The Surly Bookseller

2009-11-06T11:20:00.002-05:00

Pretty sure everyone's killed their subscriptions to this mostly defunct blog -- but just in case!

Cassandra Clare, Holly Black & Scott Westerfeld -- three excellent young adult novelists, specializing in fantasy/sci-fi -- will be signing books tonight at 7PM at Trinity St. Paul’s United Church, 427 Bloor Street West.

If you own anything by them, you should get them to sign it! I've got signed galley copies of all three of Cassie's books, and I'd love to get Scott to sign my galley of Leviathan... but I shall be elsewhere. Dammit.

2009-09-18T12:53:00.004-04:00

Last night, a parent came into the bookstore to get some reads for her 15 year-old son. He wanted Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane, because it's being made into a movie & he'd seen the trailer & was enchanted.

"But can you give me some other suggestions?" she asked, after reading the summary on the back of Shutter Island and shuddering a little. "You recommended The Hunger Games & Little Brother last time, and he adored both of those."

"No problem!" I said, flushed with the thrill of having a parent tell me their kid liked my picks. I loaded her up with Catching Fire and An Abundance Of Katherines.

"I'd really rather not buy Shutter Island," she said. "But I better call him first."

She did. She came back five minutes later, Shutter Island still in hand.

"He won't be swayed. He says you've lost credibility, since you recommended Life of Pi and he hates it, and he's not sure he'll like anything else you pick, either."

I must've looked particularly stricken, because she hastened to add "... but I'll buy these two other books anyway."

Please insert my face of woe here! I don't expect to have winning suggestions for everyone every time, but booksellers are story yentas by trade and Lord it stings to have someone tell me I've "lost credibility." Even a 15 year-old teenager, even second-hand.

I want everyone to love books and be happy. Is that so wrong?

2009-07-29T22:40:00.004-04:00

I have not posted in a while, because I had started to think that maybe it was time to quit.

But that is not the decision I ended up making! Instead, I'm going to school full-time in September, and booking it part-time, and hopefully that will let me a)pay my bills while b)still having enough study time to get impressive marks.

Fingers crossed!

It's hard, after all, to think of leaving this job. After five years, I've made friends with many customers. Also, the neighbourhood my store is in is home to many CanLit luminaries, which means I get to hear the gossip, and I kind of adore hearing the gossip. (It kills me not to blog about it, but this is The Surly Bookseller, not That Bigmouthed Jerk Bookseller.)

Because I have been wondering if I should quit, I've let several golden blog-worthy moments get lost in the passage of time. It's sad, really, but if anything is a constant, it is the truth (universally acknowledged) that working in retail means there will always be moments of hilarity.

There wasn't one today, but to make up for the lack, the landlord of the building next door came in and asked me to do some spying for him! We had previously met when I had phoned to say "I think your tenants have sabotaged our air-conditioners; please make them stop", an incident which ended with said tenants vindictively sunbathing topless outside our second-floor supply room. (I can't explain.)

Today he wanted to a)sell me an old set of encyclopedias and b)tempt my inner LeCarre into helping him out. He thinks that a tree in the courtyard of a restaurant next door is damaging the wall of this building. He's asked the restaurant owner to trim the tree; she hasn't. Now he needs a cohort!

So tomorrow I'm off to surreptitiously buy coffee and hang out in the restaurant courtyard. Where I will, I am sure, find nothing. Also, I will be extremely surprised if my order gets taken in the first 30 minutes I am there, and also extremely surprised if the waitress brings me the thing I ordered. This restaurant has never once a)gotten my order right or b)billed me for everything I ended up with. I shall bring a book. Isn't that what one does on stakeouts?

Oh, and no, obv, the set of used children's encyclopedias wasn't tempting.

2009-05-13T18:42:00.002-04:00

A very surprising thing happened to me today.

I noticed that we had an outstanding purchase order from Assouline Books, which had been placed in the first week of March. (This is not the surprising thing.)

I then noticed that we didn't have a phone number for Assouline Books. (Still not it.)

So I called my rep and asked for it. (Wait for it.)

And when I called the phone number he gave me, this is what I heard:

"Thank you for calling The Today Company. The Today Birth Control Sponge has been discontinued. For directions on removing the sponge, press three."

WHAT.

First, no, I didn't accidentally send my order for art books to The Today Company.

Secondly, the sponge was discontinued in 1995! There's a Seinfeld episode about it! And yet, apparently, hoarded copies are still in use... and getting stuck.

!!!!!

2009-02-08T23:28:00.003-05:00

Ahaha.

May I share with you a poem?

The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered, by Clive James

Excerpt:

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.‡
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

‡in other words, like the one I work at

2009-02-08T02:03:00.003-05:00

On Friday, I got this call:

Me: Good afternoon, this is (name of my bookstore), Rachel speaking.

Voice On The Other End Of The Phone (henceforth VOTOEOTP): Hello, do you sell the Twilight books?

Me: God help us, so we do.

(Okay, fine, I actually just said "yes.")

VOTOEOTP: Great! I'm calling from (some company), and we're the official merchandisers for the books. I was wondering if I could set up an appointment with your tie-in buyer.

Me:... Our what?

VOTOEOTP: Your tie-in buyer?

Me: We don't have a tie-in buyer.

VOTOEOTP: Who handles your non-book items?

Me: Um. We don't have "non-book items".

VOTOEOTP: Really?

Me: Yep.

VOTOEOTP: Huh. Perhaps I could just send a catalogue?
---

I said no. And then I hung up the phone and slapped myself. What was I thinking, saying no????

I'm going to track down the company on Monday and ask them to mail me one. And then I will share.

2009-02-07T23:04:00.003-05:00

A conversation I had today:

Customer: Do you have that book, "The Seven Habits of Happy People"?

Me: Do you mean The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey?

Customer: NO. I do NOT mean that book. I mean the one about happy people, written by two authors. One of them is a guy named Rick.

Me: His first name is Rick?

Customer: Yes.

Me: Do you think the other author is Stephen Covey?

Customer: *getting steadily louder & angrier* You are NOT LISTENING TO ME.

Me: I am listening.

Customer: I said that the book you mentioned was NOT WHAT I WANTED.

Me: I think Stephen Covey -

Customer: *banging on counter* That's not what I want!

Me: *enforced calm* As I was saying, I think he trademarked the title "Seven Habits Of..." If the book you want has that kind of title, one of the people is probably him.

Customer: Well, that's not the title then.

Me: ... Okay.

Customer: It has the word "happy" or "happiness" in the title, and one of the authors is named Rick.

Me: I don't know that book, and your terms are too vague for me to use them to search. We could go over to the section and scan through if you-

Customer: I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS. *leaves*

I hope she finds the book she wants. It sounded like she really needed it.

2009-02-01T00:42:00.002-05:00

I try hard to fill my customer's book requests. Really, really hard. Possibly too hard.

A conversation I had tonight:

Girl: I want [a play by August Wilson].

Coworker: Okay, let me check the database. *checks* We don't have it. We could order it for you. It would be $30.

Girl: $30? WTF?

Coworker: Hey Rachel, how come the database says this play is so expensive?

Me: That's the catalogue entry for the library edition. It's the only one we can get, but that play is also available from Dramatists Play Service for about ten bucks. There's another bookstore in town which carries those editions. I write down directions & their phone number.

Girl: Okay, thanks.

Girl wanders away. Half an hour passes. Girl comes back and finds me.

Girl: I also need [book by a South African activist that we haven't stocked for ten years].

Me: We don't have it. We could order it for you, and that would take a month, since it has to come from a US academic press, or you could walk two blocks down the street and get it from [another bookstore that specializes in the African diaspora].

Girl: *squints at me* Huh. You really don't want to sell me any books, do you?

EYE ROLL.

2008-12-19T21:39:00.001-05:00

Books Projected Onto The Tower of David, Jerusalem
(Via The Big Picture)

2008-12-15T20:52:00.003-05:00

John Green recites the last words of 50 famous (dead) people in four minutes, and gets only one wrong.

2008-12-13T22:34:00.003-05:00

(Picture from Leila's Etsy store.)

Go Fug Yourself has a fantastic article with suggestions on how one might improve Twilight.

Excerpt: All of Edward's condescending yearning and stalking would be way more fun if he were doing it while flitting about the rink in puffy shirts and tight trousers, tossing off triple Axels of romantic angst and throwing Bella into the air before catching her with one hand (subtext: "You must not love me BUT I LOVE YOU but stay away BUT NOT TOO FAR AWAY let me stare at you NO I MUSTN'T but I will LET ME TOE-LOOP MY FEELINGS don't look at me EXCEPT DO I am dangerous TIME TO SPARKLE").

2008-12-12T23:35:00.004-05:00

So, if anyone's thinking, "Hey, I wonder what Rachel would like for Christmas? Maybe I should buy her something book related," please allow me to save you time.

This is not a good present for me.

Twilight Edward Body Shimmer $9.99

Add subtle shimmer to your body with this iridescent powder. It includes a small application brush and comes in a clear container with an image of Twilight's Edward. 4 grams. Imported.

2008-12-10T23:04:00.001-05:00

I really enjoyed this post, over at The Booksellers Union, about what prints out on receipts/labels instead of the actual title.

2008-12-01T22:07:00.005-05:00

Three Conversations I Had Today

1. A woman approaches, arms akimbo, ready for a fight.

"Why," she demands, "don't you have a Hanukkah section?"

2. "Excuse me," a gentleman says, approaching my desk, "the U of T bookstore couldn't get this for me -- can you?"

(In case you don't want to click, the book he wanted was a copy of the Physician's Desk Reference to Current Drugs.)

(I check.)

"This is the 2006 edition. It's out of print," sez I.

"That is not true! I Googled it!"

"It's true. There's been a 2007, 2008 and 2009 edition since then. I can get you the most recent one," sez I, deciding not to explain the internet.

"I need this one. It is best."

"Um. It's out of date," and I attempt, even though I rebel against the waste of my time, to explain why the Physician's Desk Reference to Currently Available Drugs goes through yearly editions.

"This one has the most information!"

"It has the most out-of-date information."

"I only want this one! AND I NEED IT. NOW." He gives me the eyes of frantic craziness.

So I gave him directions to the local library and told him that the librarians could help him buy it online. He doesn't -- unsurprisingly, given his belief in the power of Google -- have a computer or internet access.

3. (I am at the cash desk, ringing people through.)

"So, are you going to be charging for bags?" asks a gentleman.

"If the bylaw passes, yes, we will," I say.

"Don't know what they're making such a fuss about," he says.

I decide I'm game for it, since, at his request, I'm putting his 75 cent newspaper in a plastic bag -- a request which I cannot refuse, but which always makes me cross.

"Plastic bags don't break down, you understand," I tell him.

(I didn't have stats on hand, but internet research later shows me that degradable plastic bags take 10-20 years to break down into smaller bits of plastic, as long as they're exposed to light, but plastic bags in landfills are nigh indestructible, since they're buried.)

"Pffft," he laughed. "In Nova Scotia they've got a farm, see? They put the plastic on it. Breaks down in, like, 20 days. We've got a farm here, y'know. Could do the same. Don't know what they're on about."

"They've got... a farm?" I say, weakly.

"Yup. Don't know what the Mayor's on about," he said, shaking his head as he went out the door. "We've got a farm, too."

2008-11-21T23:35:00.004-05:00

So hey! I'm back.

It's hard to blog when your subject is a) your job b) in a company you don't own, c) when you're not sure if this thing you've been doing for 10 years is the career you want.

In that kind of situation, sometimes the effort of making one's posts stand up to the possibility of being Googled by one's boss is hard. Even when one likes one's boss.

*whistles nonchalantly* (See how I didn't use "me" or "I" in those last two paragraphs? I could be talking about anyone. Anyone.)

BUT... it's Christmas. And I'm still working at the bookstore. And Christmas in retail means that stress release is damn well necessary. And my favourite form of stress relief is sharing the ridiculous situations that arise. (I also like my purse size flask of Baileys, but I save that for the two weeks before xMas, when I've told five million people the story of "The Tale of Despereaux.")

So I'm giving myself permission to blog about my job again. Here. In this very space.

At least until January.

Hear that, crazy coot customers? *sticks her head out her window, yells* Let the asking for the Pink Floyd section begin! I have a moleskine notebook in my every pocket to write down your oddities!

2008-04-26T13:40:00.003-04:00

Dear Readers,

The Surly Bookseller is now closed. Thanks for reading, and for sharing your thoughts. I'm moving over to a new blog, Living With Money. Please visit!

Love and kisses,
Rachel

2008-03-05T22:41:00.004-05:00

It's been six months since I posted last, and all I have to say, by way of defense, is that there was Book Rage, then Christmas, then one of our stores closed, another is about to open, and winter's not done yet.

But I'm writing, because yesterday, at work, I started telling an anecdote with the preface: "So, I was reading the bookseller complaint website last night-" and coworker P. interrupted "You don't get enough of that crap here? JESUS, woman!"

I don't, actually :-). I have an inexhaustible appetite for other people's essays/books/stories/films/whatever about their bookselling experience.

So, readers, if I still have any after six months of silence, here's my top five favourite bookselling memoirs, recommended for those of you who've survived the trenches, or those who are just curious:

1. Sylvia Beach And The Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris by Noel Riley Fitch

A minister's daughter goes to Paris, in the '20s, meets her soulmate -- a Parisienne running a French language bookshop -- and decides to open an English language bookshop across the street. Ernest Hemingway visits. Gertrude Stein & Alice Toklas visits. Thornton Wilder visits. George Antheil rents the upstairs room and occasionally has to shimmy up the brickwork out front in order to get in. James Joyce pops round and Sylvia says, innocently, if you're having so much trouble publishing your book, I could do it.
(And here is a copy of Ulysses which us non-millionaires can afford.)

2. Bookshop Memories, an essay by George Orwell

3. The King's English by Betsy Burton

Bio of Burton's store in Salt Lake City. Fabulous not only as a chronicle of bookselling life, but for the lists and lists of books suitable for various occasions. Also great as an example of satisfying literary dish, because Burton's met everyone, and sometimes she coyly doesn't tell you their names, but most of the time she does.

4. 21 Dog Years: Doing Time At Amazon.com by Mike Daisey

Ironically, it looks like when the hardcover of this was remaindered, Amazon bought up all the copies. And is selling them. Ha.

5. Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer

When people say "oh it would be so nice to work in a bookstore," I think they expect that it's going to be like it is in this book, a story about the second incarnation of Shakespeare & Co. (Go take the virtual tour! Online on their website.) For the record, I do not sleep in a cot in a back aisle. Nor does anyone else. I think.

2007-10-22T21:23:00.000-04:00

VERY IMPORTANT NEWS

Kid Rock Arrested for Assault After Waffle House Scuffle

He's an important man. Not so much a literary figure, mind, but this was certainly high on my list of interesting news items today.

I mean, meeting Isabel Allende when she dropped by on a break from IFOA was also nice, and there's the whole Dumbledore is Gay thing, and also JKR is in town tomorrow, but none of that overshadows Kid Rock.

Seriously.

2007-10-11T23:31:00.001-04:00

I have an advance reading copy of Tunnels!

SMUG JOY.

Yes, I'm ashamed of myself. Except, Tunnels!

2007-10-04T23:42:00.001-04:00

I don't even understand. For-profit libraries? Where is there profit in lending out books? Since the article doesn't say, I'm assuming that the profit is from Satan.

2007-10-04T21:41:00.001-04:00

I'd say a chill is in the air and fall is here, but a chill isn't in the air, gentle readers. Humidity is in the air, and it stinks.

I can tell fall has arrived, though, since I've spent this last week hanging calendars. They're suspended from the ceiling, supported by dry-wall edging hung from florists wire, and it's sweaty, sweaty work.

I was reading Fred Cody's memoir about his San Fran bookstore, Cody's Books, which he opened in the mid-50s, and did you know? Calendars used to be a rare thing! They were printed in Germany, and only daring retailers exported them to North America. Booksellers loved them because they contained beautiful art prints that were otherwise expensive, flimsy, and difficult to stock.

The shine has worn off, though -- come mid-August, publishers start shipping them, and by September there are a thousand+ piled in the basement of my store. I looked at them in the summer and thought, well, I guess I have to start thinking about Christmas. And then I nearly cried.

It's been kind of nice to be a ladder monkey again, though. In a past life, I was a theatre technician, and it's rare that I ever need to use those skills at the bookstore. I can, however, balance blithely atop a 12 foot ladder, where, I've discovered, customers don't want to interrupt you to ask things like "Do you sell paperbacks?" (a question actually asked last week... by a man who'd managed to walk the length of the first floor, upstairs, and to my desk, passing approximately 150 feet of paperbacks on display). I'll have to find other semi-dangerous seeming activities, if doing them scares away the stunned.
--

In other news, Nerve has published a Sex Advice From Booksellers column. Excerpt:

An ex-girlfriend gave me two very different answers on two different occasions when I asked her how many people she had slept with before me. Should I press her on this, or is it her business?
If you are out of high school, there are other things to discuss. Instead, channel the question to your reading group by asking, "How many books have you read?" Let that be your marker of inadequacy instead.

Should men wax?
Yes. And I think they should bleed once a month, and cry, too. And then they should have a baby.

Booksellers, man. We know everything.

2007-09-14T14:42:00.000-04:00

The winners of 2007 New Writing Ventures Awards have been announced and all of them are women. New Writing Ventures is a a relatively recent grant-thingy based in the UK. (Their website is horrid, but if you want to go look it's here.)

Anyway, I'm writing about this because bruhaha has been raised. (Bruhaha found via BookNinja.)

I'm disappointed in Henry Sutton, the judge doing most of the bru-ing (or bro-ing, I suppose) (also, incidentally, the literary editor of the Daily Mirror). I mean, I'm fairly sure that when he said the results are a "wake-up call" for male writers, he meant it in the spirit of "pull up your socks, guys!". I don't think he realized that it sounds like something you say at half-time to a losing team.

The thing is, work by women has been routinely shut out of literary awards, which Mr. Sutton must know, unless he's not particularly good at his job.

For example, in the 56 years that the National Book Award has been around, works by men have swept all categories 25 times, or 45% of the time. Broken down further, of the 331 awards handed out over the life of the NBA, 80 have been given to works by women--24% of the total 331 prizes given.

We've done slightly better here, where the Governor General Award (first given in 1936) has had 14 years where works by men took all prizes. (That's 20% of the time, for you math kids in the back.) The GG has gone to 167 texts written or co-written by women (37% of the 451 winners).

I can't be arsed to go do the math for the Pulitzer, the Nobel, the Hugos or the Gillers, but honestly, I can't believe any of those do better. (Particularly not the Hugos.)

These aren't perfect or even good comparisons -- the NBA and the GGs are for published (or performed, in the case of the GGs) work, as are the others I listed, while New Writing Ventures seems more akin to a grant, but my point it that an all-female award sweep isn't a "wake-up call" -- it's cause for a bloody celebration.

It's discouraging, as a woman starting to write, to see that a bigger slice of the pie (awards, grants, inclusion in anthologies or on academic reading lists) -- in fact, practically the whole pie -- has generally gone to the guys. Throw in all the things people say to discourage women from being artists -- all the myths we have about writing being, for women, a walk down the garden path to the river (stones in your pockets; birds singing latin); or the oven (big enough for your head, your dreams, and long-lasting infamy); or a shed where you've hidden enough vodka to get you through the day, the week, the year, and into a hospital bed where you'll slide into a yellow, fevered "died by natural causes, friends at her side" -- and you've got an uphill battle, the thought of which makes it much easier to stay in bed in the morning.

To push on anyway, to write anyway, to submit anyway, to decide on a literary life anyway takes a lot of sheer bloody-mindedness. Surely we should clap for them, the women who got their grants. Surely we should stand shoulder to shoulder and make sure they keep on, buy their books, go see them read. Surely their first victories should be met by something more encouraging than having the man who picked them want to talk about their lack of penises.

2007-09-07T22:49:00.001-04:00

I met Anne first, but I loved Meg best.

Meg Murry was awkward, wore glasses, had pocket handkerchiefs of dubious cleanliness, didn't get along with school administrators, was smarter than most of the people around her, had a father who was almost always away, and was set impossible tasks by the universe.

You could say I related. :-) Not that I've had to bend time and space to fight for the life of a family member - but when you're a 10 year old with an overly developed sense of romanticism and a yearning for the divine, it seems possible.

I said 10, but I don't remember exactly when I first read A Wrinkle in Time, or the other four Time Quintet books. I only remember absorbing them thirstily, and feeling the particular, profound sense of relief that comes from meeting your kin inside a book.

I loved everything Madeleine L'Engle offered her readers -- the science, the adventures in biblical history, the exploration of God, the clumsy protagonist with an immense hidden strength, the time travel, the love of nature. I still love all those things, but now, as an adult and as a children's bookseller, I am most impressed with L'Engle's deliberate choice to make each installment in the series more complex. Her characters were growing up; so were her readers: L'Engle's writing kept pace.

Today, at the store, I noticed that we'd sold out of the first three Time Quintet over the past few days. The last thing I did before stepping out the door was to reorder them.

And then I walked home, ate dinner, read my email, and found out that L'Engle died yesterday.

She was 88. She had a long and lovely life, and she wrote wonderful books. And I'm very, very sad that she's gone.

If I could travel through time, I'd go back to the day when Farrar, Straus & Giroux accepted A Wrinkle In Time. It had been turned down by 26 other publishers, and FSG told L'Engle, gravely, that they loved it, but she shouldn't be disappointed if it failed.

If I could arrive on her kitchen in Goshen, Connecticut, just as she got that call, I'd kiss her cheek and whisper in her ear, smiling, that she didn't need to worry. Impossible tasks aren't always so. The universe is sometimes kind.

And I still love Meg best, after all.

2007-09-03T17:59:00.000-04:00

Naomi Novik, ladies and gentlemen, seen here accepting the 2007 John W. Campbell Best New Writer award at the Hugos at Worldcon 2007:

No kimono-clad dragon-fighting-writer was ever more deserving. :-)

2007-08-17T21:46:00.000-04:00

Two ladies of a certain age, spiffy in their Burberry attire, at the front desk, idly chatting over me as I rang in their books:

Lady One: It's so nice to have servants, isn't it?
Lady Two: Oh yes, especially Martha. She's so sweet and willing!

WHAT.

This I don't understand about this exchange:

1) That it happened. Am I actually living in California in the 1920s?

2) People reflecting about having servants, as if they are unused to it. Were they nouveau riche? Are there even nouveau riche anymore? If so, who in Toronto classifies? How are they getting all their shiny new wealth? Also, how are ladies of a certain age nouveau riche? Aren't you, y'know, supposed to be young and brash in order to qualify?

3) Did they think my name was Martha?

4) If so, why was I projecting "sweet and willing," and how do I stop?

2007-08-08T22:51:00.000-04:00

I failed at poker-face today.

The conversation:

Man W/ Ray-Bans: Do you have anything on knights?
Me: I can probably rustle something up. Was there a particular book you had in mind?
MWRB: Not really. Although I'm particularly interested in North American knights.
Me: ... Um. I don't think there were any North American knights.
MWRB: Actually, yes, there were.
Me: In the medieval period?
MWRB: Yup. They got over here. I think it might explain the difference between Canada and the States.

Needless to say, we had nothing on knights in Canada, riding through the deep dark forests in their armour, ducking pine branches.

2007-07-24T11:23:00.001-04:00

Found via the intrepid Book Ninja, famous poems rewritten as limerics. Ahahahahaha. Ha.

2007-07-21T12:37:00.000-04:00

I'm fighting the urge to swing by the store. It's ridiculous: it's a Saturday, I'm not scheduled to work, and there are many, many things I need to get done at home.

But it's Harry Potter weekend, and I kinda just want to watch.

I was in the foxhole last night -- the table at the very back of the store where the curve of Manager J's office forms a defendable nook. We piled swag on the table, piled the books behind, and people started lining up 9ish in front. By the time 12:01AM rolled around, the line stretched through the store, doubled back on itself, and spilled, finally, out the door onto the street.

I wish I had pictures to share, but I didn't think that far ahead. I wasn't expecting the kid in the homemade golden snitch costume. (Nobody was expecting the kid in the homemade golden snitch costume.) I wish I'd documented it.

Someone tried to start a rousing chorus of the Sorting Hat song, but it faltered because no-one knows the Sorting Hat song.

Anyway, energy was high, the temperature was high, my co-captain was wearing a ~~civil-war-era army cap~~ (okay, I have no idea what the hell it was, but it was vaguely military, lacking insignia -- for which I suspect I should be grateful--and appropriate for attempting to get everyone in & out of the store before the neighbourhood noticed that we were shamelessly violating maximum capacity fire code), and somehow we got through the whole thing by 1:15AM.

From counting the empty boxes afterwards, I can tell you that 300 and change books flew out of the store in that hour and a quarter. It was impressive, and I'm glad that I went, since I doubt I'm ever gonna see something like it--at least, for a book drop--again.

It's been a weird ten years, JK Rowling, and I'd like to say thank-you.

2007-07-13T20:15:00.001-04:00

Friday, 5:23 PM, and I'm trying to a)finish receiving the first two shipments of 2008 calendars (boo!), b)package and mail one of the St. Clair royalty her 12 books, and c)make extra special-order forms for this weekend's inevitable last-minute round of Harry Potter pre-purchases.

And as I am running around the store trying to get all of this done and then leave, I meet this guy.

Guy: I want books on secret societies. Where's the conspiracy & secrets section?

I wanted to say "If I tell you, I'll have to shoot you," but instead I pointed him to History & Politics and pulled three titles for him to look at. He frowned at me as I put them in his hands.

Guy: That's it?
Me: Yup.
Guy: But you could get more, right?"
Me: If there's a particular title you want, yes, I can probably order it for you.
Guy: No, you can get more for the store, right?
Me: Well, yes, I could.
Guy: Are you going to?
Me: No.
Guy: Why not?
Me: (stares at him)
Me: (realizes that 5:30 has passed me by and I am about to get quizzed on Masonic influences)
Guy: You should, you know. It's getting really big.
Me: Conspiracies?
Guy: The Conspiracy.
Me: I have to... go.

And I did have to go, but I didn't manage it before Guy ended up at the cash desk, where I was standing next to co-worker C., who was clerking while I taped up Royalty's box o'books.

Guy: I want to buy this, but it's damaged.

C. looked at me.

Guy: She can't help; she has to go.
Me, examining the slight dog-ear of the bottom cover: You can have 10% off.
Guy: What would that be?
Me: The book is 18.50, so you'd pay $16.65 plus tax.
Guy: Which is?
Me: $17.65
Guy: So how is this saving me money?
Me: ... $17.65 is less than $18.50 plus tax.
Guy: Really?
Me: I have to go now.

Apparently math is part of The Conspiracy, too.

2007-07-11T14:32:00.001-04:00

Pimp My Cart

As Sus pointed out, the good people over at Unshelved had a "Pimp my Cart!" contest this January. (The theme for today's posts seem to be "Rachel is late to the party.")

Alas, alack, I have no bookshelving cart. If I did, however, I would want it to look like this:

Awesome, no?

2007-07-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

Today, someone was looking for "a newish Dick Francis," and my manager J. handed over one with the comment: "You know, it's recently been discovered that his wife did most the work of writing the books."

Customer and I, listening in, were both dumbfounded. (Well, actually, she said "Isn't that fascinating?" and I said, "Bloody hell!")

I don't follow mystery book news -- those who do will recognize that piece of information as a reference to revelations made in the biography Dick Francis: A Racing Life by Graham Lord, published in 1999.

Mary Francis, in conversation with Lord, said, when asked if she was the real author, "That's an impossible question to answer. Yes, Dick would like me to have all the credit for them but believe me, it's much better for everyone, including the readers, to think that he writes them because they're taut, masculine books that might otherwise lose their credibility."

Excuse my dropped jaw. It's better for Dick Francis to have credit, not because he wrote them, but because having a woman's name on the cover would keep people from buying the books. (I would also like to point out that she said her husband wanted her to have "all" the credit, when, in fact, she didn't get any.)

What is this, 1850? Will women never stop doing this or letting this be done to them? And if Mary really thought that it was necessary to have her audience perceive male authorship, what's wrong with pseudonyms? or using initials? (I mean, they're totally wrong, but at least they would be her alter-ego.)

BTW, rumour has it that Dick Francis' "creativity," since the death of his wife, has dried up, so his son has now taken over the series. His son, however, is publishing under his own name, not his father's.

2007-07-09T20:33:00.000-04:00

Over at the NYT, some clever editor asked a buncha writer-types how they would end Harry Potter.

I particularly like Polly Horvath's version, but the Lost guy is also quite funny.

2007-07-02T15:05:00.000-04:00

I have just signed up for the Toronto Marathon. My brother Col is going to run it with me. He is going to kick my ASS.

I'm a bit freaked out by this. But! I will DO IT. I can do more than sell books, you know.

2007-06-29T19:18:00.002-04:00

Fish Are Jumping

GAH.

It's been a ridiculous week.

First, co-worker S. is off becoming a dad -- as in, his wife is giving/just gave birth to their first child. (I am not the first person they're gonna call, so I do not yet know whether she is safely delivered.) And co-worker P. is on vacation for two weeks. Therefore, Manager, Assistant Manager Can't-Takes-No-More and I have been doing everyone's work, aided by a rotating crew of part-timers.

(Dear part-timers: I love you. You are excellent coworkers. Thank you for not abandoning us to the zombies.)

By mid-aft today, I was feeling kind of 'splodey. But I fought through, and now M'sieur Corona is helping me relax.

Four highlights of the week:

1. There is a box of fossilized poo in the staff fridge. It arrived by courier today, for a display & raffle I've agreed to do to promote a Fringe play, based on a kid's book. I didn't have time before leaving to set up the raffle, so I put it in the fridge with a "Do Not Touch !" sign. Ah, fossilized poo. Bookselling is such a glamourous job.

2. A regular whom I always thought was reasonable and sane pulled me aside this week.

"I just noticed these stickers in books I've purchased here," she said, opening a copy of <Divisadero and pointing to the security tag. "Are you tracking where we take the books?"

That's right: my store, with its creaky stairs, ancient computers (purchased in 1994!), dot-matrix printers, warped bookshelves and water-stained carpet, has invested in GPS technology. We know where every book that leaves our shelves has gone. We know you're reading Christopher Hitchens on the toilet. We know you left Margaret Atwood in the park. We're watching. We're watching RIGHT NOW. And we're sniffing.

3. Apropos of that, the alarm went off when three boys walked in yesterday.

"Oh, I just bought these two books down the road at [big, blue second-hand store that really shouldn't remain nameless, but hey, I'm avoiding lawsuits]. I bet that's why your alarm went off."

I looked at the books, two Chicago U. philosophy texts. They had our price labels on them. Sighing, I demagnetized them and handed them back. Then I checked our inventory & the shelves. Sure enough, we were missing one of each title. The owner of [big, blue second-hand store] admitted to my manager that he lets his staff buy things that are clearly stolen. He doesn't care. After all, what're we going to do about it?

BLOG ABOUT IT, THAT'S WHAT.

4. Lastly, why is it that the people who know they're being unreasonable are the ones who make the most fuss? The week kicked off with a guy who called at 9 on Monday (we open at 9:30, but it's become a reflex to pick up the phone, and then curse myself, silently), asking where the hell his $5 birthday coupon was.

My store runs a membership program. A $20 annual fee gets you 10% off paperbacks, 20% off hardcovers, one $5 coupon in the month of your birthday and another $5 coupon for every $300 you spend. Co-worker S. administers the program. Co-worker S. is off cooing over his new baby (I hope), and therefore couldn't provide answers. I have little to no patience at 9 in the morning. After much ballyhoo, guy said he wanted this fixed in a week, or he was going to demand his money back.

Three phone calls later, and I'd determined that his card had expired early May, he'd renewed it two days previous to phoning me (that is, on the weekend), and his birthday was early June. We'd sent the coupons out after his card had expired, so he hadn't gotten one. Somehow, he thought that between renewing his membership on a Saturday, and calling on a Monday, we would have figured things out and sent him a coupon -- by owl post, apparently, or teleportation.

I called and explained. I told him he could wait until June 2008, or I could change his birthday month to August, since it's not as if we care, really. He was mollified, but still chose to spend another five minutes telling me that we should be calling people when their cards are about to expire to ask them if they want to renew and tell them that they might not be getting birthday coupons if they don't.

I refrained from asking him if he wanted me to do his taxes, laundry and vaccuuming, too.

2007-06-18T18:34:00.001-04:00

"Excuse me, where are your books of collected essays written by black Nova Scotian environmentalists?"

I am glad I didn't have to field that one, because my poker face would not have been good enough. Books, she asked for. Plural.

Wishful thinking is alive and well in Toronto. In case you were worried.

2007-06-11T17:48:00.001-04:00

Oh, honestly

This has nothing to do with books. I just wanted to say that sometimes, I feel our country is being run by a sulky five-year old.

To wit:

PM challenges N.S. , Nfld. to court fight

Am now returning to The Outlander.

2007-06-11T14:49:00.002-04:00

Book Expo Canada 2007 netted me several interesting new books – chief among them Gil Adamson’s debut novel, The Outlander (in hardcover, even, not an ARC), but the most persistent thing I’ve come away with is broiling annoyance about bad young adult fiction.

During the show, I was handed a copy (unsolicited) of Something Special by Michele Shapiera, in the Grantham High series, from by Vanwell Publishing in St. Catherines, Ontario... who, by the way, enjoy Canada Council grant money.

Opening paragraph:

“The problem is, thought Isabelle, that I am just so ordinary. Ordinary height, ordinary brown hair, not too pretty, not too ugly, not too smart, not too dumb; that’s me. In fact, Isabelle decided, as she walked to English class, I’m nothing special at all.”

See where this is going, gentle readers? In this book, Isabelle learns to find her specialness, with the help of a special boy who knew all along that she had value, and an elderly wise woman who becomes her friend.

Pardon me while I roll my eyes vigorously.

What I find irritating about this book isn’t the book itself – it’s boring, trite and a waste of paper, but those are sins committed by many books. I’m angry it has only been published because the person who greenlit it thinks that the book’s audience won’t notice that it stinks. (In levelling this accusation, I'm crediting Vanwell's editor with enough intelligence to have been bored by the book themselves. This credit may, I admit, be misplaced.)

We don’t need to entertain ‘em, you see, we just need to teach ‘em, and they’re too dumb to care about the story. It shows excellent values, so teachers and parents will buy it, even if the kids don’t. Heck, we don’t even need to edit it all that carefully! (See: the two punctuation mistakes in the paragraph I quoted.)

There are worse variations on this line of thought, of course, and on the scale of “assuming YA readers are oblivious,” this book isn’t the most shocking example. The Gossip Girls series, perhaps, is: the books are produced by a marketing company (the author is rumored to be pseudonymous, like “Carolyn Keene”); the cover photos feature clothing and accessories that can be purchased by the readers (helpfully, the catalogue page says which retailers stock the items); the book titles all come from pop songs; the stories themselves are littered with product placement.

The difference, the insidious difference, between the Gossip Girls books and Vanwell’s Grantham High books is that the writing in the former isn’t boring. There’s a catty verve to it. It’s addictively trashy, like the “Cheerleaders” series that I read surreptitiously when I was 10, and therefore girls buy the books themselves, or ask their parents for them.

My anger isn’t borne out of a belief that literature is sacred. I read high- and low-brow interchangeably; my bookshelves hold both Marne Kellogg, Anne Rice, Robert Jordan and DH Lawrence, Anthony Trollope and Virginia Woolf. (Also: see link at side to Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. I keep my colours flyin' high and obvious.)

I’m angry because I find it disgusting that adults offer young readers dreck and/or economically manipulative “literature” because they think that young readers won’t notice. That stinks. Underestimating your audience stinks, but particularly so when your demographic are new readers, essentially people being trained as readers – to graduate, apparently, to the Shopaholic books.

Um. Hm.

I began writing this without thinking of gender implications, but apparently my brain realized it anyway. There are crap books for boys too, of course, but the major effort being made here, on undervaluing and manipulation, is centered on books for girls. From my own stock, and from closely observing stock at other bookstores where I've worked, including Chapters/Indigo, I feel fairly confident in saying that books for boys abandon product placement after picture books and movie tie-ins. Boy-aimed young adult fiction doesn't bother attempting to put one over on their readers -- perhaps because boys are still perceived as a largely reluctant-reader audience, but maybe because girls are women in training, consumers in training, and therefore that's what happens with the books aimed at them.

The trend bothers me. There's not a lot I can do about it. I hope that stocking and handselling a fair selection of better titles, warning those with parental purses off the crap books, and voicing my disapproval helps. Mostly, I try to have faith that young readers are savvy enough to spot when they're being sold a bill of goods. It's a precarious hope, but it's either that or police my shelves vigorously in an attempt to weed out the commercials masquerading as novels. And I'm reluctant to do that. There's a place for the trashy book--even on teenagers' bookshelves--as long as it's recognized as such.

So I gotta have faith.

Or go gnaw off a limb.

(I re-edited this article June 18th to neaten. No names or titles have been removed.)

2007-06-06T18:42:00.000-04:00

Hey, do you sell..

Because this morning I was asked for a watch battery, here is a list of odd/illegal/non-book things customers have wanted to buy from me:

Whiskey
Reading glasses
Bookshelves
Balloons
CDs
DVDs
Photocopy services
Fax services
Internet services
Big, beautiful, coffee-table photography books on Israel (I would totally stock this, if I could find one in print)
A gift for a boyfriend who does impressions
Kids' books about guns
The Toronto Sun
The history of a small village in Somalia, printed by a Somalian press, seen while on vacation in Somalia
Lightbulbs
Batteries
Wet wipes
Cigarettes
Milk
Pens
Computer paper
Scrapbooking albums
Fair-trade clothing
Weed
The music mix played on our stereo (4000 songs on an iPod, including the soundtrack to Momma Mia and an Al Jolson album)
My time as a consultant on an original screenplay

The history of a small village in Somalia is my favorite. I gave it a game shot, ladies and gentlemen, but apparently small, local Somalian presses don't have great distribution logistics set up in Canada. Surprise.

2007-06-02T10:40:00.000-04:00

BookExpo is next weekend. I am hopeful that I'll pick up several good advanced reading copies. In anticipation, I've moved 20 books which have been languishing in my to-read pile onto my BookMooch inventory list. Please. Take them.

2007-05-24T23:48:00.001-04:00

So, I was walking home after work today, and passed one of the under-housed, drunk, stoned, fresh from a fight that left him short a couple of teeth and with a mouth full of blood, and, as I watched, busy face-planting himself through a couple of sandwich boards onto the sidewalk.

Whoa.

I stopped, because hey, collapsing on the street on the hottest day of the year so far? Bad news. And another passerby, who got there before me, called an ambulance, and I waited with dude, who was nearly comatose and mostly incoherent (although my attempts to small talk about hockey in order to keep him awake were met with extreme disgust – he hated hockey, and baseball – was I kidding?), and passerby offered the stupidest suggestions.

“Don’t move him!” said the first. This directive wasn’t all that stupid, except that passer-by dude who said it was busy holding the head of collapsed dude down against the sidewalk, not immobilizing as much as squishing him into the concrete.

Later, as the guy was trying to sit up in order to offer me acid (and making grunting noises), someone else bent over me, worriedly, and asked if he had a pulse.

The ambulance arrived, the cops arrived, dude was patted down for possible weapons and loaded in the back, and the crowd dispersed. And I threw out the handkerchief I’d used to wipe blood from the guy’s face. I’d done it without thinking, and then the woman next to me touched my shoulder and said, “Don’t touch his blood.”

[I’ve never worried about that before. I mean, I got Hep A shots and tuberculosis innocs so I could do volunteer work at various places, but there has only been vomit to contend with so far, never blood. ]

I’m pretty sure that he didn’t need to go to the hospital. I think he needed to rinse his mouth out, eat something, and find someplace quiet to sleep it off. I think the biggest thing "wrong" with him was loneliness. But there wasn’t any easy way to fix the last, and it was easier for everyone – including me – to hand him over to the paramedics, transfer him into the system, and walk away. I mean, sure, it was the most sensible thing to do for other reasons – the split lip, the mouth full of blood, the lack of coherency – but the cops and the medics were extremely resigned and brusquely efficient: they do this every day. And then the under-housed addicts go back onto the streets and everyone ignores them until they faint, again, on the sidewalk, on a hot day.

---

Since this blog is supposed to be about book-selling, this seems like a good time to point you to street nurse Cathy Crowe’s new book, Dying for a Home. Less ignoring, I think, is better for everyone concerned.

2007-05-23T22:53:00.002-04:00

So, I felt my last post was a little mean.

Sure, the image of someone sitting in a teensy Toronto apartment, boxes upon boxes of books arriving endlessly, bookstore owners refusing to take his calls, his cat meowing plaintively and unable to get to her food dish (okay, so I'm making that part up), is pretty funny.

But it's a predicament that I wouldn't actually wish on anyone. Especially you, my readers.

Therefore, if you ever find yourself in a similar situation (though honestly, I think you're smarter than that), here are some things you can do. Bear in mind that collections of poetry, even by big names like Leonard Cohen, rarely sell more than 1500 copies. There are exceptions -- Christian Bok's Eunoia sold, purportedly, 15,000 copies in 12 months, but please believe me as a bookseller when I say that's hugely weird.

How To Dispose of A Goodly Chunk of the 5000 Copies
Of Your Self-Published Book Of Poetry Without Resorting To Renting A Dumpster: Canadian Edition

1. See if you can find a small-press distribution group who will take it on and sell it through their reps and catalogues. (And, more importantly, warehouses, so you can get it the hell out of your apartment.) Some possibilities: The Literary Press Group, Canadian Manda, White Knight Distribution, Perseus Distribution, Georgetown Publications, Marginal Distribution

You can find names of people at those companies whom you should talk to in the publication The Book Trade in Canada, which Quill & Quire produces annually. It's pricey -- $150 ish per copy -- so you might want to find it through the library. (It's also useful for #3.)

If you accomplish this, congratulations! You only have to do half of the rest of the things on this list.

2. Donate copies to libraries. There are 99 branches of the Toronto Public Library. If you haven't used up every penny you have on printing, you could also mail copies to the other appropriate branches of the Ontario Library Association and/or the Canadian Library Association. I can't find a nice, neat figure, but there must be thousands of branches in total.

No, you might protest, I need to make some money from these books on which I ~~wasted~~ invested my life savings! Donating copies of a book by you to libraries is actually a great financial move, because of a little government program called Access Copyright.

I cannot explain exactly how this works. I know it's funded through CanCopy agreements and, I think, through Canada Council money, but I have no practical experience with it. My understanding boils down to this: get your books on library shelves, get a guaranteed yearly cheque from the government, purportedly in exchange for fair-use photocopying and as a "repertoire payment." And, of course, get floor space in your apartment freed up.

The cheque is small, but it's yours for no work (except registering). And you'll get one annually as long as there are copies of your book in Canadian libraries. Sweet, huh?

3. Suck it up, and go asking for consignment placement. No bookstore owner in their right mind is going to pay you outright for copies of your self-published, 300-page book of poetry. However, if you can get the locals and the mini-chains on your side, and place 3 or so at each, you may sell some. (Also, it's easier to get people to agree if you can say things like, "Well, McNally-Robinson said they'd take some at each of their stores." But don't say it if it's not true. Bookfolk talk to each other a lot.)

There's a nearly complete list of Canadian bookstores at the Canadian Booksellers Association website. Look under "find a bookstore" (button on the top right-ish side of the page). Bookstores who aren't CBA members aren't listed, but most general interest stores are members.

4. Now that there are copies on bookstore and library shelves, write a press release and fax it to local media outlets. Include where people can buy/find the book.

5. Use the self-sell feature on Amazon, and list 100 of the suckers. Listing is free. If anyone buys the book through Amazon, Amazon will take a commission, but it's a smaller commission than bookstores will require on a consignment contract. And while you're on Amazon, post a review of your book (although not under your own name... they'll delete it.)

6. You have a published collection of poetry! This means you can submit work to magazines that require submissions to come from a published manuscript. Get a copy of The Poet's Market and go to town. More publication=more people looking for your book=seeing your apartment floor sometime in the next decade.

7. In a similar vein, go to every open mic poetry night you hear about. Bring copies of your book and mention it after every reading you do. Mingle with everyone there. Be friendly. Have ONE drink. Don't be pushy about your book or ask for help immediately. Just be friendly, at least for the first few times at any one series. (Jeffrey Gitomer's book, Little Black Book of Connections, while aimed at salespeople, has excellent advice, applicable to writers, for creating a network that will help you meet your goals.)

8. Write a second book. DO NOT SELF-PUBLISH THIS ONE. Hopefully, now that you know a lot of people on the scene, someone will be able to point you to an editor and recommend they look at your work.

9. When your second book is published, go find the media and let them know about it.

10. When you get interviewed about your second book, mention the first one and where it can be purchased.

(And now the stuff that won't, actually, make you any money, but will keep you from having to throw copies out.)

11. Give the books away to every friend and family member you've got. You've got birthday and Christmas presents sorted for the next decade.

12. Send a dozen or so to BookAid. They have a neat-0 Camel Mobile Library.

13. Register 10 or so on BookCrossing, and then release them all over the city.

14. Build something out of them -- I've seen DIY lamps, coffee tables, and various art pieces made from books stacked, glued and shellac'd together.
---

It's nearly 1AM and my brain feels like cheese, so I'm going to bed. If anyone has any other brilliant suggestions for this list (or merely silly ones), please post. Having 5000 copies of a self-published book is the kind of challenge where no deployment idea is dumb, only effective or not. It's like trying to come up with a list of 101 goals for 1001 days -- eventually you run out of serious possibilities and have to find things that may seem, initially, less worthy, but are in fact more fun.

Bed. And then back to bookselling. Oi.

2007-05-22T15:02:00.000-04:00

This morning, Dude -- let’s call him Sasha, since he’s Russian -- has been calling the store every half-hour. (He began by calling the store every ten minutes, but I think my impatience showed.)

He wants to talk to the owner. The owner does not want to talk to him.

I finally scrapped discretion and asked manager J- what was going on.

Sasha is a poet. Sasha has self-published a 300-page book of poetry, with illustrations. Sasha accomplished this by going to Barnes and Noble, loading his book into their Print-on-Demand machine, and then printing off … wait for it… FIVE THOUSAND COPIES.

And now he has them sitting in his apartment in Toronto, and no one will return his calls about stocking them.

This is going to make me laugh for days, people. DAYS.

2007-05-19T21:08:00.000-04:00

I'm not all the great about remembering names. I work on it, but there are many times when someone arrives at the store and I know we've met, somewhere, but I can't put my finger on it.

And then I do. And then I start blushing.

So. With the scene set, here's what happened this aft, as I was doing my once-monthly Saturday supervisory shift:

(Tall man approaches my cash register, book in hand)

Me: Hello. Say, don't I know you?

Dude: I think so. You maybe know BJM?

Me: Yes....

Dude: And his boyfriend JK?

Me (starting to get a feeling that somewhere, warning lights are flashing for my benefit): Uh huh...

Dude, snapping his fingers: And there was a party where we all decided to go skinny-dipping, in the afternoon, when the neighbours were, unfortunately, home?

Me: Right. You've seen me naked. That's how we know each other.

If any moment called for a *headdesk*, oh dearly beloved, this was it.

Needless to say, the part-timers who were on duty don't really so much respect me any more. Or maybe they think better of me. Either way, I'm not going to ask.

2007-05-19T00:50:00.000-04:00

GetRichSlowly had a post, a while back, about how frugality can become amoral. If your most important goal is to save money, you can step over ethical lines without thinking about it.

This has totally obsessed me all week, because of customer 854. That's his loyalty card number. I don't know precisely how long he's shopped at the store, but it's been at least since 1998, when we started our "preferred customer" rewards program (y'know, the excuse to track sales data more effectively.) He claims he's shopped there for 30 years, but although he knows the owner and manager, the owner and manager don't know him. So.

I opened 854's purchase history file two weeks ago, and started crunching the numbers. In the last ten years, he's bought almost a hundred books. This isn't big shakes, but it's decent shakes. However, 854 has also returned more than a quarter of the books he's bought.

My friend D-, who worked at Chapters when I worked at Indigo, once asked someone who made a habit of sitting at the store for hours reading (and not buying) why they didn't just go to a library and sign the books out, so they could read them in the comfort of their own home. The customer blanched. "Other people touch library books," she sniffed. "They touch them with their dirty, dirty hands."

854, obviously, thinks the same way.

I decided to call him on it. (Disingeniously, of course. This blog is called "surly bookseller," but I like, y'know, not being fired.)

854 was in the store, by the way, to return a book. He pushed it across the counter to me. I looked at it.

"Clearly, Mr. 854," I said, smiling, "We're failing you."

854 is perfectly alright with the idea that someone else is at fault.

"Hm?"

"You seem to have to" (hah) "return a lot of the books you buy. More than a quarter, I see." I'm still smiling, because, again with the not being fired. "We're apparently recommending bad books. Or something."

(I'm afraid I couldn't help adding the last bit.)

His smile faltered. "Are you trying to accuse me of something?"

"No, I'm serious about wanting to serve you better. I looked through your file. We're obviously falling down on the job."

I can be very convincing. And so, it's now, apparently, our little in-joke, Mr. 854 and I. He seeks me out. I recommend books. He hasn't yet returned anything to me. He may be taking them down the street to our nearest sister store and getting credit there -- I'm not so enamoured of my persuasive powers that I'm sure he's changed his stripes -- but at least it no longer pisses me off all the time.

2007-05-18T21:03:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, someone asked "Where's your Navy Seals section?"

!?!

Maybe the people asking me these things are used to much, much more comprehensive General Interest bookstores than mine. Or maybe I should start directing them to the "bookshelves" in the back alley. Which, incidentally, houses a bar that happens to have a vast, mildewed and eclectic collection of books, including this one (and may I say, Michael Ondaatje, what the hell were you thinking?).

2007-05-14T11:55:00.001-04:00

I was playing with LibraryThing today (since I have the day off and only a couple of projects to procrastinate about), and found the intriguing LibrarySuggester.

I don't know why I bothered, really, since I now have 59 books in the "to read" pile next to my bed. (I have an unnecessary personal rule that I can only put books I've actually finished on my shelves. It comes from working at Indigo, where people bought books as ornaments. I don't want to be that vapid, so instead I'm messy.)

Anyway. Belly-button lint gazing aside, it's kind of amazing! I mean, I don't actually need to buy or borrow anything else, probably not for a year, but LibraryThing is right: now that I know it exists, I do covet Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction.

Of the other 98, I've already read 25. There are two on the list which I hated, but I did, in fact, own them at some point.

I was also amused by the Librarything Unsuggester, which does exactly the opposite and, based on one choice, gives you a list of a hundred books that you will probably never want to read or own. It was less useful than the Suggester, though, since I'm an opportunistic and somewhat unfocused reader.

Selected results from four books I love very much:

1. Awakenings by Oliver Sacks unsuggested Diana Gabaldon's entire Outlander series, a whole slew of Nora Roberts titles, The Pragmatic Programmer, and, oddly, Stephenie Meyer's two YA books, which I've been meaning to read.

2. Dune by Frank Herbert unsuggested (and was spectacularly right about) both What's the Difference?: Manhood and Womanhood as Defined By The Bible and Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger, although I have (ergh) read the latter. I had been meaning to read 26A by Diana Evans, though, which also appears on the unsuggestion list. It got a lot of good press last year, though not enough for me to have borrowed it from work.

3. The Years by Virginia Woolf unsuggested everything Dan Brown has written (all of which I've read, in an effort to figure out why people were bothering), Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren and a lot of Laurell K. Hamilton and Tom Clancy. Unsuggester failed by including a couple dozen low-brow sci-fi books.

4. The Empty Space by Peter Brooks unsuggested a lot Stephen King, the whole Shopaholic series, and, oddly, all the Artemis Fowl books. I dunno why theatre and Irish YA are incompatible.

In short, half of my library unsuggests the other half, half unsuggests books I've read but don't own, and all of it implies that I'm not really interested in romance novels, manly pulp, or Christian life books by the founders of large, US, right-wing churches. The latter's true.

One out of three, I guess, ain't bad.

2007-05-07T14:50:00.000-04:00

From Joe Queenan's essay in the Sunday Times Book Review section about bad books and the pleasures thereof (found via bookninja):

"Most of us are familiar with people who make a fetish out of quality: They read only good books, they see only good movies, they listen only to good music, they discuss politics only with good people, and they’re not shy about letting you know it. They think this makes them smarter and better than everybody else, but it doesn’t. It makes them mean and overly judgmental and miserly, as if taking 15 minutes to flip through “The Da Vinci Code” is a crime so monstrous, an offense in such flagrant violation of the sacred laws of intellectual time-management, that they will be cast out into the darkness by the Keepers of the Cultural Flame. "

HA. SO THERE.

In other words, I'll read Marne Kellogg's books about jewel thievery and the uber-rich if I want to, okay?

2007-04-29T00:08:00.000-04:00

On days when the store is empty and I've run out of make-work projects, I like to read resumes. It's fun because I have nothing to do with hiring.

Remember that scene in The Office: Season One (the American series), when Rainn Wilson's character gets called about a job that he didn't apply for? He checks with the HR department on the phone to make sure that they have an "official" version of his resume--the proof, y'see, being in the list of martial arts skillz.

Many people seem to think that way -- that every ability they have should go on their resume. It results in a lot of submissions with lengthy bar-tending courses under "education." (Also, "to get a job as a server" under "objective.") My favourite was an innocuous one-pager handed in six months ago: at the end of it, Sarah M. listed "Sandbagger: Flood of '97" among her pertinent volunteer experiences.

A lot of out-of-work librarians and information-science students apply, too. These, mostly, make me sorry for them: true, bookstores have the same basic ingredients as libraries, but the work is, I suspect, significantly less rewarding. Also, the amateur archivist in me wonders how they stand the thought of selling books: surely, one could define librarian hell as an eternally-dismantling collection.

Lastly, since my store is situated neatly between three highschools and is a 15-minute subway ride from two universities, lots of people arrive looking for a summer job. What I find amusing is that they announce this as they walk in the door--assuming that since they need a seasonal job, most business will have seasonal jobs.

My first year at Uni, I stayed in the city over the summer and lived in a house with five other students. One of them spent all four months unemployed, living off a diet of Ramen noodles and dried iced tea, which his father delivered periodically from Pittsburgh. Sure, he tried to find work, but inevitably his job-hunting forays were performed bare-footed in a holey straw hat and jean shorts a few threads away from indecent. "It doesn't matter," he said, when we suggested he put on sandals and try to ditch the eau de homeless, "I'm just dropping off resumes."

I think of him whenever one of the rebellious young things with multiple piercings (and once, memorably, with one of those new hoop earrings where the hoop goes inside the hole, stretching it out until you could put a fist through the piercing) walks in the door and announces that they're looking for a summer job.

And I also think that country kids -- of which I was one, for all they complain, have it easy: you work at summer camp, or your friend's parents hire you to work on their farm. Seasonal jobs are plentiful; resumes, by and large, aren't required; and no surly bookseller is going to put your c.v. in the recycling after you walk out the door.

Which I don't do, by the way. They all go to the assistant manager... and then he bins them.

2007-04-27T22:33:00.001-04:00

Since I am mostly in the store during business hours, and people mostly come in to pick up their special orders during evenings and weekends, it took me a year to figure out that one of our regulars -- also, the grumpiest man I've ever met -- uses two phone numbers and has two names. (Two full names, that is, not one first name and one last name.)

I'm now trying to figure out if what seems to be multiple-personality disorder is also a division of pleasant and unpleasant personality, and, if it is, how I can avoid "Joshua," who has not yet managed an entire visit without being mean to at least two staff members. It's just barbs and an entirely absent sense of humour, not downright rudeness, but it leaves everyone unhappy. I've often thought that one of the simplest ways to have a happy life was to assume innocence intent behind most people's actions; "Joshua" seems to do the opposite. He's old and probably lonely and I understand how that can make you crusty and impatient, but still, if there's a way to only deal with the personality who generally treats me kindly, at least when we speak on the home, then that's what I'd prefer.
--

Speaking of other surliness, not mine, I discovered early this week--and accidentally, since my manager J. felt that it wasn't valid and therefore wasn't going to bring it up--that a customer had written a thousand-word letter complaining about me.

He should have been complaining about the store policy of not accepting returns without a receipt, which is what I had enacted, explaining why to him and pointing out, as I did so, the signs announcing the policy prominently mounted on the door and at each cash register.

But no -- despite that I don't own the store, don't get to decide sales policy, and, most confusingly, thought that our encounter ended amicably and he was going to go see if he could find his receipt -- he decided that he had to complain about me. For a thousand words. He ended by saying that he had decided not to pick up his most recent special order, y'know, to punish us.

[Edited to snip out several paragraphs of relieving my annoyance. Nobody cares, including me .]

Bah. I'm going to bed. There's a whole weekend before I need to demonstrate my hand-selling skillz and willingness to implement policy to my boss (who's just come back from a month of remainder buying in Europe and needs to know that we're still competent and didn't screw everything up while he was away), and I'm going to spend as much of it as I can asleep. Or eating pancakes. Probably not at once.

2007-04-13T20:56:00.000-04:00

DIY is the same as dead-in-the-water

I wish people would find better things to do with their time and money than self-publishing their fiction.

I was thinking about this today because an author (who shall remain nameless) called up my boss to see if he'd gotten her press release about her new novel (which shall also remain nameless) published with AuthorHouse.

AuthorHouse is a vanity press, which allows writers to pay them money in return for publication and access to their North American distributors (Ingram, mostly). Their books are non-returnable and sold at net, and my store doesn't touch them with a ten-foot pole. (And I think they use Print On Demand tech? I'm not sure.)

The press release the inquiring author had faxed over hadn't made it to my bosses desk, he explained to her. (Translation: it had made a permanent side-stop in the recycling bin.)

I can tell that the thrill of having a book to her name is still new to this author. It's a heady sensation, one that I've experienced, and I know how sweet it is to dream that your book will be a huge success.

I also know, however, how it's actually going to go down, which will be something (exactly) like this:

The other indies in town aren't going to carry order it from AuthorHouse, and neither will Chindigo, although they might offer to keep it on one of their nifty new POD machines for customers to buy, if they're interested... and if they know to look for it. Eventually, she'll end up leaving them in various places on consignment. The effort of keeping track of where all the copies are, trying to get media to notice (which they mostly won't, except, maybe, for neighbourhood newspapers), and trying to be a writer, too, will eventually wear her down and she'll forget that she has to pick up her copies from the consignment locations within 6 months or forfeit the copies and any profits they may make.

The books will gather dust until one of the employees does an inventory sort to remove stale-dated merch from the shelves, and then they'll end up in a bargain bin, or at a warehouse sale. Or in the trash.

People, your money shouldn't end up in the trash. Spend it instead on creative writing workshops at Humber or Sheridan, or something else in your area with a solid faculty, join a writing workshop or an online group dedicated to honing manuscripts (I haven't used it, but Critters seems to have a lot of supporters), get an agent, and then find a publisher who will pay you and use their money to print and promote your book.

You'll still have to do some of the legwork, but it will feel a hell of a lot better.
---

Bonus list!

Actual Self-published Books Left (or almost left) On Consignment In My Store

1. Whose Pampers Are These? In which a white woman ends up impregnated by a black man, and then the baby disappears and no one believes she's actually had a child. Cover synopsis ends with a hope that other women who've been in this predicament will be helped by the novel.

2. Kid's book whose name I can't remember. Something about bears? Anyway, it was memorable (although apparently not really that much) because the endorsement on the front said "This author has won the Ontario Principal's Award!". That's what I want from my kid's picture books, dear readers: evidence that the author is an excellent administrator.

3. "Love Songs" -- a book of poetry bound in cardboard, yarn and strips of leftover upholstery. The author would sit for hours at the bar next door, introduce herself to strangers, make friends, then send them over to buy her book. It was, in fact, a pretty successful marketing strategy.

4. An English translation of an epic Quebecois poem from the 1700's about coureurs de bois. Well, actually, we turned this one down. I'm not sure how co-worker P. had the heart to do it: the author was in her 90s and had spent the last decade devoted to the translation -- however, it's just as well. I would never have been able to remove it from the shelf, and it would have gradually yellowed and decayed until the author's obituary appeared in the paper and I didn't have to feel guilty about throwing it out.

2007-04-12T20:18:00.000-04:00

If anyone is ever at a loss as to what I might want as a present, might I suggest Leila's Etsy store, where she has bookish t-shirts -- including one about Beezus. I always identified with Beezus, although my sisters were never cruel enough to call me "pizza-face."
---

This morning, my first phone call was from a woman in the States with a lovely Southern lilt... which is a lot less gentle, I now know, when it's edged with panic. Her boss had sent her madly scrambling for enormous coffee-table books on cigars. Despairing of tracking them down in the US, she'd finally called the concierge at the Four Seasons Hotel, and the concierge told her to call my store.

(Might I say that I'm proud of my store for being a place that a concierge would refer to? Although it seems weird and really highly unlikely?)

Anyway, the books were 1. out of print and 2. a cigar annual published in Paris which I couldn't get. I instead directed her to abebooks and to Shakespeare and Company - which, to my complete and utter surprise, now has a website. (Also, look! Shakespeare & Co. has a job opening for a bookseller! My French is abysmal and my UK citizenship is still tied up in red tape, so, sadly, it isn't for me. But surely, o bookpeople who read this, one of you must be qualified and restless.)

That was the (10:30 AM) highlight of the day. The raininess and the chore of picking 3000 titles to be returned made the rest of this Thursday into a completely boring experience. I dreamed about Paris, where the rain makes the mud an odd yellow and I broke a key for my room at the Young & Happy hostel trying to open a bottle of wine.

2007-03-26T21:37:00.000-04:00

I'm interrupting your (ir)regular bookselling reading to point you all to the special Literary Techniques editions of Dinosaur Comics:

Anachronism
Anthropomorphism
Allusion
All the Rest

T-Rexes are the best visual aid ever.

2007-03-22T23:23:00.000-04:00

Room of One's Own -- a 30 year-old Canadian literary journal of work by women -- has decided to change its name. The editorial in which they explain why is vague, but it seems to follow this logic path:

1) The phrase "Room of One's Own" evokes Virginia Woolf.
2) A title that evokes Woolf, coupled with their all-womyn-all-the-time mandate, they worry, leads The Public to think that their mag is all about feminism.
3) Feminism is divisive and Not Fun, and their mag is all about the fun! Really!
4) So they're still feminist, but only kind of! Not the "in yer face" type, you understand. The fun kind!

There are several reasons why this pisses me off.

First, Woolf herself was leery of the word 'feminist', as she wrote in her early journals, because it was coined to describe women who'd put their bodies on the line (and the racetrack) for suffrage, and her work wasn't as dangerous. Woolf didn't have the terms first wave-, second wave- and third wave-feminism to work with; I suspect that if she had, she'd have been more comfortable with claiming the f-word for herself.

Nevertheless, my point is that Room mag is turning away from a writer who wondered, like they are, if the word "feminist" is relevant to their purpose. I suspect they are ignorant of Woolf's questions, and, considering their history and mandate, I find that ignorance inexcuseable.

Second, why is an editorial board of women, devoted to publishing work by women, throwing the idea that feminism is divisive on the table without any kind of justification, expecting that their audience will agree? I certainly don't. 'Feminism' is divisive if you think it means only one thing; for example, if you think it means Andrea Dworkin. It doesn't. There are many feminisms -- as one might imagine, considering that the movement towards equal treatment for women and men has been underway for more than a hundred years. (And, by the way, Andrea Dworkin doesn't even mean Andrea Dworkin -- she had several incarnations of self-as-feminist, as Susie Bright's eulogy helpfully points out.)

Also, just who are the readers that they're worried about scaring off? People who get shifty at the thought of feminism, in a women's lit journal, are not really the kind of people I expect to be picking up said women's lit journal. Perhaps the Room editors are inching towards an attempt to tap into the pink book market? There's money there -- Harlequin, after all, will pay you $10,000 for your first book.

In closing, the name they've picked as a replacement is 'Room'. Just... 'room'. It doesn't evoke feminism or Woolf, but it doesn't really evoke anything else, either -- maybe real-estate ads (three-bedroom, open concept), or the need to have people not touch you. It's boring, empty and has nothing to do with carving out space for female voices.

I've already had one customer pick it up, look at it blankly, and then turn to me and ask when the new "Room of One's Own" issue would be on the stands.

2007-03-16T22:07:00.001-04:00

~~Love~~ Lusty Glances Amid The Stacks

Lately I've been obsessed with Julie Wilson's blog, Seen Reading. This woman, I suspect, is one of my store regulars, and she's crazy, which, I suppose, didn't read when she was absorbed, quietly, in a book.

My lovely and now far-away friend R. once worked for the summer at Indigo Manulife, in their kids' section, and she & I recognized her exactly in someone's I Spy ad. I suppose the man who wrote it didn't want to try to pull among children's lit.

In my store, I retrieved a carefully written strip of paper from in-between the cookbooks, where a gentleman shopper, enamoured of my colleague J, had left a note wishing he had expressed his admiration for her knowledge of The Kitchen Diaries. She had left the job (and the country) by then, so I didn't bother trying to make love happen.

In short, books have never found me or anyone I know love--at least, not among the flesh & blood and non-fictional. But they could. I hold out hope that they could.

2007-03-11T19:06:00.000-04:00

LibraryThing, dear readers, is either genius or entirely devious and evil.

Nevertheless, I spent most of this afternoon cataloguing my collection (see link in sidebar), and was seized, while doing so, with weird performance anxiety. Is my library cool enough to put online?

[I'm asking in an entirely rhetorical manner, my sweets. I know perfectly well that it's not, what with the Robert Jordan and the Anne Rice and the unfortunate couple of books about Guinevere (the last were gifts, I swear.)]

I'm trying to chalk the time-wasting up to how useful it could be: I'll never accidentally buy a duplicate... or I wouldn't if I had a BlackBerry or a cellphone that let me check my catalogue online; I can point friends and family to it in order to avoid duplicate gifts; I can keep a copy for insurance reasons, should I ever have a fire or flood or really out-of-control party (ha).

In short, I obviously don't have enough to do. But I do have a catalogue of all the books I own that I care about owning, so... um. I win?

2007-03-08T18:35:00.001-05:00

Firefox, I love you.

It turns out that the ~~simplest~~ Apple-friendly solution was the best one: I switched browsers and now Blogger and I are friends again. And I can re-upload the entries I deleted when I started wiping this site, in a fit of pique and with wrath in my heart towards Google and its subsidiaries.

--
Last night, after my shift ended, a man walked into the store and moseyed back to the philosophy and religion section, where a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi was sitting face out on the shelf.

He stopped and looked at it.

Co-worker S. walked past and saw him staring. Co-worker S. thought "Great. Someone's having a bad trip," and started tidying the shelves around the philosophy/religion section.

Dude continued to stare.

S. went to sit at the back desk.

Dude continued to stare. After five minutes, Dude picked up the book and brought the cover close to his face. Then he put it back on the shelf.

S. decided it was time to be cheery and helpful. "Do you need assistance?" he asked Dude.

"Nope! Just looking at this book!"

"I can see that."

"We're having a staring contest!"

"Uh... huh."

S. retreated to the desk. Dude stayed put. S. considered pointing out that the photograph, not needing to blink, was probably going to win.

Dude left forty minutes later--having not moved a muscle since inspecting the cover, apparently satisfied with his performance and confident in his ability as a staring athlete, despite that the picture of Paramahansa Yogananda was taking home the gold.

2007-02-03T19:10:00.000-05:00

Marginalia From A Pretty Boring Week

We wrapped up returns and inventory, and now it's February, when people have received their Christmas credit card bills, and panicked, and no one is buying books.

This has given me time to read the gossip. You've all heard about Judith Regan being fired, right? New York Magazine has the best article yet: Even Bitches Have Feelings. No, really.
---

The one moment of gleaming absurdity this week happened when a customer pointed to After The Flood, a coffee-table book on the display wall behind me at the cash desk.

"Is that about Katrina? Or some other flood?"

I wanted to say that they were pics found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, just now being published, and that they would change Biblical scholarship forever. But I didn't.
---

Oh, and Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows is scheduled for a July 21 release. My co-workers offered me their condolences. Frankly, the thought of processing a thousand pre-orders is less disturbing than the recent publication of naked!Daniel Radcliffe pics, promos for Equus. I feel like I just saw Luke Skywalker naked. Or Mr. Hooper.
---

Lastly, I have a pile of YA galleys almost as tall as me to read, and so far nothing seems made of awesome. I was, however, sent into a fit of giggling by this back cover blurb: "Avala's fate is mighty, for she is the chosen one--the one who will bring the Time of the Eagle, when the hunted will become the hunters and win back their freedom. It is a destiny that requires the spirit of a warrior and the heart of a healer."

Come on! Really? This got published? An ex and I used to classify this kind of writing as "Time of Earthmas" writing ("It was the Time of Earthmas. Earthmas was the time when no wind blew. We stood for days that day"), which, sadly, is an accurate rendition of many fantasy novels.

I dunno what I'm doing working as a bookseller, when I could be getting paid for writing about "The Time of the Eagle." Ooo! Or "The Time of the Evil Gold-Plated Unicorn"! I totally want to be doing that instead! Who's giving me an advance? Harper Collins? SimonPulse?

2007-01-13T19:36:00.001-05:00

Leading the praise on the back of David Adams Richards’ last two books (The Friends of Meager Fortune and Christmas Tree) is the following quote:

“As a pure storyteller, Richards has it all over just about every other male writer in the country.”

I have no particular position on whether this statement is true. The thing about it that interests me isn’t whether it’s true, but that odd use of the word “male.”

It’s strange it’s there, isn’t it? For years, writers who happened to have wombs made pointed arguments against the practice of calling someone a “woman writer.” They didn’t hold their pens in their labia, after all, and besides, male writers weren’t called “male writers” when their work was being discussed. But now, here’s that very thing happening.

I furthermore find it puzzling that this quote was picked for jacket copy, with that odd defensive tone. When you break it down, the reviewer (whose name I didn’t jot down, but I think it was from the Globe and Mail) is basically saying that for someone with a penis, DAR does pretty good work, maybe the best work that penis-owners in Canada are doing. But not necessarily the best work that Canadian writers are doing. Damned with faint praise, indeed.

Partly, this is just hilarious, considering feminist history, but partly I’m sad that the pendulum has to swing the other way. Writing isn’t a competitive sport, people! There are no men’s and women’s leagues!

And it’s okay that DAR isn’t Atwood or Munro. He’s himself, and his work is pleasurable, and surely there are more useful things to say about it, particularly on jacket copy, than his swinging cod can out-swing all the other swinging cods in the Canadian book market.

---
Postscript, several months later: I just found this argument addressed again, in a slightly different form, in Edmund White's excellent book,The Flaneur. In it, as he wanders the streets and salons of Paris, someone asks him if he considers himself a gay writer. Of course, he replies. Strange, they say, all our French writers who are homosexual argue vehemently that the only identifier they want is French.

2007-01-07T19:59:00.001-05:00

You lookin' for me?

I have nothing bookish to tell you today. However, since I am slightly obsessive, and Stats Counter exists, I do have meta stuff to wonder about.

First, the CIA is totally looking at this site! Or someone geeky with the ability to hide their ISP, country of origin, referring page, etc, from Stats Counter's prying eyes. In reality, it's probably the latter, but hey, I did blog about possible terrorists. Of the book variety.

Someone else looked over who didn't hide anything except the referring page, which makes me wonder what unsavoury places link to my humble blog.

Third, readers from a wide variety of other improbably places are clicking over, too. Last year SurlyBookseller had viewers in Qatar; Lisbon, Portugal; Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA; Brandon, MB; Anhui, China; The Beer Store; and The Wrexham Borough Council. It also seems to have picked up devoted followers in Atlanta, Georgia and Rancho Cucamonga, California, both of which puzzle me since I know no one there at all, nor can figure out the six degrees of how that happened.

My favourite part of StatsCounter is the nifty keyword analysis function, which has let me know that the following Google search terms lead here:

1. book+courtesan
2. mein+kampf+virginia+woolf+printing+press
3. wedding+jewel+peterborough+lisa
4. buzzAH
5. pictures+of+patients+encephalitis

"Book Courtesan" strikes me as an excellent blog name, albeit a little too close to "BookSlut," which is better... and taken.

2007-01-07T19:00:00.001-05:00

Doppelgangerism!

There's another Surly Bookseller! Well, actually, there's a million of 'em, and I've worked with many. However! Blog! Like mine! Same name!

I'm partially delighted and partially weirded out and partially worried suddenly about lawsuits. And also wondering if I should change the name of this blog. (Though no, no I'm not. We were independently witty in coming up with our titles. They can stand.)

She posted a list of her 2006 top-selling children's books, in her bookstore in Alabama. There are things I could've predicted as being hot there and not here (i.e. Give Me Grace: A Child's Daybook of Prayers... a board book, no less), and there are things that sell just as well (The Tale of Despereaux), but there are other entries that I'm totally WTF over. Eats Shoots And Leaves (for children) is a best-seller? And that Beverly Cleary book? I'm also amazed that there is no British YA fic on her list. UK writers are producing a lot of the stuff on the top of my lists (His Dark Materials, Bartimaeus, Girlfriend Of A Sex God, Artemis Fowl), but I guess no one's pushing it in the south.

This explains the entries from Alabama on my IP log, anyway.

2006-12-31T18:59:00.002-05:00

Didn't Expect The Spanish Inquisition... Or The Gay Pirates

Holiday requests I didn't foresee and couldn't fulfill, even though when I made my pre-Christmas orders I was armed sales data from previous Decembers and fairly wily foresight, if I do say so myself:

1. Kids' fiction about hockey, with girl protagonists
2. Wrestling calendars
3. Something for a five year old who likes guns and killing things
4. A balanced book about the conflict between Israel and Palestine
5. Rum, Sodomy and the Lash (that's right -- homosexual pirating! For reals!)
6. Hanukkah YA novels

I should've seen number six coming, and I am vexed that I couldn't find something suitable for number one (although the customer who asked happily bought some of the Screech Owls books).

The one really nice thing about having the kids' section full to bursting of people shopping is that half of them were mums and dads I've helped before, which meant that I had a somewhat constant back-up chorus of "Yes, she's right!" "Our kids loved those books!" "You have to try that one!". I love back-up choruses. Particularly when I don't have to hire them.

Anyway, December is over, I have one more day to rest and drink chicken soup and recover from what feels like a particularly grouchy cold but is mostly my body saying "Good god, can we stop now?", and then January starts, which means skids of publisher returns to pick and thousands of books to reorder.

Happy New Year to you all. I hope that it brings peace to the world, love to your lives, and at least one good book per publishing season.

2006-11-28T12:00:00.001-05:00

A brisk wind that blew no good swept through the Toronto book biz today. Well. I'm being dramatic, but there was painful gossip.

(Although, I am glad to say, the news doesn't yet include the opening of the enormous and slightly sketch second-hand bookstore down the block from my place of employment. I think we've got another two weeks.)

Anyway, painful gossip item #1 is that the owners of Sleuth of Baker Street are looking to sell. I'd like to hope for the best, but in this town "looking to sell" generally translates into "retire and close." (See: Omega Centre Bookstore)

Point of yech #2 is that the Anglican Book Centre may be closing its doors soon, too. The word on the street is that the Diocese feels it's not profitable enough. Although I haven't actually frequented it myself, I direct customers there every week. It's reliably well-stocked. I dunno where else to send folks looking for various hymn music, or a cassock, or a leather-bound King James bible.

And lastly, the manager of ~~that very British bookstore down on Front Street (the announcement, as far as I know, isn't official, so I'm trying to make this Google-proof)~~ Nicholas Hoare has quit, effective end of January.

Anyway, since I was feeling morose at the decline of Toronto bookdom, and inclined to stay so, I came home and flipped through A Guide to Bookstores of Toronto, published by ECW in 1994. And oh, if ever a directory could be called tragic, that one fits the bill. There were 250 bookstores in Toronto in 1994, including the late lamented Britnells (and the less-lamented Lichtmann's). There was a chain of educational bookstores. The nearest Chapters was in Burlington. Glory days, people!

Now ... well. Half of them are still around. The staff of many have been subsumed into my company. And there isn't a decent kids' bookstore to be found downtown for love or money.

I think that's what I want to do. I have visions of how great it could be -- of authors' visits and Saturday storytime and kids writing classes and reading tutorials and a bookmobile and benches and catalogues and committed community involvement. It would be fabulous.

But I can't do it anytime soon.

Sigh.

2006-11-12T19:14:00.002-05:00

Book It Real Good

Highlights and lowlights of the week before people go crazy with Christmas shopping -

Unexpected and fairly useless discovery: The book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time got its title from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes short story 'Silver Blaze.'

The request which made my day: "Have you got a copy of Fifth Businessman?" (Um. If it isn't obvious, she meant this.)

The request that made me feel like a bookselling superstar: "Do you have that new novel about a Toronto photographic panorama?" (Yes. Yes, I do.)

The third request of its kind in as many days (and I am clean out of politeness for anyone who asks me this next week): "I need a book by David Icke. No? How about David Irving? Really? Well, can I order Behold a Pale Horse?"

Remarks by a dad to his three-year old daughter that made me extremely happy: "Okay, Izzy, we're here to find something that isn't about princesses or a TV character. Anything else is okay. Anything at all."

Also, I went to the Giller Light, where bottled Steamwhistle Ale was $5 a pop, and the food provided was... wait for it... Pizza Pizza. Also mini-hamburgers (and despite my disdain, I did, to be honest, eat both... and baffled the waitstaff serving the burgers by asking "Is this meat?" "Yes," she said, apologetically, turning to go. "Fantastic," I replied, and dove on them.)

When the winner was announced (the talented and very endearing Vincent Lam, in case you don't know), the room was, well, not all that enthusiastic. The applause was short-lived and faces were dour. I think that there were a lot of House of Anansi people (perhaps all of them) and not so many Random House representatives. That, or everyone had placed bets on De Niro's Game, which was the favourite.

Also, although Ben Mulroney was there, he stayed suspiciously close to the doors the whole time.

To round the week out, I spent an hour yesterday afternoon with the Queen of Canlit. It wasn't painful. It would've been better if I'd read Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, because She was busy being very proud of Vincent Lam and I had little to say besides "Yes, we've sold out twice." We talked about how men will buy the book. Apparently, since Kevin Patterson was remarking on the same thing two days earlier when he came in to sign Consumption, that's the new demographic which publishing houses are hot for.

So. It's now Sunday and I have another 18 hours before I have to put on my retail face. (That's started to become literally true: I've found that bright red lipstick seems to bolster me psychologically for the inevitable dealings with Annoying People.) I'd like to be high-minded about it and read something -- I have to get through the Governor General fic list, still -- but instead I think I'm going to watch Back to the Future.

2006-11-03T19:56:00.002-05:00

Salad Days
sa-lad: def'n-noun-from the French: meaning a mixture of things confused

There were no letters from terrorists this week, but I did have:

1. A woman who really wanted the works of David Icke. "This is a mainly Jewish community; even if it wasn't, we don't carry hate literature," I said.

"That's censorship!" she sputtered. "You carry Mein Kampf and the works of Marx!"

I was so astounded that she was going to argue with me about not providing anti-semitic literature that I couldn't really come up with anything more to say.

Also, the works of Marx are hate-lit?

2. Burst pipes. Someday, I'm going to get a job with a product that can't be killed by radiator explosions or heat or toddlers.

3. "Do you have Truman Capote holiday stories for juveniles?"

"Yes, yes we do. Right next to the Elton John musical theatre for runaways."

At least, that was what I was going to say, but then I found this. Next thing I know, I'll discover that there is, in fact, a Pink Floyd section.

4. A nice, dramatic fall down the stairs, complete with smashing china. Ironically, this occurred mere hours after I found out that, at the insistence of our insurance company, my boss is finally going to replace the rotten and warped stairboards with something a little less so.

[My mom once told me that she decided she'd become an adult when she stopped having scraped knees. I am unsure that I'll ever achieve scrape-less knees, because I keep doing dumb things like falling down stairs and hoisting my bike over my shoulders (not at the same time).]

5. My (much more surly than I) co-worker P. with a fairy wand. It made magical sounds every time he waved it, and he waved it whenever he arrived in a room. I do not have pictures. This makes me very sad.

2006-10-28T19:57:00.000-04:00

Terrorists Like To Read Too, You Know

So, what would you make of a twenty-five hundred dollar order for biochemistry and engineering textbooks, delivered by email, written in all-caps, to be paid for by credit card and delivered to a tenement in Montreal that didn’t trace back to the name on the card?

It was an unexpected end to a fairly boring week, at least.

And the RCMP doesn’t care. We called them. We called Visa. I tried to trace the name on the card to notify poor unsuspecting William Monroe that his identity has been stolen and bad people seem to be planning stuff under his name, but “William Monroe” is a fairly generic moniker and besides, he could live anywhere in the world.

My store is commencing email silence and hopefully Montreal won’t be suddenly struck with the plague and have a population of zombies.

(Am now trying to decide how French-Canadian zombies would differ from the usual, Dawn-of-The-Dead American-style zombies. Perhaps they’d eat their brains on toast?)
--

In less deadly news, I am gleeful to announce that I get to attend the McArthur & Co. annual Beaujolais party, which is next to the BookExpo Manda Party in terms of industry ToDos, and one of those things which I’ve never been invited to before.

Well, technically, I wasn’t invited to this one, either. I had to call and get my name on the list.

But that’s not the point.

Drinking! With the glitterati! And wearing fabulous clothes!

I wish ALL my Thursday nights were like that.

2006-10-01T19:06:00.001-04:00

Getting The Text In Hand

After being charmed by Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword, I’m doing the thing that I try to prevent customers from having to do (that is, accidentally reading something in the wrong order) and working through her previous novel, Swordspoint.

It’s fantastic, and I love it, and this morning, two-thirds of the way through, my reading was interrupted by 32 pages of Teresa Medeiros’ A Kiss To Remember (which I am absolutely not linking to), which somehow got accidentally bound inside.

So, I’ve been thinking about the pleasures of the hand-made book.

I’m not interested in trading mass-production for it, of course – I like being able to make a living, I’m pro-widespread literacy, and it’s a great joy to have a private collection. And there’s a certain attraction to tawdry pocket novels that I am fully sympathetic with.

But honestly, there’s so much badness in mass-production. Apart from the rudeness of having a froth of delicious writing interrupted by sentences like “He’d never before had cause to regret his size, but as he slipped between Laura’s slender thighs, he knew a moment of genuine trepidation,” there’s also the indignity of the reading experience. Mass-market paperbacks fall apart. The print rubs off on your hands. They absorb liquid and humidity like a sponge, and invariably, after a year or so, they’re warped and uncomfortable in your hands.

Plus, pocket books never fit into pockets.

(Clearly, I’m living up to the “surly” part of this blog today.)

In addition, I’m uncomfortable with how unsold mass-markets are disposed of. Like newspapers, the covers are stripped off and the remainder is shredded (if it happens at the publisher’s warehouse) or binned (at the booksellers). My store tries to send them back whole or, if instructed to strip covers, will bind the remnants with packing paper and tape and use them to prop items on the top shelves into visibility. Usually. Or bin them.

In either case, even if the leftovers are recycled or composted, it’s a significantly less than ideal practice.

So. Hand-made books.

There are degrees, of course. On one hand, you’ve got people who carefully craft limited runs of ten or twenty copies with original prints. These are objets d’art and they are, of course, lovely. I own a facsimile of Charles Pachter’s beautiful rendition of Margaret Atwood’s The Journals of Susanna Moodie, and it makes me happy just to hold it.

The problem, though, is that purely hand-made books require especial care. You can’t read them in the bath, or even (less radically) on the bus. You can’t bring one with you for company when dining alone. And you absolutely can’t bring one into bed for that last lovely hour of reading, tucked up in quilts and pillows, before sleep, for fear that you’ll drift off while holding it and wake up with the cover bent or pages crumpled.

You can love these hand-made books, but they’ll never be part of you.

Also, I can’t afford them.

There is, happily, a middle ground. Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press staked it out, and today it’s also occupied by Coach House Books, Small Beer Press and The Porcupine’s Quill, among others. Not all of these houses do their own printing, and the ones that do don’t do it all the time, but the end product always feels like it’s been overseen with a loving and scrupulous eye. And the books are hardy enough to read without excessive caution.

In conclusion, I’m grateful to Gutenberg for having invented the printing press, I’m grateful to Penguin for having created the pocket paperback, but I’m also grateful that there are alternatives to having literature delivered in sloppy bundles of newsprint, cardboard, glue-gun and vegetable-dye. When you love a book, it’s usually for keeps, and there’s nothing sadder than having to keep a beloved tome in a ziplock bag because years of rereading disintegrated the binding.

Well. Yes, there are things that are sadder. But it’s still hard for me to look at my first copy of Anne of Green Gables without being grief-struck. I realize any 22 year-old book would be in rough shape, but still.

2006-09-10T12:00:00.001-04:00

A Reader of Serious Books

September, and the store is full of students buying the books on their school reading lists.

This also means that the store is full of people who normally don’t read, or who read only the things on their high school grade eleven English course, and are now panicking at the titles their breadth requirements force them to attempt.

Sometimes it's painfully sweet. An eighteen-year old girl came in a week ago, stopped in the middle aisle, scanned the room with a mixture of discomfort and hope, and then turned to me and explained that she was about to start an English degree, but was going to visit family in Hong Kong first, and wanted something to read on the plane.

“What have you read and enjoyed before?” I asked.

This standard gambit made her stutter.

“Um. Well. 1984? Animal Farm?”

I’m still not sure if she indeed hadn’t read for pleasure before or if she felt that starting an English degree meant she had to present herself as a reader of Serious Books. I mean, teenagers don’t pick up those two titles, in conjunction, by themselves. Maybe one of them—I pulled Animal Farm from my parent’s bookshelf at age 9 and was promptly awash in weeks of nightmares about drinking pigs—but not the two together.

It kind of threw me for a loop.

I eventually suggested Sense And Sensibility, which she bought promptly, hugged to her chest and left. I know it wasn’t the best choice, but I’m still not sure what the best choice was. At least this way she has a head start on Austen, which she’ll have to read sometime during an English degree, and there’s an excellent film version if she gets totally mired down in the comedy of early English manners.

The thing is, the situation is so fully what snooty lit-lovers long for (putting someone in a contained space for twenty hours with a book they normally wouldn’t have picked up) that I feel I’ve significantly failed. Maybe I should’ve handed her The Red Tent? Or something non-challenging and beautiful like Girl With A Pearl Earring? Or maybe, since she’s on the Greatest Hits track, Fahrenheit 451?

Well, too late now. I just hope she didn’t hate me totally for it.

2006-08-28T18:56:00.001-04:00

CC: Madeleine Wickham, or whatever you’re calling yourself these days

A few weeks ago, there was a letter in the New York Times book section complaining bitterly about Amazon’s reselling option.

I was immediately pissed off. Partly (and in the spirit of full disclosure) this was because I happen to have two dozen or so books listed through this highly useful tool. It doesn’t make me any money, but I’m soothed by the thought that I’m not throwing my books out; instead, I’m directing them to loving homes. (I recognize that they aren’t kittens, in case you’re wondering.)

The other reason I found the complaint annoying is that I read it after packaging six boxes of returns. Returns are a necessary part of bookstore life, but I’m conflicted about them: on one hand, they free up shelf space and generate nice account credits; on the other hand, we’re sending stuff back because it didn’t sell, and it’s partially my fault —- at least, when the books are coming from my sections.

But the really awful part about pulling returns is knowing that some of the books —- as Quill & Quire informed me last month —- are going to get shredded. True, it’s a better policy than the old “strip the covers and burn the rest” method (at least this way something gets recycled or composted instead of sent to landfill), but still! I’m sending books to die! (Again, my maudlin tendencies are noted.)

I’d much rather that books revolved “like constellations through the dark” (misquoted, since my memory is faulty, but the dude who wrote the letter totally said something like that). We keep the books we love. We keep the books that move us and add things to our lives. I’m all for throwing the rest back into the stream and letting them float for years between owners. If this means that print-runs are reduced to a sane, sellable size; that only one edition of lite-lit like “The Princess Diaries Volume Five Bazillion” gets published; and that authors who specialize in said lite-lit don’t get paid extravagant advances for their work—well, bravo Amazon.

To me, that sounds like improvement.

Just sayin’.

2006-08-21T12:00:00.000-04:00

Books were a solitary country until I was 13 or 14.

It wasn’t that my family didn’t read. Books were everywhere and everyone sampled, but I plundered voraciously: coming in late to meals, staying up past bedtime to finish another chapter, sneaking Dr. Doolittle inside my math textbook or under my desk at school. My mother still recounts, grinning, how, when I was five, she took to summoning me by pounding on the ceiling of the kitchen with a broom-handle (my bedroom, and the deep closet under the eaves which I hid in to read, being directly above).

We all read, but we didn’t talk about it.

I’m not accusing or criticizing. The habit of reading was pervasive in my family home – continues to be – and I think that’s the crucial part of helping daughters and sons to fall in love with books.

The thing, though, is that was such a shock when I realized that you could talk about books and how you felt about them.

To be honest, although I said 13 or 14, I don’t know exactly how old I was. I know where I was – the change rooms at the local swimming pool. I think I know who was there with me, although I’m not entirely sure that I could name all present.

I don’t know how we started talking about the books we loved, but there we were, four or five of us, one adult and the rest girls, suddenly comparing notes on literature.

I didn’t know you could do that.

I hadn’t thought you couldn’t, but reading was what I did to forget about being lonely and upset and a kid without any kind of power in the world. Books were a ticket out of adolescent hell, and part of their attraction was that they guaranteed exclusive, single passage. Books granted me a cabin all to myself. I never thought that other people might be taking the same journeys.

I wasn’t suffering under a delusion that I possessed the only copies of the books I loved. For one thing, despite a large-ish personal collection, most of my reading material came from the library, and having to wait two weeks for the latest Terry Brooks novel had firmly informed me that I wasn’t the only one who’d consumed his florid prose.

The bald truth, though, is that most of the people around me didn’t read the books I’d read. I had learned early, and to my chagrin, that the easiest way to prevent my siblings from picking up my favourite books was to recommend they read them. The local library served a lot of people, but I almost never bumped into a peer while pawing through the Young Adults section. In addition, there were no bookshops, first or second-hand, in my town, and the nearest (which continues to be an exceptionally sorry excuse for a bookstore) was a good fifty kilometers away. And Amazon hadn’t yet been dreamed of.

But here were the five of us—bare-footed, rinsing the chlorine out of our hair and comparing notes. I don’t remember what we discussed—probably unsurprising standards: Anne of Green Gables, perhaps, or The Chronicles of Narnia—but I do remember the sudden sense of enchantment that settled over us. Standing in that unlikely, damp place under harsh lighting, half-dressed, probably in a hurry to get on a bus or go meet our rides in the lobby, we were all of a sudden revealing the stories that had moved us, comforted us and taught us. It was amazing.

I’d like to say it became a habit, but, of course, the rest of my life hadn’t changed. Furthermore, although it had been a lovely moment, I had no inkling that you could do that all the time. I did, however, find ways to share book experiences. The crudest efforts involved stealing my friends’ lunch-time reading, although we never actually discussed the texts afterwards. (Part of me, I suppose, felt it was enough of a shared experience if we had merely both read the same words.)

When I got to high school, the need for literary communion was met in class. I had a trio of remarkable English teachers, and despite the torture of sitting with 20 other adolescents who may or may not have done the assigned reading, formal treatment of books was stimulating, and I enjoyed it enough to do an exceptionally prolonged BA in English afterwards.

I also, however, started working at bookstores.

I hadn’t thought ‘till now—on my first vacation in years, which, of course, is being occupied almost entirely by my pile of books-to-be-read—about how those two things correlated. But they certainly do. Formal discussion of literature is useful, of course, and I’ve experienced the alchemy of deepening understanding about a book turning directly into love. Still, sharing book-wonder is a different thing, and often more satisfying. It’s well and good to discuss how Louisa May Alcott was using the form of the feminine novel, but honestly, I’d much rather commiserate about how annoying it is that Jo didn’t marry Laurie. And yadda yadda masculine versus feminine words – talking about reading Yeats, with someone who, as I had, brought a book of his poetry to his gravesite and read it as the sky darkened, is to be caught in a the world of Faerie.

I am, of course, in retail, and thus stocking and logistics and trying to up sales is, sadly, part of the deal. But I think the essential reason why I’m still a bookseller (and why I dream about opening my own store) is that discussing loved books is intoxicating. I enjoyed the sense of a solitary country, but it’s so much better to have books as common, well-loved ground.

2006-08-19T19:50:00.000-04:00

I have ten days sans bookselling (in other words, vacation!). This is a pretty novel thing -- I haven't had so much non-Christmas time off in years. I don't particularly know what to do with myself, so my initial plans were exceptionally dry and boring and good-citizen-y. (Give blood! Find a hospital to volunteer at! Join choirs!) I've now remembered to factor in fun. (Picnics! Brunch! Naked swimming!)
--

Before I left for vacation, though, I was privileged to overhear this conversation.

(Co-worker Paul, answering the phone) "Good afternoon, name of my bookstore, Paul speaking."

(Scratchy old-lady voice) "What's HIV?"

I can't transcribe everything else accurately, but reassurances were given that, yes, it's a disease, transmitted by a virus; no, it's not a judgement from God; and perhaps a family doctor could be of more use in answering questions.

Books were not sold.

2006-07-11T12:00:00.001-04:00

Book Fairs: Huzzah! Chindigo: Buzzah!

I just spent all day at Book Expo Canada. It was my first time there, and I went in determined not to bring down publisher ire in the way that the Chapters book staff seem to do every year. They were a force to behold, in fact -- junior members wheeling through the fair in groups of 5 or 10 with grabby, grabby hands. A former staff member from my company, who now works for PGC, felt a little shock'n'awe at the experience of being on the other side of the desk when the Chindigo Battalion approached: "They don't make eye contact. They just take stuff -- multiple copies -- and they don't talk to you. When you tell them 'one each, please,' they pretend not to hear you."

Appalling, but also really useless. How does this help anyone? Like most book and bookish people I know, I already have a leaning stack of books at home that I need to read, to say nothing of the pile on hold at work. Picking up five dozen books at BEC serves no purpose. I mean, you can't sell advance readers copies, and if you spend all your time looking for freebies, you don't get to talk to anyone.

Anyway, the trade show was fun and useful, and there's a whole bunch of new kids books that look great. I love Orca's "Reluctant Readers" series, and there's a slew of pregnancy books for dads that I think my store needs, and Scholastic's Dear Canada series has three French titles that I didn't know about, and Gordon Korman is writing hockey books! (I can be more enthusiastic about hockey books than about mob books. Sorry, Gord. I love you, but it's a hard sell.)

I'm a little sad that there wasn't an elephant this year. However, I suspect the year the elephant was on-site was a year with uniformly boring frontlists, and by having a literal elephant in the room, the publishers were trying to keep everyone from talking about how much the fall season was going to suck. This season looks pretty good, so distraction tactics weren't necessary.

There was, however, a lot of free booze. I don't think that was distraction, though: I think that was wheedling. And an attempt to provide relief and convivality.

It worked. I enjoyed myself.

Even without an elephant.

2006-07-08T18:55:00.001-04:00

BookSlut is a source of constant delight for me, and it was through them that I heard about the James Tiptree Award.

James Tiptree, Jr. was the pen name of Alice Sheldon, and, in the tradition of Tiptree/Sheldon's writing, the award honours science-fiction writers who explore and expand gender.

If you win, you get a monetary prize, a piece of art and a large quantity of chocolate (which was once presented in the form of a chocolate typewriter, but I don't know if that happens every year), and you are serenaded by a semi-professional chorus.

Funds for the award are raised primarily by bake sales.

Obviously, this is the most awesome award for writing, ever.

(At the store, we discussed how it could be made more awesome only if you could pick when and where you were serenaded. I chose at work, on a Friday afternoon, just as the phone starts ringing off the hook with people calling to ask if the Jewish newspapers have arrived.)

Less obviously, the pieces nominated are varied, eclectic and absorbing. I'm working my way through the second anthology of award winning stories right now, and God. I want to eat this book. Stories about intergalactic tourism and personal tragedy! About men and women as aliens locked into conflict until the end of time! About DNA contributing to our ability or inability to parse gender! About shape-shifting aliens and marine exploration!

I'm only on the third entry, which is why this is a poor excuse for a blog entry. But I highly recommend the collection. And when I read the first anthology, I expect that I will be highly recommending it, too.

2006-06-15T19:31:00.002-04:00

I spent all morning telling people that they weren't allowed to have the books they wanted.

I'm quite happy to do so when it means that I'm catching thieves or judiciously advising doting grandparents that no, Atlas Shrugged is not a suitable Bar Mitzvah gift.

However, I generally feel that everyone should be able to read voraciously and widely, without restrictions. One of my first memories about books is being self-righteously pissed off when, at the age of 4, a well-meaning teacher didn't want me to sell me a copy of Anne Of Green Gables, and more pissed off, at the age of 14, when my mom didn't want me to read And the Band Played on: Politics, People, and the Aids Epidemic. And I have never had a happier bookselling moment than when a small serious twelve-year old explained to me that she was interested in forensic science, and here was a list of what she had already read, and could I recommend anything? I gave her Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, and both she and her mom were thrilled.

Today, though, I had to turn down a dozen or so requests because there was no way to legally (or even only kind of legally) get the books shipped to Canada. Penguin has a fantastic Red Classics series, and half of them are only available in the UK. Another local pub. group has a textbook I need in stock in the east end of Toronto, and yet aren't allowed to sell it to me. A university publisher who shall remain nameless *coughUofTcough* seems to have destroyed a slightly-damaged volume of poetry even though it was the last available one in existence and we'd begged and pleaded and assured them that it didn't matter that there were scratches on the cover, we'd take it anyway. The New York Times Review of Books publishes amazing things that the glitterati get their assistants to call us for, but then their print runs are never large enough.

Ever since my very first bookselling job eight years ago -- special orders at Indigo Manulife -- saying "Sorry, we can't get that for you" always makes me feel a little defeated. I don't know why anyone bothers banning books -- just get the rights reversed, wrap them in red tape, lose a couple of shipments between the printers and the warehouse, and there you go: no one will get to read, and dangerous ideas won't be allowed to spread.

At least, not in Canada.

2006-06-09T19:52:00.002-04:00

Change: Sometimes Good, Sometimes The Cause of Landfill Sites Full of Pink Books

I started bookselling full-time two weeks ago, and have found, to my surprise, that causes for surliness have shifted to the left and declined in quantity. There are significantly less crazy and angry people in the store between 9:30 and 5:30 on weekdays. Instead, there are staff mistakes to correct (and yes, often the mistakes are my own); calls from busy people who can't be bothered to check if the store is open before they pick up the phone, and media flunkies with absurd requests ("Do you sell organizers for home decorating? With places to put swatches and phone numbers for wallpaper stores? That we could borrow to dress a photo shoot?").

The last two that can be dealt with quickly and without having to go all polite and deferential (namely, "We're not open yet. Call back in half an hour" and "Are you kidding? No? But you already have something like that on your desk? Just take a picture of it then.") Anyway. I like the change, but it has meant that I have had nothing to write about.

Until today! More copies of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things came in, which reminded me of a conversation I had with a co-worker when it was first published:

"Look! It's printed on plastic."

"What?" (coming over to investigate--indeed, the book is strangely heavy and the pages are very slick)

"Plastic pages means no forests chopped down and less energy expended in production."

"Yes, but the books will be around forever"

I hadn't thought of the last part. I was just so proud of the creators and publishers of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things for expanding into new territory. But it's true: plastic pages are a terrifying idea. It's fine if the book printed on them is going to be read forever (or if the book should be read in the bath), but can you imagine Danielle Steel suddenly having a 10,000 year lifespan?

The only thing more terrifying than landfill sites full of stubbornly intact Danielle Steele novels is landfill sites full of stubbornly intact painfully sincere first novels.

Anyone want to advocate ebooks as an alternative to tree-killing? Anyone?

No?

2006-05-27T09:33:00.002-04:00

Love Me, Love My Books

A few years ago, I was on a first date. A fairly blind first date, having met the bloke in question through the occasionally useful nerve.com personal ads.

It was Fringe time, and we had pretensions to being Young, Hip and Excited (alas for the last two), so we arranged to go see a show together. And it was disappointing, so we went to another, and by then we were feeling reckless about theatre-watching, so we went to yet another.

Things seemed to be going swimmingly (after all, we'd breached the six-hour mark), but then an alarming thing happened: we started talking about books. Frankly, I'm amazed that I managed to hold out for six hours.

We discussed favourites; we waxed nostalgic about childhood doggerel. And then he asked me what I was reading.

"Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveler,"” I replied. "I've wanted to read him ever since Alan Lightman told me that his novel Einstein's Dreams had been inspired by Invisible Cities." (He did. I'm not making that up.)

He stared at me and I began to feel the familiar shame of having read something other people think is preposterously eclectic.

And then he opened his satchel and pulled out a hardcover copy of...

If On A Winter's Night A Traveler.*

My heart began beating impossibly fast. Visions of telling our grandchildren the story of how we met slew wildly through my brain. My hands shook.

"And what do you think of it so far?"” he asked.

Oh. Right.

"To be honest, I'm getting annoyed. The technique was fine for the first little while, but the idea of continuing to read stories folded inside each other like Russian dolls, never finishing, makes me tired."

Silence.

"I think it's one of the funniest things I've ever read."

So we shook hands, he kissed me on the cheek, and we went to our separate, respective homes, and our incontestably disparate and divided bookshelves, never to speak again.

And I'm not sad about it.
--

*It was actually exactly the one which I linked to at Amazon. No one cares, but I like accuracy, because I am surly AND anal.

2006-05-24T15:38:00.000-04:00

Stores I Like: One

The daily blog at Nerve posted that Freebird Books & Goods is holding its first singles event. The planned activity itself sounds somewhat lame:

"We would like to invite single men and women (roughly) between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five to bring in a typed paragraph or page describing an experience they have had on a date. Stories will be picked from a hat and we will ask all single attendants to at random, read the story they picked."

... but who can argue with this? "And after all, what better place to meet than a used bookstore on a waterfront in Brooklyn?"

Well. Me, I guess. Meeting at Shakespeare & Co in Paris might be slightly better, or at Frog's Hollow in Halifax, or at San Fran's City Lights. But that's not the point! The point is that my surliness abates slightly at the thought of love flourishing in the fiction aisles.

Or in front of Poli-Sci. I'm not picky.

2006-05-21T18:50:00.001-04:00

Forgotten Items I Have Found at Bookstores
(in alphabetical order)

Cards (Old Maid)

The Carpenter’s Companion*

Cheese, delicious (caraway gouda, one wedge)#

The Complete Penguin Stereo Record And Cassette Guide, 1984*

Credit cards, debit cards, passports*

Figs (package of)#

Flash memory cartridges#

Glasses*

Glasses cases*

Glove, catchers

Gloves, leather*

Hat, Santa#

Hearing aids

Keys

Makeup, unopened, MAC (one bag of about $200 worth)#

Mattress (one)

Notebooks (2), containing
1. grocery lists (one says “beer, cat food, garlic, beets”)*
2. lists of books to read [8 titles about genocide, two clipped reviews (of The Anatomy of Fascism and... Jane Austen Book Club. What? Can't genocide buffs have beach-book time?)]

Pants

Pictures of really ugly children, wallet-sized

Plums (bag of)#

Shawl, silk#

Swimsuit, child-sized*

Sunglasses#

Tomatillo (one)#

Tupperware*#

Umbrellas*#

Watercolour paints

*currently in the Lost & Found box at work
# things I have taken home and used/eaten

2006-05-21T11:34:00.001-04:00

Dunno how to help you, kid

Two conversations from yesterday, at work:

1. A really wild-eyed dude approaches me at the second floor desk.

"Hey, I'm tryin' to find a book."

(me, trying to defuse possible craziness with humour) "I think we can work something out."

(him, confused) "huh?"

(me, resigned)"Is there a specific book you wanted?"

"Do you have a section for books about walking through life totally numb, unable to really, y'know, understand that anything was going on around you?"

"... Not really. Do you mean about coma patients?"

"Yeah! but, you know, walking and awake."

(me, trying really hard) "How about Oliver Sacks' Awakenings? It's about patients with encephalitis caused by a sleeping sickness linked to a flu pandemic."

"No, I don't think that will help."

"Books on insomnia, maybe?"

"Nah, that's not it, either. How about books on how to make girls fall in love with you?"

Although this was the perfect opportunity to handsell Game (see post Flames, leap higher), I refrained.

2. "Good afternoon name of my bookstore, Rachel speaking."

"I'm looking for this book? That I saw at one of your stores? About astronomy and the stories of the planets?"

"You're looking for a specific book?"

"Yes. I asked at the Village store, but they didn't know what I was talking about."

"Had you seen it at the Village store?"

"I can't remember where I saw it."

"Do you remember the title or the author?"

"No."

"Do you remember any words that were in the title?"

"Astronomy. Or maybe stars."

"Are there any other details you can give me about the book?"

"It had the stories of the stars? I'll know it when I see it."

(starting to feel the surl take over) "Over the phone?"

"Well, you could describe it to me."

"I don't think I can help you, sir. Sorry."

Except I wasn't.

2006-05-16T23:21:00.001-04:00

Surly Booksellers stick it to The Man
actually, we just want to tell publishers off

I found this on Neil Gaiman’s blog:

You know I wish just once publishing companies would ask booksellers what actually works when they are doing cover designs. Yes the cover looks gorgeous – but as with all covers that use that translucent paper – it will only look gorgeous until it has been sitting in a bookshop for a week after which time it will be covered in dirty fingerprints and the paper will be all tatty round the edges. That is of course assuming that it makes it into and out of delivery boxes without being trashed. Suze from Kent, UK

Yes! Yes yes yes! I could weep.

Why don’t they ask us anything?

Translucent paper is bad, matte white covers are worse, and travel books with maps as end papers drive me mad (nowhere to put security tags). The book that makes me the most annoyed is George Elliott Clarke’s Black, where the cover features embossed black text on a black background, and doesn’t have discernible text on the spine, which means that no one takes it off the shelf.

Bar codes don’t have to be ugly, but they do have to be on the book. The title should be printed close to the bottom of the cover, because if the book is faced on a top or bottom shelf, that’s the only way it will be seen.

And while I’m at it, design is the least of the stupid things publishers saddle us with. If I ran the book world, I wouldn’t let newspapers print reviews until after I’d actually shipped the books. People buy on impulse, and they’ll decide not to buy if it’s going to take a week to get that book Leah McLaren raved about.

On the same note, embargoing books until a Tuesday is retarded – no one buys on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, and if the book arrives in house on Friday (as they always seem to do), 20 copies could get sold on the weekend.

Where are the promotional bookmarks for kids' books? Where, I ask you?

The best way to ship books is to vacuum-shrink wrap a pile of them to a piece of heavy cardboard (shout out to Cambridge University Press, yer awesome), because otherwise they get banged up before customers can start pawing at them. And can’t you use paper for filler, which can be recycled, instead of plastic? CAN’T YOU?

Lastly, the WordStock title field only allows for 40 characters. Please prevent authors from titling their works things like: Joel on Software: And On Diverse And Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove Of Interest To Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to those Who, Whether By Good Fortune Or Ill Luck, Work With Them In Some Capacity.

I can provide you with sticks if they need beating in order to convince them. I have lots of sticks. Really.

2006-05-15T00:47:00.001-04:00

Today, a fire-truck filled with competent fire-people pulled up in front of my store, cordoned off the street, taped off the sidewalk, raised their ladders, and proceeded to the roof in order to carefully and gently rescue--wait for it--a mattress.

Seems the people who live next door above the shops had decided either to sleep under the stars (precariously perched next to the gable of our second-floor windows) or to get rid of unwanted bedding in the most awkward and difficult way possible.

In any case, this morning said mattress was hanging dangerously from the roof of our three-floor building, and I was in the middle of shelving How It All Vegan! Irresistible Recipes for an Animal-Free Diet when a cop tapped me on the shoulder. Thus, I embarked on a morning of crawling through windows, figuring out new ways to set off the store alarm system, and fielding complaints from customers who would come up to me and say “It’s a waste of taxpayer money to have firemen go up ladders for that.”

I agree, of course. But the cop called the firemen, not me, and I didn’t call the cop. (Someone, in fact, called 911 to say “There’s a mattress on the roof of the bookstore! Eek!" I admit to being a little pissed-off that the 911 operators told me off for calling about a rabid raccoon, when mattress-fearing Annex citizens have their worries validated.)

After it was all over, the mattress was abandoned on the street, and I found myself (tired after three nights of fairly book-less debauchery) looking at it longingly and thinking about naps.

2006-05-13T19:51:00.001-04:00

Surly Streetlife

The sun is shining, gentle readers, skirts are getting shorter (although not mine, since I am anti-heels and also work in a business where an elaborate dress-code is in effect), and the colourful street-dwellers are spending less time in church basements and more time in and around my store.

The begging regulars – Judy, Mark and the guy who occasionally butts in on Judy’s turf (GWOBIOJT)– are back in their usual spots. I’ve passed GWOBIOJT six times a week for the past two years, but he still had the balls to try to spin me a “new to Toronto, have to get home to Peterborough, need $27.50 for a bus-ticket” story yesterday. This is marginally better than the “punks ripped me off on Har-Board Street and I’m a real-estate developer and I live in Pickering” story that I fell for when I had just moved to TO, but is still insulting in that it assumes that I am an idiot.

“Toonie or a loonie or a nickel or a dime or a dollar” man has been breaching the front-of-the-store perimeter on Friday nights to stand in the door and accost book-buyers. Yesterday, I reminded him of the no-soliciting rule, and he yelled at me “I’m starving to DEATH,” then turned on his heel and marched off.

Massive Head-Wound Harry has been absent this spring, although I did see him last fall around Queen and Bay, when I was working for Desjardins in the most depressing job ever. [Wanna know how much George Stroumboulopoulos makes? No, you don’t. You’ll cry. (Also, the Toronto Life estimate was really very wrong.)] If I was a better person I’d be more concerned about MHWH's health, but I’m not good with pus.

FlirtMan, who occupies a doorway in the next block, has been making his leave-money signs more and more elaborate. They started with “I need money. Thank you, beautiful ladies. Have a nice day, guys”. The first and third clauses have stayed the same, but he now lavishes massive amounts of attention on the “thank-you, beautiful ladies” part. It’s morphed from that to “Have a nice summer, lovely women” to “Have a hot lovely day, gorgeous girls” (in cursive, surrounded by flowers and hearts) to today’s offering “You should all be Victoria Secret models.”

Our mascot-of-sorts, 75-year old Bernard (who doesn’t live on the streets (thank god) and isn’t crazy, just a pot-head), has been behaving weirdly lately. He’s never entirely sane or polite, but lately he’s been downright vindictive about the new BMG going up two blocks away. He giggles gleefully when he mentions it, and tells me that I should be worried, and then he brings me Timbits. It’s cumulatively disturbing, but I’m still eating the Timbits.

None of this has much to do with books, but bookselling often doesn’t have anything to do with books (proof: Star: A Novel ("a novel"! Ha!) by Pamela Anderson, The Da Vinci Code). My point, I guess, is that it’s Spring, since all of these indigenous characters are making their way back into the store, and I’d really love it if the signs of spring were less accompanied by BO, but at least the buskers haven’t arrived. If Massive Head-Wound Harry and the mandolin player both show up on the same day, I may graduate from “surly” to “vengeful.”

And vengeful booksellers are too busy being ninjas to write blogs.

2006-05-10T15:41:00.001-04:00

Flames, leap higher!

A little while ago, at the end of one of my store’s warehouse sales, co-worker P. was culling crap-to-be-tossed from the tables. Somehow, the word “garbage” got said aloud, prompting a nearby browser to gasp and look at co-worker P. in shock. “You’re not throwing out books, are you?”

And since co-worker P. is the king of thinking on his feet, and surly only when he can’t be funny, he replied, “No ma’am, ‘garbage’ is a booksellers term.”

Which it sort of is. It means “stuff going to the dump.”

I wish I had been there. :-)

We don’t burn ‘em anymore, but if we did, here’s what I would gleefully strike a match too:

1. Celebrity “novels,” including but not limited to Junior
by Macauley Culkin, Ash Wednesday by Ethan Hawke, and The Continuity Girl by Leah McLaren

2. In the same vein, Jessica Simpson’s I Do: Achieving Your Dream Wedding

3. All the tchotke books that live at the front counter (we call ‘em “koobs”). For example: The Spotter's Guide to Male Species, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Weddings, and Everything Men Know About Women’s Sexual Preferences (it’s blank)

4. The South Beach Diet books, soaked first in Cosmopolitan martini mix

5. Neil Strauss’s The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society of Pick-Up Artists

6. The Gossip Girl Books by Cecily von Ziegesar. Who the hell thought that “Sex and The City” for early-teen girls was a good idea?

7. Movie-to-book adaptations, such as Terry Brooks’ execrable Hook, in which a grown-up Peter Pan shaves off all his body hair (he might have had help from the Lost Boys; I can’t remember) in order to help him regain his childlike sense of wonder

8. The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump, in which, among other tidbits, he reveals that putting low-wattage light-bulbs throughout his apartment buildings in the early years of his kingdom-building helped him lower costs. No word on increased rape, burglary, tripping instances in said apartment-buildings after low-watt bulbs were installed

9. Fighting the Freshman Fifteen: A College Woman's Guide to Getting Real about Food and Keeping the Pounds Off

10. A Night Without Armor: Poems by Jewel

What would you douse with gasoline, dear readers?