCauly
4) I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
5) Joy in the Morning - Betty Smith

Diana P:

Arrow's Flight by Mercedes Lackey
Three to Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich
Dragonsquest by Anne McCaffrey
Face the Fire by Nora Roberts
Midnight in Ruby Bayou by Elizabeth Lowell

Janni:

1. A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Madeleine L'Engle
2. Speak, Laurie Halse Anderson
3. The Ice Queen, Alice Hoffman
4. Christopher Fry, The Lady's Not for Burning
5. Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Patricia McKillip

Lady T:

1)Northanger Abbey/Jane Austen
2)The Ladies' Auxillary/Tova Mirvis
3)Mammoth Cheese/Sheri Holman
4)Swan Song/Robert McCammon
5)Popco/Scarlet Thomas

Sue:

1. The Year the Music Changed by Diane Thomas
2. Come Like Shadows by Welwynn Wilton Katz
3. Dark Tort by Diane Mott Davidson
4. The Goddess of 5th Avenue by Carol A. Simone
5. The Shelters of Stone by Jean M. Auel

Katherine:

1. A Moveable Feast, Hemingway
2. All Didion
3. All Chekhov (the stories, the plays)
4. Always Cheever, but never Updike.
5. My Phantom Husband, Marie Darrieussecq

Paul (whose profile is unavailable):

1. Tomcat Murr - ETA Hoffmann
2. At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien
3. Master and Margarite - M. Bulgakov
4. Carmichael's Dog - R.M. Koster
5. The Kiss of the Spider Woman - Manuel Puig

Beth:

1. World's End, T.C. Boyle
2. A Gesture Life, Chang-Rae Lee
3. Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman
4. Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
5. The Instance of the Fingerpost, Iaian Pears.

Jmc:

1. Persuasion, Jane Austen
2. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
3. Welcome to Temptation, Jennifer Crusie
4. The Far Pavilions, M.M. Kaye
5. Living to Tell the Tale, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Ms. Librarian:

The Gate to Women's Country, Sheri Tepper
Combat in the Erogenous Zone, Ingrid Bengis
The Once and Future King, T. H. White
On Basilisk Station, David Weber
The Pride of Chanur, C. J. Cherryh

Otterb (who shares a mind with Susan Wilbanks):

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie R. King
Anything by Lois McMaster Bujold, favorities are Memory and The Curse of Chalion.
The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris
Pilgrim's Inn, Elizabeth Goudge
Liaden Universe books, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller

Michelle:

Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver
Possession - A.S. Byatt
Use of Weapons - Iain M.Banks
Acid Row - Minette Walters
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

Alua:

Song for Arbonne - Guy Gavriel Kay
Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey
Primary Inversion - Catherine Asaro
Hero and the Crown - Robin McKinley
Golden Compass - Phillip Pullman

Kate R:

1. Bartimaeus trilogy (it'll come out as one book some day)
2. Once and Future King TH White
3. Bottom of the Harbor (essays about old NY) Joseph Mitchell
4. October Light John Gardner
5. 100 Years of Solitude. Marquez


“I Challenge You to a Book Duel” is now closed. Thanks to everyone who participated.

Things I Have Learned: Alcohol Brings People Together

Yesterday I learned:

There is a club promoter named Tequila Mockingbird (thanks Ronnie).

There is a sound/music studio in Austin named Tequila Mockingbird, and if I tell them that Annette sent me they may do the Bookseller Chick theme song…which they will have to compose entirely on their own because I’m tone deaf.

There was a Get Smart! episode called Tequila Mockingbird in which “Smart and 99 pose as a flamenco dancer and a seedy doctor to fool KAOS as both search for hidden gems in Mexico.” This is one of those things I missed when my mom kept kicking us outside to play instead of letting us watch Nick at Nite. Hide and seek at night, Ma? We could have killed ourselves (especially after the bit with the scary tales, the full moon and the cape, you evil woman). Apologies to Paul for my lack of pop culture knowledge. If Get Smart! is on DVD, I’ll do my best to rectify the situation.

So what have I learned from all of this? Well, to quote Chuck Palahnuik, “There is nothing a blue-collar nobody in Oregon with a public school education can imagine that a million-billion people haven’t already done…” (Fight Club, new intro, xix-xx)

In my favor is the fact that my Tequila Mockingbird recipe contained Coca Cola Blak, which is new, but really if we changed a few pertinent facts in the above quote to be reflective of me the sentiment would be correct.

Sigh.

I’m liking this “literate” drink book idea (although unless we went through lulu.com I’m thinking it would be the literate drink link in the side bar, something I’m totally cool with). I know that there is a Hemingway Cocktail, which is odd to me because Hemingway loved his daiquiris (I thought), so what’s up with the champagne (forever pronounced Sham-pon-ya in honor of Walken’s stint on Saturday Night Live). Anyone have an explanation for this?

Anyone have any other literature related drink recipes? Is there a Dorothy Parker? Or an Algonquin Round Table (or maybe we can just make it an Algonquin Sidecar take-off)?

They don’t have to be drinks after literate drunks, they could be a twist on a book title (or the book title itself). Imagine, if you will, a rendition of the Four Horsemen (of the Apocalypse) renamed (and reconfigured) to be known as a Good Omens (newly re-released in hardback for your collecting pleasure).

And we’ve already got the whole Star Wars book phenomena taken care of with the Darth Vader (guaranteed to kick in thirty minutes after being consumed and kick your ass for the next three hours).

So c’mon y’all. Put on your mixologist hat, ignore your liver, and chill some vodka in the freezer. Who or what deserves to have a drink named after them, and what should be in it? Already existing drink recipes greatly appreciated too.

Tequila Mockingbird

One of the most mispronounced titles I’ve ever encountered is To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Some just run “To Kill A” together so fast that it sounds like tequila, and others just honest-to-God ask for Tequila Mockingbird leaving me with that pressed lips face you make when you are trying desperately not to laugh. Granted there are books out there bearing that title, but I’ve never had anyone ask for them.

Sad, really.

Still it would make a great name for a drink (and maybe it has already been turned into one), and, thanks to the nice people from Coca Cola handing out free soda pops this whole weekend, we now have the ingredients.

(Someday I hope to create a whole bar book full of “literate” drinks.)

The Tequila Mockingbird

One part Tequila (not Cuervo, something better. Save your gut)

One to Two parts Coca Cola Blak

Slice of lime

Serve over ice when you need the caffeination of coke and coffee mixed with the smooth burn of something alcoholic. Great for an after work drink, a pre-funk before a long night of dancing, or just something to sip while fighting off the humid weather many of us seem to be experiencing. If you are doing the last (and doing it in front of a computer) you should check out the following links:

• Sara Holbrook performs her poem “Chicks Up Front,” which I love. For some reason it always seems to remind me of Christine Fletcher’s character Ruth in Tallulah Falls, although I don’t know why. Probably the been there, done that, got to live with it now persona.


• Y’all are going to kill me with this list, you know that right? I put it up three hours ago and already ten of you have responded. As I was pulling my blanket up to take a nap, I thought to myself, “Maybe I should have added that I usually ask people what they liked about their favorites…nah, not that many people will respond.” Ten points for readers, zero for the bookseller. This will teach me to never assume that y’all will react with the predictability of my customer base.


• The Written Nerd has put up her response to her question on the future of bookselling. Excellent as always.


• The NY Times posts a blog round up of “Reactions to the Best Fiction Survey.” If you have absolutely nothing planned for this evening and want to do a lot of blog hopping, then you should check it out.


• According to Fuse#8 Authorgeddon is nigh! Run! Ruuuuuuun! Just as soon as you find out what Authorgeddon is, of course.


• Meg Cabot is writing a Guidebook to surviving your book tour. Check out the first two entries at her blog.


• And finally, there is an interesting article over at Slate called, “Book Clubbed: Why writers never reveal how many books their buddies have sold.” I’ve never thought to use Book Scan this way, mostly because it doesn’t include Wal*Mart (from what I understand), and despite being the evil empire, Wal*Mart sells a lot of books.

I Challenge You to a Book Duel

On the “Take Two Christopher Moores and Call Me in the Morning” thread Paul said,

“Challenge:I'd like to see how this works. Why not ask your readers to post the names of 10 books we love and see if you can come up with one recommendation off the top of your head from your own font of booklore. You get a point if the commneter we hasn't read it and a big bonus if we subsequently buy your recommendation.”

And fool that I am, I think that I will take that challenge with these changes.

• List five books you love, not ten (I don’t want my head to explode).

• I reserve the right to recommend the same book multiple times (we all have our loves).

• I will answer the challenge as time allows (the last few weeks have been crazy busy, but looking ahead I think I’ll have more time to focus on this blog).

If I think of any other qualifiers, I’ll let you know, but the above or just to keep me from going insane.

P.S. Blogger is being hateful and this is the third time I've tried to post this, so I apologize for the delay/any mistakes.

Take Two Christopher Moores and Call Me in the Morning: the Art of Recommendation

I’m distressed by the number of people who have commented here that they’ve never (or rarely) received a book recommendation from their bookseller. Distressed, but not surprised. It’s hard to recommend titles and open up to a complete stranger about your reading choices because for every book snob bookseller out there, there’s a book snob customer. A well placed inflection in the phrase “I don’t read those books,” can strip your self-esteem in a nanosecond, especially when you don’t expect it.

Imagine, if you will, having one of those how-are-you/how’s-the-weather conversations with a customer (it’s going good, both of you are connecting, but no one is being pushy) and the topic of new releases comes up.

“Oh,” you (as the bookseller) say, “I just read [fill in author’s name here]’s new book, [fill in title here], and it’s great! Really engaging, compelling characters, yadda yadda yadda.”

You love this book. Have loved it ever since you thumb-wrestled a coworker for the ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) in the backroom after one too many Coca Cola Blaks, and you want everyone to love this book. But the customer?

Not so much with the loving.

In fact, it doesn’t matter what the yadda-yaddas stand for because before you’ve reached that point where the customer has stopped listening. If you’ve been making eye contact this is where they might look away or raise a brow or roll their eyes. There are people who prefer to purse their lips or smirk. There are even those who will physically take a step back leaving you to wonder if your deodorant suddenly gave out or you fluffed and hadn’t noticed. Suddenly where once there had been some pretty fluid customer/seller interaction going on there is a big, gaping nothingness because the customer has disengaged and you’ve been discounted as a reliable source to receive recommendations from.

If this happens the first couple of recommendations out then you’re burned for life. You start going with the sure bets, the people who’ve already picked up two or three books exactly like what you would recommend and just need another title to tip them over the edge to qualify for that sale. You only reveal your likes and dislikes after the customer has already made theirs known, so that you’re assured that this will be a meeting of like minds (only in this case it turns more into a fangirl/boyish agreement over “oh my gawd, didn’t you just love X” than any real recommending). You do not go out of your way to give your opinions to just anyone because you’ve been rejected and it hurts.

Can having a good recommendations experience reverse this? Maybe. There is nothing like having someone come back and telling you how much the loved the book you picked out for them, the one that they bought without even bothering to read the back because you were so enthusiastic. There is absolutely nothing better than hearing another person tell you about how much they loved something that you love, that their husband loved it (and their husband doesn’t read), or that their kids couldn’t put it down. Hell, there’s nothing like standing there in the aisle with a customer—after all the struggle it takes to condense and organize your thoughts on what makes this book a great read—and having them say, “You know, I’ll give this a try.”

I remember talking to a coworker once, after she’d made her first hand-sell, and she just glowed. “They listened to me,” she said over and over again. “They really listened.”

They understood how you can get so caught up in a story that you forget to eat or don’t realize you’re crying. They’ve been there where not even a power outage or a big test or a huge presentation can keep you from turning the next page. And they connected with you over your love for words and paper and binding and plot that you let all flow out in your recommendation.

One moment like that can make up for a day of dodging children, hauling heavy boxes and being ignored when you greet customers.

So next time you’re in a bookstore, any bookstore, and you’re looking for something new, ask the bookseller for a recommendation. Maybe they will be veterans in the field, and you’ll suddenly find yourself loaded down with books of every flavor as the words fly fast and furious. Maybe they’ll be new and unsure. They might stutter. They might look confused. You might be the first person to ever ask them. But hopefully they’ll come through, open a bit of their reading self up to you, and point out a title or two (bonus points if they actually put it in your hand).

And next time they’re shelving in their section and they see someone standing by the book they recommended to you (that maybe you bought, or maybe you just waited politely until they left to put back), maybe they’ll point it out to this new customer without waiting for their opinion to be solicited.

A great bookseller is created from great customers. Be one and someone might realize that there’s something cool about this book business after all.

Blogger Learning

Last week the NY Times had an article called, “Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply,” that addressed the growing concerns companies have about their interns’ (and employees’) online activities. This coincided with an announcement from my own ranks that I might soon find out what my company’s own stance might be, and both events got me thinking on the nature of blogging, the internet, and the openness that we allow ourselves (or should allow ourselves) depending on our respective jobs.

Increasingly writers are asked to put themselves out there on the net (start a website, blog, MySpace) and share their struggles, their joys, and their overall experience. By building a net following before their books are even released they increase their selling potential and can offer insights to parts of the book that might otherwise be troubling (or been messed with in the editing process). While this image of the writer is one of the self-employed and free to say whatever, they still owe their advance to the publishing company, publicity help to their publicist, etc, and talking smack about any of these people might be detrimental to their future writing career. So despite this illusion of openness fostered by the ability to hit post and send your words to the world wide web in less than a second, there is the unstated rule, “thou shalt not burn any bridges that you many need to cross again in the future.”

Unless, of course, you are one of those people that call another a bitch to their face and get them to laugh with you: a talent many of us do not possess.

With company blogs larger issues come into play. Not only do you not want to anger those above you, but suddenly (whether you want to or not) you are acting as a representative for the company to the outside world. You can give a bad impression of your company as a whole if you have a bad day. You can be fired for releasing information if the company deems said information for internal use only.

Still there are company sanctioned blogs out there that improve the image of the company: the Boeing blog we discussed previously, the Powells.com blog, and others that demystify the process of the world they write about without giving away the company’s secrets. And why shouldn’t the process be demystified? Why shouldn’t everyone be allowed to educate themselves on the basics of these businesses when it directly affects them?

The question really is where to draw the line.

When I started this blog it was merely to keep a group of friends laughing about my adventures gearing up for Harry Potter. Nothing big. No plans to explain the book universe or my own thoughts and feelings about the future of bookselling. I was a novice when it came to blogger with no knowledge of trackbacks or site meters or what the hell Technorati was. I never thought that other people (outside those friends) would be interested in what I had to say because for the most part I figured the whole thing was common knowledge. Replace bookseller with barista and books with coffee and the daily ins and outs would be the same. There’s the good and the bad in every job.

Quite randomly this blog caught on—despite the fact that I’m nowhere near as eloquent as Robert Gray, the Written Nerd, and other booksellers who express their thoughts on the future of books and bookselling—and I find myself wondering if I’ve done the right thing. I know that I don’t get near the amount of hits of other sites, and that even if I put my real name out here my company may never find out. But if they did?

Would they be proud of the words I’ve written?

Would they find fault in those issues that I felt needed to be commented on and discussed?

Did I accidentally give away company secrets somewhere in these posts?

It’s something I’ve definitely thought about more now than I did before when my shell of anonymity was strengthened by the ignorance of not knowing my company’s blogging policy. Would I have been as open on calling people on bad behavior or discussing co-op marketing had I known that one day I might have a chance to put my name on this?

I don’t know.

I love how this blog has evolved from a place to post my opinions to an open discussion about bookselling, book writing, and a celebration of the written word. I love that people who have never met me feel comfortable asking questions, trading opinions, and pointing out the flaws in my arguments. I love how we all have a chance to educate ourselves through the process.

I’m not an expert on any of this, none of us are, but together we seem to do pretty well, and I’d like to let that process continue whether my name is attached or not.

And I’d like that openness to continue.

So whether or not this Bookselling Chick gets to use her birth name in the future, I want to thank you all for helping me create something so much more than the sum of its parts (and its start). I hope that you get as much from the process as I do.