photo: yahighway.com

National Etiquette Week seems an appropriate time to offer a little advice as you prepare for total immersion in the crowded aisles of the Javits Center, not to mention a crowded city filled with crowded restaurants/bars. The streets of Midtown Manhattan are tough, but BEA can be tougher, especially during the opening hours of the first day, with all the pushing and shoving; the shouting and grabbing; the toe-stomping and elbow-crashing. Oh, the humanity!

So we need some rules. We need to talk about your behavior. I could rain a little Emily Post down on your parade, but let's try historical perspective instead. I refer you to chapter 7 ("Behavior in Public") of my new favorite book, The Etiquette of To-day by Edith Bertha Ordway, which was published in 1913. The guide is probably an appropriate symbol of our industry-in-flux times, since a century after its publication, this digitized version exists in Google Books while bearing a stamp from the University of Michigan Libraries.

"The test of the depth of one's courtesy is found in one's attitude to strangers and the public at large," our new etiquette guru advises, raising a key question:

What would Edith do at BEA?

Getting there: "The dress for traveling should be plain and simple, suited to the need rather than elaborate. The effect of crumpled finery is so very unpleasant that no person of taste will make a display of it in a public conveyance."

Checking in: "The usual good manners of cultivated people, emphasized by the additional restraint which the presence of the public imposes, is a safe standard of etiquette in a hotel."

BEA/ABA conference sessions: "The loud-voiced, aggressive person, whose opinions are alone of vital moment in his estimation, and who will not yield a point in an argument, is much to be dreaded in any company, and effectually brings to an end any general conversation into which he intrudes."

Opening day on the floor: "Pushing, shoving and all like methods of getting people to move out of your way, or of getting ahead of others, are marks of great rudeness, and have a tendency to retard rather than aid one's progress through a crowd...."

Everyday behavior at BEA: "Never show hostility, nor permit people to quarrel with you. The irritability which crowded conditions aggravate makes it necessary to adhere, from principle, to the rule of strict good-will toward all."

Night life: "The considerate person will not enter even a public hotel late at night.... Those who are asleep deserve as great consideration as if they were awake, and more also."

Partying, a cautionary note: "It is not necessary to recognize in society a strictly business acquaintance unless you wish to do so."

Taxis: "In entering a carriage or automobile, one should step promptly, without either loitering or haste."

Paying attention all day long: "Straightforward attentiveness is the attitude of most profit and enjoyment in society.... The habit of a vacant or absent mind in company is a grave fault, and works greatly to the detriment of one's reputation for intelligence, in spite of all else that one may do to establish it."

Dining out, sexist edition: "In business life it is not good form to dine with your employer. This does not include a ban upon those business dinners, where there is a group of people, the majority of them men, with one or two unmarried business women of equal or superior business standing, who meet over the dinner table to talk of business problems."

BEA as an unusual circumstance: "The exchange of visiting cards with strangers, unless under unusual circumstances, is unwise and bad form."

Cell phone etiquette: "To converse in loud tones or talk of personal matters anywhere in public shows great lack of fine feeling and good breeding."

Final hours of the trade show: "It is a mark of good breeding to control or at least conceal one's moods, so that in company one always appears to be content, if not happy. It adds much to the happiness of others to give this impression, and is therefore generous as well as wise."

Etiquette "is the necessary colleague of intellectual ability in winning the farthest heights of success, and makes the plains of mediocre attainment habitable and pleasant," our guru advises. Behave yourself this year at BEA. Don't mess with Edith. --Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1998.

"It is written for a voice," Tóibín has said. "And it is written for an actress' voice. And I had in mind as I was working a voice like Fiona Shaw's voice that would have a huge level of commitment to loss." Both voices--Shaw's and the one I imagined as a reader--now inhabit my mind with equal force. 

Earlier this week, Tóibín learned that even though The Testament of Mary has earned a Best Play Tony nomination, it will close Sunday after just 43 performances due to poor ticket sales.

How did he deal with the loss? "I think dark laughter might be the best way to put it," he said. "And when in doubt, consult Oscar Wilde.... He has a quote--success is merely a preparation for failure. Anyone who works in the arts knows, if you're writing a novel or a play or anything, you have to be ready for someone to say, you're time is up."

He also noted that "about 30,000 people will have seen the play over a 6-week run by the time it closes, with a standing ovation every night. In European terms, that's a huge success. In Dublin I'd be walking around with everyone saying, what an amazing success you've had with your play."

I bought my ticket months ago, when I first learned the play was coming to Broadway. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Shaw told NPR that while she is "on the stage alone, I suppose what happens is, I feel I'm surfing the story with the audience.... I tell this particular story, and I follow it as I'm in it, and the audience follow it with me. So I do feel a great communion, dare I say, with the audience." This is how it felt to me, too--her voice, her silences, Tóibín's words and, somewhere in there, myself as reader and then as audience. Communion. --Published in Shelf Awareness, issue #1986.

We've traveled a considerable distance in this column, from NCAA basketball to mutilated worlds, but that's what I love about poetry, how it finds its own way. Each poem is a loner, an outcast. Poems are even born alone, though the lucky ones may find temporary shelter in literary journals or, eventually, in books where they huddle with their "collected" or "new and selected" cousins. As a reader, poetry also lives for me between the brackets. --Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1975.

Tavern Books making a donation drop at the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Tribal Library. L.to r.: founding editor Michael McGriff, managing editor Natalie Garyet, founding editor Carl Adamshick, head librarian Marion Mercier.

In the Pacific Northwest, Tavern Books publishers Michael McGriff and Carl Adamschick launched Poetry State, an ongoing campaign to build and sustain the circulating poetry collections in Oregon libraries. They collect donated poetry books from publishers, individuals and bookstores (in addition to purchasing new titles) and then distribute them free of charge to any library in the state expressing need for an enhanced poetry collection, with a particular focus on those serving rural communities of 5,000 or fewer, Tribal populations and Oregonians in need. The project also provides books to alternative book-lending programs and social services. To date, 2,500 poetry books have been donated.

"The program is expanding rapidly, and we find ourselves constantly reminded of the need for this service within Oregon libraries," said managing editor Natalie Garyet. "Running it has proven to be a formative experience for Tavern Books as well; it has allowed us to give back to our community in a tangible way and to enact our mission to 'disseminate books in a way that benefits the reading public.' "

Can you hear it now? That, my friends, is the exquisite sound of poems making their way in the world. Poetry is everywhere. "We can leave it out on the counter for our beloved, like a bowl of yellow pears," Dobby Gibson observes in his answer to that question posed by Common Good Books. "Or we can fold it up into a tiny square and bury it in our sock drawer, like our most dangerous secret. Either way, it will lie there patiently and wait to be discovered." --Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1970

Scheemaker

Nancy Scheemaker, who is the general manager of Northshire Bookstore Saratoga, joined the Northshire team in 1998 as a part-time children's bookseller and has held numerous positions since then, including full-time general bookseller, assistant sales floor manager and co-manager. More recently, she has been the community programs director, working "to improve our responsiveness to customer interests, to move the bookstore more into the realm of a cultural center, to build partnerships, and to develop new experiences for customers that increased their loyalty, affiliation and connection to us," she said.

Morrow cited this wide range of experience within the Northshire's structure, as well as her passion for bookselling and focus on community as key factors in the decision to offer Scheemaker the Saratoga position.

As community programs director, she said she has learned "how partnerships with neighboring institutions--going out on a limb a bit with the unexpected event--rarely hurts, and just being in tune with the local and the regional culture are key to the full life and personality of a local bookstore. I'll carry these insights with me to Saratoga."

With fewer than 60 business days until launch, everyone involved with the project has been "considering and planning what the layout will be--what goes where, and how to create the most exciting, warm, accessible, dynamic bookstore experience for each and every person who walks in," Scheemaker noted. "This is an amazing opportunity--but it is tough not to feel the pressure. How to reproduce the very best of a 37-year-old, award-winning bookstore in a new location with an entirely fresh staff?

"Working on this, I'm reflecting on my experiences with community and customers. But as you know, it all comes down to this--the incredible dedication, creativity and passion that comes from our staff. When you have that, everything else falls into place."

The bookstore's July opening happens to coincide with the start of Saratoga's legendary thoroughbred racing season (or, as we call it here, "the season"). This year Saratoga Race Track also celebrates its 150th anniversary. In terms of walk-in traffic potential for a brand new Broadway business, think of it as Christmas... in July... for six weeks. Off to the races indeed. --Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1964.

Quiet may not be the first word that occurs to most people on a trip to Paris, but it's the one that struck me early last week as I browsed the beautiful, iron-gated little poetry section at Shakespeare and Company bookstore; and the word continued to weave its way through my impressions of the city during an all-too-brief visit.

On our third day in Paris, we began the morning with innocent optimism at the Musée d'Orsay, where we discovered an enormous and noisy line of tourists and vacationing students outside, snaking around the plaza and down the street. Bundled for a mid-March snowstorm, some braced their umbrellas against a bitter wind while others negotiated with the parapluie vendors.

We declined to join the frozen queue. Since almost any postponement in Paris is an opportunity, we just kept walking along the slick sidewalks--often taking necessary and irresistible detours on narrow side streets--in the general direction of Shakespeare and Company, which would, we were certain, offer much-needed warmth and shelter from the storm to weary readers.

After the anxious buzz of the museum crowd, followed by traffic noise and pedestrian chatter, a near silence inside the bookshop was almost as breathtaking as the cold wind had been. We browsed for a long time, exploring the ground floor stacks as well as the library upstairs.

Because it's my business even when on holiday, I also watched the booksellers, who were young and knew their stuff, fielding questions in French from the locals; changing direction instantly for an Australian man's query about "social justice in literature"; then deftly handling an American woman's request for some Ken Follett, Nora Roberts or Pat Conroy. It was a drill most frontline booksellers would recognize: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, I thought, more or less.

Just a day before, I'd been amazed by the high "shushing quotient" at the Louvre, which was fending off its own invasion of student and tourist groups. By contrast, the quiet in Shakespeare and Company was simply expected and natural, inspiring even an energetic band of chaperoned young Americans to tone it down a notch. Their muted conversations ranged from shocked recognition of classic novel covers on display to a report from a pair who'd strayed and then returned with breaking news of a place nearby selling "cheap little pizzas" (Croque-Monsieurs). Low volume conversations from unexpected sources are also a form of quiet, I decided.

We bought several books, of course, and then ventured back outside. It was on this wet and chilly walk across the Seine at Pont Neuf and back to our apartment that I began thinking about quiet as image.

Ultimately, this notion lured me to Shakespeare and Company again a couple of days later to photograph the iconic exterior. From there, we headed to nearby Notre Dame, where my obsession with "quiet" was probably entrenched as the week's theme. Following a boisterous crowd being funneled through the cathedral's ancient entryway, we were greeted by signage that proved to be a relatively effective international commandment: SILENCE.

Quiet as image.

It stuck, even when I wasn't taking photographs. I remember visiting Flammarion's La Hune bookshop near the Boulevard Saint-Germain one night on the way to dinner and being, well, intoxicated by the distinctive sound of two wine bottles clinking gently together as a bookseller carried them upstairs, where an author event was about to take place.

There was also a measure of visual quiet in bookstore exteriors, including the closed (Librairie Paris et son Patrimoine), the high end (Taschen Kartell), even the expat (W.H. Smith on the Rue de Rivoli).

And then there was that small but exquisite bookshop tucked within the passageway to the courtyard of the Musée Carnavalet. As the days and our endless strolls accumulated, so did all of these beautiful, bookish images. Merci, Paris, for showing us the exquisite quiet of your librairies. --Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1954.

"This is an old book. Grandma has read it. Please return. I can get the new paperback I saw in Costco. Love, Mom."

One of the little pleasures of my reading life is receiving the B-Mail newsletter from Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, Mass. In each issue, there is a Used Book Cellar "Find of the Week." Sometimes the hastily scribbled notes are funny and sometimes poignant, but always irresistible. It's as if they weren't lost or abandoned at all, but finally discovered their true home and value between those pages.

Exegesis is also part of Brookline's Find of the Week ritual. Here's the commentary on Mom's Costco note above: "This makes my heart hurt. While you're there, we're almost out of mustard and Alaskan king crab spread. Get a gallon of each. And eight dozen bottles of sparkling cider. Unless they don't let you get just half the package, in which case go ahead and get sixteen-dozen. And twenty tubes of toothpaste. Please."

The casual and yet deeply personal handwriting in these scraps affects me as a reader because it is so human in a fragile, unintentionally revealing way that text messages ("pls give gram hr bk getting 14u @costco") or viral tweets can't possibly emulate.

Handwriting isn't a lost art, or at least not an art lost on me. When I visit a bookstore, I'm always drawn to shelf talkers that are handwritten. Even legibility is secondary to the enthusiasm invoked by a pen's scrawl across the surface of a card. I'm also on the lookout for those faded, handwritten, often outdated reminders that cling by frayed yellow tape to cash registers ("Use shift-F4 to...") or over staff break room sinks ("You're mother doesn't work here. Wash your own dishes!"). For pure entertainment, however, there's nothing quite like children's handwritten contributions to bookstore suggestion boxes ("Need more chairs for us kids!").

I'm not a handwriting purist, which is perhaps one reason the scraps intrigue me. Just in case you missed it, January 23 was National Handwriting Day, brought to you, not coincidentally, by the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association, which represents the $4.5-billion industry of pen, pencil and marker manufacturers. Its purpose is to "alert the public to the importance of handwriting," offering "a chance for all of us to re-explore the purity and power of handwriting." Sorry you didn't get my handwritten greeting card.

Probably the reason I'm paying more attention lately is because I just finished reading Philip Hensher's The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting, in which he observed: "Our attitude to our own handwriting is a peculiar mixture of shame and defiance: ashamed that it's so bad and untutored, but defiant in our belief that it's not our fault. What shame and defiance have in common, of course, is the determination to leave the cause of the shame and defiance unaltered."

I get that. My own "hand" is deeply influenced by the slight childhood trauma of switching schools in the middle of first grade and having to adapt in mid-stream from print to cursive. The end result is a relatively legible, if visually jumbled collection of print and cursive letters lining up like mismatched train cars (judge for yourself in this example).

After I changed schools, my former teacher wrote a consoling note to my mother regarding little Robert's apparent struggle to adapt. She conceded that while "many schools do start writing in the first grade," most of the districts in the area didn't begin teaching cursive until third grade. It didn't get better from there. I hesitate to even mention the nuns. In sixth grade, Sister Philomena checked "N" on my report card under penmanship: "Needs help; is progressing but below grade level."

Thus, handwriting eventually became more of a spectator sport for me, and when I need a fix, Brookline Booksmith always delivers with treasures like this postcard: "Hello--Here in Riverside, Conn., for the meeting of the Titanic His. Soc. Met a survivor and got his signature..."

As I mentioned before, Brookline has a true gift for handwriting exegesis: "It concerns me that this message is abruptly cut off. Did anyone out there ever hear any word from attendees of the 1971 Titanic Historical Society reunion in Riverside, CT? From what I know of the original tragedy, it took some hours for the ship to go down, but I fear that whatever befell this postcard's author was rather more sudden. Perhaps the iceberg simply dropped upon the top of the building this time. That would explain it." Nicely played, Brookline. Couldn't have written it better myself.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1933.