SHELF AWARENESS Columnhttp://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/en-US2010-02-09T09:07:52ZSquarespace Site Server v5.9.1 (http://www.squarespace.com/)'Well-met in Chester' at New Voices 2010http://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/well-met-in-chester-at-new-voices-2010.htmlRobert Gray2010-02-07T16:59:59ZColum McCann inscribed a copy of Songdogs, his first novel, to me in January, 1996, with the words: "Well-met in Chester on a winter evening, with great thanks for your supporting my work. Sláinte." Last fall, he won the National Book Award for Let the Great World Spin. I was thinking about that narrative arc last weekend when I attended the afternoon readings for New Voices 2010 in Chester, Vt.

Hosted by Bill and Lynne Reed of Misty Valley Books and celebrating its 16th anniversary, New Voices was started by the bookstore's original owners, Dwight Currie and Michael Kohlmann. After the Reeds purchased Misty Valley in 2001, they not only continued the tradition, but eventually added Vermont Voices and a Gourmet Mystery Series to their seasonal schedule, thanks in part to the success of this original event.

Guest authors for New Voices this time were Deborah Copaken Kogan (Between Here and April), Elena Gorokhova (A Mountain of Crumbs), James Landis (The Last Day), Heidi Durrow (The Girl Who Fell From the Sky) and Matthew Dicks (Something Missing).

"This year's New Voices, which you can imagine we spend some thought and effort on, coalesced early," Bill observed. "Lynne always scouts first timers in the catalogs and gets galleys. She keeps in touch with publishers, and we always go prospecting at BEA and NEIBA for possible New Voices, with documentation in hand of previous events. This year we had a credible roster early, and we had both read the books of the five authors we finally invited. Publishers were very helpful this year, too, pointing us in the right direction. We were pretty sure by the fall that we had a good group."

The day began with cross-country skiing in the morning, followed by the afternoon reading/signing at a beautiful stone church in the village. That evening, there was a wine and cheese cocktail hour and then dinner with the authors at the Fullerton Inn. This day-long interaction seems to gradually develop a comfort level between writers and readers, and the barrier of compressed arrival, performance and departure that bookends most author events dissipates in the welcoming, cozy Vermont winter atmosphere.

"The thing that makes the weekend so wonderful for us is the fact that it is more than a book reading," Lynne said. "We had the authors to our house Friday evening for dinner along with their introducers and a few friends. This group really, dare I say, bonded. We had such a good time. Then to wake up to go cross-country skiing in 5-degree weather at Grafton Ponds cemented their friendship. So, by the time they got to the church, they were old buddies, felt comfortable, knew people in the audience, and the day kept flowing. No one wanted to leave."

"Bill and I both agree that this was one of the very best New Voices ever," she added. "We always have interesting authors, but this year the mix worked. The books were all so different. I think what made the reading special was the introducers. The energy in the church was amazing."

A few words about those introducers: Bill came up with the idea a couple of years ago to ask members of the community to read the selected books beforehand and make the introductions: "It helped increase attendance, too, I think, to involve community members early, inviting friends to read the books and introduce the authors. The friends were happy to be involved and, as you probably noticed, rose to the occasion. Somehow it also gives more credence to the event if more people are involved. Several attendees have remarked that it was nice to hear what the introducers had to say."

That direct and personal engagement by the introducers with their chosen books and authors ultimately added five additional "new voices" to the event. In fact, Deborah Copaken Kogan responded to Nancy Pennell's intro by saying, "That was the best introduction anyone in my decade of writing has ever done."

Jeremy Dworkin, who introduced Heidi Durrow, thanked Bill and Lynne for "an effort that's obviously become a community tradition."

This year, more than 130 people attended the readings, up significantly from 2009. Misty Valley sold out of all five books and took orders for more. I heard one woman standing in line enthusiastically ask a friend, "Who are you going to buy?"

"Well-met in Chester" indeed. A reading tradition still thrives in the Green Mountains and, as Elena Gorokhova said, "In an era when innovation and adaptation are watchwords, there is something to be said for tradition."--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1109.

]]>Quirky 'Beyond Measure'http://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/quirky-beyond-measure.htmlRobert Gray2010-01-31T18:49:13ZDuring an intensely digitized week--as I monitored the iPad's debut, last-minute objections to the Google Book Settlement and the Digital Book World Conference--I also found myself thinking, for some reason, about Richard Brautigan.

I read "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" for the first time in decades. And as I was considering and reconsidering that word "quirky" and its relationship to indie bookstores (for the record, I never used the term to describe Brautigan when I read him in the 1970s), I recalled some lines from his novel, The Abortion: "The library came into being because of an overwhelming need and desire for such a place. There simply had to be a library like this." If you don't know about the library, you should. Now more than ever, perhaps, quirky may be a business model.

I mentioned last week that Kathy Patrick's Beauty & the Book, Jefferson, Tex., was high on my list of pilgrimage-worthy shrines to bookseller quirkiness. Subsequently, Kathy put the question to her fans on Facebook: "Is Beauty and the Book a quirky bookstore?" Among the responses:

Quirky is good! Everything else is boring.
Quirky fits, also unique, fabulous, outrageous, fascinating, inspiring, blingful and totally Kathy!
It's the quirkiest! That's why the world loves it and you!
Quirky beyond measure. And I mean that in a nice way.

Besse Lynch, events and marketing coordinator at the Bookworm of Edwards, Edwards, Colo., responded to the column by recalling her affection for the Bookmill, Montague, Mass., because "browsing the shelves felt like exploring in some long forgotten attic. There was nothing cookie cutter about the space or selection, yet it was somehow familiar and comfortable."

I asked her how that might translate into success for indie bookstores. "Quirky can be so different for different people," she replied. "I think of it as a feeling you can't find anywhere else, something unusual yet familiar, maybe nostalgic at the same time. In defining quirky in terms of a bookstore, it can mean at once being a place where a person feels like a unique individual, and a place where those individualities come together to form a cohesive community. When a person shops at an indie bookstore this is what they are looking for. Not a place where they buy a book and walk out, but a place where they buy a book and belong to community."

Can the "quirky" factor drive people away? "The trick is to define yourself as an individual while being careful not to exclude other individuals," she added. "The beauty of a truly quirky bookstore is that it must be accepting of the quirks of others." At the Bookworm, "We just try to do things that we are passionate about, and that have meaning within our community. We take our customer's needs and suggestions to heart and try to create an atmosphere that reflects the diversity of ideas that come into our store."

And, finally, is quirky something that can be planned?

Janet Geddis, who hopes to open Avid Bookshop in Athens, Ga., sometime later this year, observed that she wants her shop "to be well-organized, friendly and cozy, but I'd also like something funky or quirky that instantly sets it apart from other bookstores (and other businesses, for that matter). But I believe there's a problem with setting out to do something deliberately quirky: I don't want my design decisions to appear contrived or manipulative. When I think about quirky places I like to visit, the thing that has drawn my attention is almost always something that evolved organically."

She noted that genuine quirkiness seems "born out of true individuality. People haven't made calculated decisions to be strange in order to stand out. Instead, their oddities come straight from the heart. I'd venture to guess that the proprietors of Wild Rumpus [Minneapolis, Minn.] genuinely love animals and children--they didn't make a choice to sell kids' books in a store full of animals purely because it was a good business plan. Their quirkiness arises from their passions."

As Janet plans her bookstore, she already knows it will include "some surprising and intriguing elements in the design, but I can't yet know what I'll say, do, or create that will give Avid that quirkiness many of my future customers crave. I suppose this strange and appealing element will evolve naturally as my staff and I settle in and share what we love with our customers."

To paraphrase Mr. Brautigan, there simply have to be bookstores like these.--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1103.

]]>Bookstores & the Quirky Factorhttp://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/bookstores-the-quirky-factor.htmlRobert Gray2010-01-24T17:54:03ZShould independent bookstores be quirky? What does quirky mean now? What is (or was) your favorite quirky, eccentric, fun, weird, off-the-wall (off-the-shelves?) bookshop of all time? What bookstore makes (or made) you smile just thinking about it?

So many stories are written about booksellers in dire financial straits and contending with perilous, hyper-digitized futures that the fun factor can get lost in the numbers. Business is business, but most of us became booksellers for pleasure as well as--if not consciously in lieu of--profit.

What makes a great bookstore quirky? What makes a quirky bookstore great?

The catalyst for my musings on the quirk factor is Michael Walsh, sales manager at Johns Hopkins University Press and publisher of Old Earth Books. He wrote in response to last week's column, which mentioned Siegfried Weisberger, a Baltimore bookseller who closed his store in 1954 after 29 years.

This triggered some memories for Walsh, who shared a great Style magazine article he found reporting that three years later, Rose Hayes purchased and reopened the Peabody Book Shop and Beer Stube. Style described it as a place where "beer took precedence over books, which became more motif than merchandise, and the stube itself became a cluttered caricature of its humble origins with ballet slippers hanging from the wrought-iron chandelier, and the stag’s head above the brick fireplace competing for attention with mounted animal horns, ceramic busts, figurines and framed pictures of waterfowl."

There is "no counting how many Baltimoreans descended the dingy stairwell into the Peabody Book Shop and Beer Stube to share a beer at the communal wooden tables, hear poetry read aloud, participate in sing-alongs or watch as the Great Dantini performed his magic tricks. But everyone who passed through, it seems, has a story to tell, and one rarely about books," Style wrote.

"I remember going there," Walsh recalled. "It was a hoot. More beer than books. But still, one of those off the wall weird/fun places. Now gone." In 1986, the business closed once more after Hayes died.

"The Peabody was interesting, but perhaps one of the most interesting characters in Baltimore book trade was the late Abe Sherman," Walsh added. "He ran a newsstand with books for decades. He fought in WWI and WWII. He was well known for yelling, 'Are you buying or reading?! If you wanna read, go over to the library!'"

If you've lived your life in books (and who among us hasn't?), you've encountered these places and people, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse--though quirky bad can be as entertaining as quirky good.

My longtime favorite was Tuttle Antiquarian Books, which closed a couple of years ago. Tuttle's was located in two old houses on South Main Street in Rutland, Vt. One building had an extraordinary selection of used books crammed on dusty shelves. You accessed the stacks by wedging your way down narrow aisles. It was always worth the trouble. Customer service was not generally an option, however. With some effort, you could locate the room where you paid for purchases, and someone might grudgingly accept your money.

The other building housed the offices of Charles E. Tuttle Co. The history of Tuttle as a publisher is well known, and in this place there was a much more organized display of Asian-themed books, which they began publishing in the late 1940s. That particular room opened up a literary world to me long before I had access to it anywhere else. And the two houses conspired to have a kind of Dickensian impact on my sense of what a bookstore should be--a little mysterious, grudgingly open to exploration, quite possibly infinite in space and, yes, just a little wacky around the edges.

When I became a bookseller, I simply added customer service as the missing plot twist.

Bookstore quirky is, of course, an indefinable concept. Or, more accurately, it is subject to endless individual definitions.

While it is fun to watch the snarky anti-ambience of Black Books, the British comedy series, I wouldn't want to be there.

Someday I would love to visit Lenore & Lloyd Dickmans' manure tank bookstore in Princeton, Wis., if it still exists.

And if I'm ever in Jefferson, Tex., I will definitely stop by Kathy Patrick's Beauty & the Book, "the only hair salon/book store in the country." Even though I'm too bald to present much of a challenge on the coiffure front, it just sounds like a fun book place to visit.

What's on your great quirky bookstore list--past or present?--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1097.

]]>'What's Past Is Prologue' for Booksellers, Toohttp://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/whats-past-is-prologue-for-booksellers-too.htmlRobert Gray2010-01-16T14:13:40ZAs I wandered through the virtual stacks of Harper's archive researching last week's column, I noticed that references to another corner of the book trade came up quite often--bookselling in all of its passionate, literate, insightful and perpetually endangered glory. So I decided to bookend those old publishing industry analyses with a few bookshop memories.

1. September 1892 Harper's observed that bookshops in cities and villages "used to be an intellectual centre where readers met, not only to keep the run of the thought of the world, but to exchange ideas about it. Few are so now. Bookshops generally throughout the country have changed their character. The booksellers say that it does not pay to keep a stock of standard literature, nor to put on their counters the pick of the best books that are published every week. Their book-stalls have become shops of 'notions,' of bric-a-brac, of games, of newspapers and periodicals, of the cheap and flimsy temporary product of commercially directed press, with only an occasional real book that has attained exceptional notoriety."

2. April 1937 I was surprised to discover that children's book sections, which are now a profitable bookstore staple, weren't always so. Writing about the Children's Spring Book Festival, May Lamberton Becker praised the quality of children's books, but she also bemoaned the fact that for much of the year, most people "would scarcely know that they are there. Where are they, indeed, in far too many of our bookshops all these long months between the first of January and the middle of September?

"I know where to look for them when I visit a typical shop of this kind. I go straight through to the back of the store. Under the stairs, there they are, the children's books, with the decorations left over from last Christmas tucked in with them, ready for next Christmas's display. Books for children, it would appear, are in such places considered solely as holiday gifts and expected to hibernate for the rest of the year."

3. July 1954 A gentleman named Siegfried Weisberger, who closed his bookshop in Baltimore after 29 years in the business, said the "age of the boob is upon us" because the country had entered an era when people want "bucks, not books."

Curious whether bookselling was a vanishing profession, Harper's surveyed publishers, booksellers and sales reps, discovering that the "pedigreed bookseller, the old ideal of the classical scholar and man of letters who sold books for the sheer joy of being among them has, to be sure, pretty largely disappeared. The modern bookseller is a book-lover too, albeit a practical one. He must look to his bookkeeping as well as his books. His costs are going up. His margin of survival is beset with books which should have been best sellers but which were something less than that. He likes to be among books, but he likes to be among customers more."

4. October 1965 Alan Levy, in his essay "Lost in the Bookshops of New York," wrote that the American bookseller "has been sounding his own death knell for more than half a century, while struggling to live with such cancerous growths as bicycles, automobiles, telephones, television, movies, department stores, coupon advertising, book clubs, Sunday supplements, magazines, Time-Life Books, paperbacks, Little Blue Books, Modern Library, public libraries, lending libraries, and remaindering."

He cited Brentano's retail strategy as an example of how booksellers were fighting back by meeting the threat of discounters like E.J. Korvette "with, among other weapons, a superb paperback palazzo in the main store (13,000 titles, arranged by category, not by publisher) and the creeping non-book merchandise upstairs (stuffed Kookie Gonk, $5; bust of John F. Kennedy, $50)."

5. August 1985 In a condensed version of a discussion held at the ABA convention in San Francisco, Hillel Stavis, owner of WordsWorth bookshop, Cambridge, Mass., disagreed with others on the panel that the book trade's mission was to give the public what it wants: "After all, bookstores should not serve merely as an afterword to whatever is happening in the general society; they are, or should be, an active and a positive force. Independently owned stores should resurrect the backlist titles not carried by the chains and support new titles from small presses. Although chains like B. Dalton do offer a wide selection, the general trend is toward blockbusters; and as the chains capture an increasing share of the market, their ever-narrowing selection will come to dictate what publishers publish. But in the long term, this narrowing selection will produce a non-reading public, which will be detrimental to both chains and independents."

What's past is prologue, indeed, Mr. Shakespeare.--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1092.

]]>Publishing Trends of Futures Pasthttp://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/publishing-trends-of-futures-past.htmlRobert Gray2010-01-09T16:12:42ZForecasting publishing industry trends for the new year and the new decade is an irresistible and ubiquitous exercise these days. Perhaps it's only natural, then, that I honor my habit of glancing out the back window of the digital express caboose (Shelf Awareness, June 19, 2009) and offer, courtesy of the archives at Harper's magazine, my own list of a half-dozen publishing trends of futures past:

1. January 1850 Harper's featured an excerpt from the North British Review on a "common complaint that the publishers make large fortunes and leave the authors to starve--that they are, in fact, a kind of moral vampire, sucking the best blood of genius, and destroying others to support themselves."

2. May 1883 George William Curtis observed that "one-half of the books published each year in the United States fail to return their cost, and that one-half of the remainder bring no profit, leaving the cost of supporting the publishing machinery of the country to be borne by the publishers' share of the profits of one-fourth of the books issued."

3. June 1948 In "The Book Club Controversy," Merle Miller wrote about the recent appearance of "a smoothly designed advertisement announcing the formation of still another book club" even though were already "more than fifty clubs" in competition. This particular organization, however, was called the Blue Sky Book Club and hoped to lure members with an offer that may sound familiar to e-book enthusiasts: "You may now receive all the books published... over 10,000 a year FREE." These books weren't the only lure, however, because members would also receive "in compact digest form, the synopses, plot analyses, and YOUR OWN OPINION of these books." It was, of course, a gag with satiric bite.

4. October 1959 The anonymous author of a "Letter to a Young Man About to Enter Publishing" cautioned that even though "you want to go into publishing because you love good books and would like to help produce them... the first thing you should know about is the curious attitude of the American reader."

Strong evidence was then presented, including Edward Weeks, writing in the Atlantic Monthly's that there were about a million "discriminating readers" in the U.S., and "this number has not increased with the population; it has not increased appreciably since 1920." The London Economist suggested "even before television, Americans had not acquired the habit of reading good books. It has been estimated that since 1946, spending on books and maps has declined from 15 to only 10% of total outlays on recreation." And Dan Lacy of the American Book Publishers Council observed that the "basic nature of the trade-book audience is well known; it is largely urban; somewhat more women than men buy books; a dominant proportion of the reading public is in the higher professional and economic brackets; perhaps about 2% of the people account for a vital percentage of trade-book purchases."

5. July 1963 An article noted that Geoffrey Wagner, a British novelist living in the U.S., believed American publishing had become big business and this was a "calamity," since "most small publishers of interest... are being swallowed up by a few big firms. The survivors, he claims, are adopting a 'blockbuster technique' which has 'resulted in astronomical pre-publication deals, movie tie-ins, etc.'"

6. August 1985 Harper's offered a forum--"Will the Book Survive?"--based on a discussion that had been held at the ABA convention in San Francisco, and noted that in the previous year, American publishers had released "40,000 new titles, the vast majority of them, ignored by the great spotlight of publicity, were seen by almost nobody but the author and his twelve closest friends."

One of the panelists, William P. Edwards, v-p for new business development at B. Dalton Bookseller, observed: "Today there are new customers out there--the baby boomers, who fueled the dramatic growth of the bookstore chains and the large trade publishing houses. These younger customers have different views about format. They grew up with paperbacks; they give them as gifts. It's inevitable that during the next ten years bookstores will extend their franchise. Sure, we sell information and education; but the vast majority of books are bought as entertainment. Virtually the whole mass-market industry is devoted to entertainment. We are going to see bookstores moving heavily into audio cassettes--in effect, books one can 'read' while riding a bike or driving a car--and into videotapes as well, exercise 'books,' 'cookbooks,' whatever. It's already happening. After all, in buying a book, people are making an entertainment choice, and if we ignore that and stubbornly deny that these other forms belong in bookstores, we're going to drive away the younger customers. Diversity in format is important, and these products belong in bookstores."--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1087.

]]>When Scrooge Met Cratchithttp://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/when-scrooge-met-cratchit.htmlRobert Gray2009-12-28T20:02:08ZOne of my favorite cartoons by Charles Addams appeared in the December 23, 1950, issue of the New Yorker. The Addams family has gathered round a cold hearth, where stockings are hung without care on the cobwebbed mantlepiece beneath a cracked mirror, and Gomez shares his mischievously edited version of a beloved and ghoulish holiday classic, saying, "Then good old Scrooge, bless his heart, turned to Bob Cratchit and snarled, 'Let me hear another sound from you and you'll keep Christmas by losing your situation.'"

This is not the first year that I've found myself sympathizing a little more than is probably good for me with Ebenezer. I do understand the generous spirit of that final, redemptive chapter in the Dickens tale, but I also get the gnarly, anxious businessman in Scrooge--the short-tempered SOB who confronts holiday well-wishers with a snarl.

Hey, it's a down economy, the weather has been disruptive and who knows what the future will bring? And the fuel prices? Put down that lump of coal, Cratchit! If you're lucky, it'll be in your stocking on Christmas Day.

So this week I went looking for redemptive holiday messages among booksellers, my comrades in arms for many years and people who truly understand how to balance on that highwire stretched between holiday business and holiday cheer because they must walk it without a net each December.

I've collected a bagful of good wishes, including a few that nestled snugly in the bookstore e-mail newsletters that have been stacking up like digital gifts in my Shelf Awareness inbox.

Cornerstone Books, Salem, Mass., acknowledges that this has been "a challenging year for all of us, and so we want to wish all of you a very peaceful holiday with your friends and families. As we look forward to 2010, we do so with the optimism, joy and renewal that each New Year brings."

From Tom Campbell at the Regulator Bookshop, Durham, N.C.: "Thanks once more for being part of the Regulator community. Thanks for another great year. Thanks for supporting local independent businesses. Thank you in more ways than we can name. And 'God bless us every one!' Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year."

Susan Weis and Jenn Northington of breathe books, Baltimore, Md., "wish you all the warmest, sweetest holiday and we thank you so much for including thoughtfully chosen presents from breathe books in your bounty! This year it means more to us than ever. A deep, deep bow and namaste to you all."

"I hope this finds all of you out there in bookland happy and healthy and enjoying the season with a hearty Ho Ho Ho," writes Wendy Hudson of Nantucket Bookworks, Nantucket, Mass., on behalf of her "Merry Bookworkers."

Among the blogging booksellers, Hans Weyandt of Micawber's bookstore, St. Paul, Minn., notes that although this can be a frantic season for people, "we get to see some of the best that this season and its spirit can bring. Shoppers are calm and enjoy their time browsing and frequently help one another and give suggestions. The books are whirling in and out of hands. It is fantastic fun. 2009 has been a challenging year for small businesses, retail in general and the world of books. Yet we've made it thanks to the support we get from loyal customers who've decided to put their money into stores they believe in. For that, and much more, we send our best to all of you."

Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y., is celebrating its first holiday season and co-owner Jessica Stockton Bagnulo's message to patrons is: "Here's wishing you and yours the holidays you most wish for--whether it's partying or relaxing, being sociable or spending time on your own, feasting or cleansing, traveling or staying home. And of course, happy holiday reading!"

In celebration of the season, Rediscovered Bookshop, Boise, Idaho, exclaims: "We are truly spoiled by amazing customers. One of our oh-so-awesome customers made us a present! She hand knit us a pillow with our logo on it. Isn't that adorable? Chaucer is thoroughly enjoying it. We really do love how amazing our customers are, and we all hope you guys have a great holiday season. Thanks for making my job the best job ever!"

Now I feel better. Here's to indie booksellers--and everyone in the book trade--who continue to sustain a Bob Cratchit spirit and focused, Scroogey business plan in the face of ghostly, ghastly visitations year after year.

Bless us, every one.--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1082.

]]>Between the Pages--Collecting Bookmarkshttp://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/between-the-pages-collecting-bookmarks.htmlRobert Gray2009-12-20T15:52:09ZWhat is the common link between Cyril Connolly's The Unquiet Grave and an exhibition of Renoir paintings at the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; between Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins and Vanessa Redgrave's performance in Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking on Broadway?

As I fanned through the pages of my books while researching a recent column on bookmarks, I noticed a startling number of sheltered ticket stubs to theater, art and music performances. I'm not a collector by nature, but apparently I am a hoarder of bookmark stubs.

Lauren Roberts, on the other hand, is a genuine collector of bookmarks. The founder of BiblioBuffet, where she co-writes a column, "On Marking Books," with Laine Farley, Lauren has also teamed with Alan Irwin of the Bookmark Collector blog to organize the first Bookmark Collectors Virtual Convention, a 24-hour online event scheduled to begin next February 20.

"I collect them, and I love discovering the stories behind them, or at least about them. My collection actually began with a clump of hair that had been acting as a bookmark in a book for so long it had left its own mark," Lauren recalled. "Currently I own more than 1,300 bookmarks. Most but not all are antiques that are past their days of work. Too heavy for today's book paper or too fragile to risk, they sit either on display or in their own special acid-free albums."

Among her collection's prizes are "two silk bookmarks from the 1936 Olympics; a brass one whose top is in the shape of a lobster claw, one side being a lovely stone, the other brass; a die-cut vase with flower bookmarks that can be removed from it (and which has no indication of who made it, why or what it's purpose was); a World War II propaganda bookmark; an old typewriter bookmark; government bookmarks; women's suffrage (my research indicates to me this might--might--be Carrie Chapman's mother); a hero who had been unknown to me before I acquired this bookmark; stockings; Paisley flour; gloves; commemorations of the death of Prince Albert; the opening of the Cabanne Public Library; a bookmark to mark a theatre production; and tea (I especially like the older woman)."

In the U.S., the bookmark collecting field was "so small it was nearly non-existent" until a few years ago," Lauren observed. "Now, however, interest in them has increased. That's good in one way--more antique ones are being saved--and less so in another because the better ones are increasing in price."

I wondered whether she is a bookmark watcher in public places, as most of us check out what other people are reading. "Oh yes," Lauren admitted. "I am curious about what people are reading and what, if anything, they are using for bookmarks. Thankfully, I haven't seen any physical bookmark that gives me the willies. Most people, at least in public, seem to use either the book jacket's flap, a Post-it, a business card or a piece of newspaper ripped out from their morning's read. I don't consider dog-earing a page as a bookmark, though some use it for that reason, but I do see that. It makes me shudder."

Naturally I couldn't resist asking her what a bookmark collector uses to mark her own place when reading. She confessed that while she now primarily uses BiblioBuffet bookmarks, she "used to go through my collection, when it was a lot smaller, and choose a bookmark for each book I read. I tried to tie it to the book. I can't remember most of them, but I do remember choosing a red maple leaf for Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods. (Now a maple leaf is not a bookmark per se, but it had been part of a large bookmark collection I bought on eBay so it became one of mine.

"What I found though, especially as I bought more expensive ones, was that they were not suited to today's books. Many of the metal ones that were so common in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were heavy by today's standards and would damage modern books. Many of the paper or silk ones were fragile too. Generally they weren't treated all that well--they are, after all, ephemera--and by the time they get to the collectors' hands today they have been through a lot."

My favorite bit of ephemera from my bookmark search turned up in a first edition of Michael Murphy's Golf in the Kingdom, where I found the ticket stub for a soccer game I attended in 1966 between Santos of Brazil and Inter Milan of Italy at Yankee Stadium. That one marks a book, a place and a time.--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1078.

]]>Marking Books, Marking Timehttp://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/marking-books-marking-time.htmlRobert Gray2009-12-05T19:03:01ZThere are few objects in a reader's life that are more ubiquitous yet personal than the common bookmark. This realization was reinforced last week as I read Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's story, "The Bookmark," from his wonderful collection, Memories of the Future (translated by Joanne Turnbull for NYRB Classics).

When the story's narrator rediscovers a favored bookmark with "a flat body of faded blue silk and needlepoint designs trailing a swallowtail train," he recalls, "We hadn't seen each other in a long time: my bookmark and I."

Books had crossed his path in the interim, but "they did not need bookmarks. . . . One consumed these texts posthaste, without reflecting or delectating: both books and two-wheeled carts were needed then strictly to supply words and ammunition. The one with the silk train had no business here."

He thinks fondly of "all the voyages we had taken together--from meanings to meanings, from this set of signatures to that." Now, he resolves, it is time again to "include my old friend in my next reading; instead of a series of memories, I should offer my guest another bundle of books."

Despite the fact that you can mark your place in a novel with Post-its, scraps of paper, napkins, template letters addressed "Dear bookseller or reviewer," dog-eared pages or repositioned end flaps, traditional bookmarks persist.

They must have been among the first sideline items ever sold in bookshops and still hold a place of honor for reliable inventory turns, especially during the holiday season. Bookmarks are a gift that keeps one--especially if the one in question is a hard-to-buy-for reading relative--literally in one's place.

And what other item is both sold and given away free in the same retail environment? Many, if not most, bookshops offer their patrons complimentary bookmarks with the store's logo, contact information and sometimes a pithy quote (perennial favorite: "So many books, so little time") as a promotional tool.

And though computer programmers have attempted to co-opt the term ("Bookmark this page," "Bookmark this item," "Organize Bookmarks," "Bookmarks Toolbar"), the simple act of slipping a flat piece of cardboard or leather or even silk between the pages of a book to save our place remains an important ceremony for readers.

Included among the features on the website for Mirage Bookmarks are a history lesson, bookmark exhibition, link to a Flickr group for vintage bookmarks, as well as a collection of relevant quotations. Two of my favorites:

Why pay a dollar for a bookmark? Why not use the dollar for a bookmark?--Steven Spielberg
I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed-reading accident. I hit a bookmark.--Steven Wright

Clearly bookmarks have been on my mind lately. Krzhizhanovsky's story inspired a journey round my office. Moving from shelf to shelf, I ran my fingers along the tops of volumes as I scanned for the presence of my "old friends" and quickly found one marking my place in Fusion Kitsch: Poems from the Chinese of Hsia Yu (translated by Steve Bradbury), a recent acquisition from the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Cambridge, Mass. The store's bookmark features a blurb from Robert Creeley: "Poetry is our final human language and resource. The Grolier is where poetry still lives, still talks, still makes the only sense that ever matters."

Hidden in an old, broken down Modern Library edition of Henry David Thoreau's Walden was a bookmark from the Hartford Bookshop, Rutland, Vt. Although the bookmark reassured me that the shop was "est. 1835," the sad truth is that the Hartford did not make it beyond the 1970s.

A 17-year-old copy of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient preserved a black bookmark from Vintage International promoting Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières by linking it back to back with the Booker Prize winner. I must have kept it because I was a handselling fool for both books.

M.J. Rose's The Reincarnationist sheltered a bookmark from Partners & Crime mystery booksellers in Greenwich Village, where I'd attended a signing. Dava Sobel's Longitude had a glossy bookmark featuring color photos of "John Harrison's Timekeepers" from his 18th century pursuit of the longitude prize. There was an Adelphi University bookmark in my copy of Graham Greene: A Life in Letters and a beautifully understated Archipelago Books card resting in the pages of Gate of the Sun by Elias Khoury.

Each one reminded me of "voyages we had taken together." So I invite you to take a journey round your shelves and see what ancient bookmark treasures are hidden there. Let me know what you find.--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1067.

]]>Remembrance of Black Fridays Pasthttp://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/remembrance-of-black-fridays-past.htmlRobert Gray2009-11-27T17:30:08ZWith apologies to Proust (as I imagine myself nibbling turkey-shaped madeleines), I'm in a retrospective mood as Black Friday approaches this year. I guess I'm still not used to the idea that I won't be immersed in the BF handselling hustle after working 15 crazy busy Black Fridays (beginning in 1992) at the Northshire Bookstore, Manchester, Vt. For such a long time, it was part of my holiday DNA.

I was already contemplating this fact when I read a Facebook message posted by author Connie May Fowler yesterday: "Want to avoid Black Friday? Easy! Pre-order How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly for everyone on your holiday list. Send me names and addresses and I'll write them a lovely holiday note, notifying them of Clarissa's April arrival. I'll also send a signed bookplate. And I'll send you, via e-mail, my knock your socks off recipe for baked Parmesan cheese grits. Even my most hardcore beloved Yankee friends ask for seconds."

I liked that, and asked Connie if I could share her offer with my readers. She said yes, adding, "If anyone pre-orders through Northshire, I'll be very happy to send the recipient a note, signed bookplate, and recipe." And your bookstore's customers are invited, too, I'm sure.

Her offer is a small indicator of how social networking is changing the rules, but we already knew that. I mention it because Connie's novels were among my handselling staples through many Black Fridays going back to the mid-1990s, so she is part of my Proustian recollection here.

Adrenaline is the word that comes to mind when I recall those Black Friday experiences--bookseller adrenaline in the preparation and execution of a perfect retail battle plan; and customer adrenaline in the instinctive human drive to shop on the one day of the year when everybody else is in stores. "I can't believe I'm shopping today" is a familiar refrain from the Black Friday choral ensemble.

I wrote my first Black Friday blog post at Fresh Eyes: A Bookseller's Journal in 2004, asking: "Is anybody ever ready for Black Friday. Ready is not the word. It's more a kind of constructive paranoia--generously mixed with terror--that propels us to take every precaution we can think of to insure success. The bean counters upstairs will hold their breath because so much is riding on this day and so many things can go wrong. They can't prepare. They can only add up the damage afterward."

The adrenaline rush began in the weeks leading to BF. We built up key inventory. Work schedules were meticulously gridded to make sure there was adequate floor coverage for every minute of the day. Sections and displays were given the "dress right dress" treatment. A "soup kitchen" was organized so staff wouldn't have to brave the crowded cafes and sandwich shops downtown.

In Vermont, even weather patterns were closely tracked because a bad storm could wipe out everything. The perfect retail weather pattern here was a nice snowstorm on Monday, roads cleared by Tuesday and cold, sunny weather from Wednesday (travel day) through Sunday. This combo drew both the relatives (who have to come) and the more elusive ski/snowboard contingent to Vermont's mountains.

And while that tense half-hour before a Black Friday opening might not have the anticipatory terror of a Wal-Mart door-bashing stampede, it was still a time to take a deep breath and put on your bookish game face.

Dennis Johnson's MobyLives Radio interviewed me on Black Friday, 2005, while I was working the sales floor. "Every now and then you'll see someone who actually has a sane expression on their face," I said, "who has found a quiet corner in fiction and is just thumbing through a book, but for the most part it's engulf and devour. . . . It doesn't feel like the image of a bookshop where the bell rings over the door and the cat wakes up. That's just not happening today."

I wrote my first Black Friday column for Shelf Awareness in 2006, and noted: "Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this post-holiday retail holy day is that a bricks-and-mortar bookstore can be part of the action, too, and that books can be quietly handsold in the swarm of bodies and cacophony of voices."

Because again and again, in the midst of that controlled chaos that was and is Black Friday, someone would say: "Excuse me, I know you're busy, but I was wondering if you'd recommend a book. I just need a great read for the weekend." And that sparked adrenaline of another kind.--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue#1062.

]]>A Shame List by Any Other Namehttp://www.fresheyesnow.com/shelf-awareness-column/a-shame-list-by-any-other-name.htmlRobert Gray2009-11-22T18:31:48ZHe was not born to shame:
Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit.--Juliet, Romeo And Juliet

We've been talking about definitions in an English Composition course I teach; about how easily the definition of a word can slip into the challenge of defining an elusive concept, and then release itself from your control altogether.

A word, for example, like "shame."

In his book Shame in Shakespeare, Ewan Fernie notes that the Bard used the word "shame" 344 times in his works and the word "guilt" only 33 times. "Having offered a first definition of shame, it is now necessary to distinguish it from the associated phenomena of embarrassment and guilt," Fernie writes. "Embarrassment is a weak and transient form of shame: shame is absolute failure, embarrassment failure in a given situation."

This definition conundrum occurred to me after Dan Schreffler, the buyer at Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y., observed that "the notion of a 'Shame List' has been eating at me ever since you first discussed it several weeks ago. If the Book House were the gift shop of some well-heeled cultural institution instead an independent business trying to survive this recession, I would have a different attitude. As it is, my Shame List consists of any title that customers actually want to purchase and that we do not have and cannot get in time to satisfy them. No title is sacred. If booksellers want to surround themselves with precious gems of literature (and who among us does not?), then they should collect them in their own homes. In the bookstore we are sellers of books, not curators.... I understand that every store stocks titles that do 'perform' optimally. Maybe it is just the word 'shame' which got my goat."

He could be right. Is Shame List harsher than necessary? There are probably a dozen other terms (Guilt List? Embarrassment List?) that would do, but I heard Shame List used this fall and it seemed to raise the stakes appropriately. Maybe I've unleashed an unnecessary demon.

Or maybe not.

"I'm loving this 'Shame List' business!" noted Jennifer Moe, general book buyer for Wheaton College Bookstore, Wheaton, Ill. "Working at a college bookstore, there are certain professors' books that we definitely must have in stock in our Faculty Authors section. It can be pretty brutal to have a prof come in and ask if we have his or her title and we have to say, 'Um, not at the moment... must be sold out!' At least then that gives them a little boost while I scurry back and order another copy right away!"

And Harriet Logan, owner of Loganberry Books, Shaker Heights, Ohio, admitted: "We're running around frantically updating our Shame List now, checking inventory and ordering the vacancies. Kinda fun. It's a mish-mosh of old classics and staff favorites, and the list is largest for children's picture books. We used to call it the Essential Inventory List, but Shame List is quickly taking over. It's easier to say, for one."

She shared some "oddballs on the Loganberry Shame List, because we recommend these books all the time (just because we like 'em)."

Fiction

The Lilac Bus by Maeve Binchy
Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Rose by Martin Cruz Smith
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Nonfiction

The Federalist Papers
Various and sundry titles by Thich Nhat Hanh

Children's/young adult

Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop and Kurt Wiese
Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
Miss Twiggley's Tree by Dorothea Fox
Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson
Ben and Me by Robert Lawson
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner (and she's local)

"Actually, I have an Excel list with several hundred titles," Logan added, "but these are in bold, and perhaps not on everyone else's list."

Betty Smith's classic novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, made Cheryl McKeon's Shame List at Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, Wash. She confessed, "I clearly recall suggesting to the customer seeking this classic, 'Perhaps it's a current school assignment and we just sold out.'"

So, if not Shame List, then what? The possibilities are many: regret, chagrin, remorse, compunction.

But there will always be those books--and those questions--and in the end, a bookseller's job is to find every way possible to say "Yes." So, in my book at least, Shame List it is.--Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1059.

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