An amateur no more...

 

 

 So, this past week, I realized a life-long dream.  After years of working the amateur circuit, I have become a professional bookseller.  What's an amateur bookseller, you may be asking?  Well, I've had a pretty fierce case of bookseller-envy going, and it wasn't at all uncommon for me to loiter in a bookstore for hours, hand-selling favorite titles to random customers, answering questions... possibly moving friends' books to more advantageous shelf positions.

 

I am delighted to announce that I've been hired by Bookshop West Portal, one of San Francisco's

finest independent booksellers.  (Thank you Neal, Kevin, & Richard!)  I've been shopping at Bookshop West Portal for years.  They've also hosted some of my favorite author events: Ann Patchett, Gary Shteyngart, Jonathan Tropper, my pal Matt Richtel, and so many more.  My new co-workers are people I want as friends.  Take my word for it, it's a really good place!

 

It was kind of fun to announce this new job to friends and the world.  There was a widespread cry of "You're perfect for it!"  And I was tickled by the number of best-selling authors who took the time to congratulate me.  I spend so much time with writers; I can't wait to see a friend show up in the shop to sign stock.  And I've already started hand-selling my favorite books.  Please don't tell my new bosses, but this feels a bit like being paid (albeit modestly) to do what I normally do:

• Follow the publishing industry
• Read a bunch of books
• Talk to people about them

Best. Job. Ever.

So, yes, it's business as usual around here, but now when I read the PW Daily, I can feel noble.  "This is for work," I say.  Peruse reviews in the New York Times--for work.  Earlier tonight I was schmoozing with a Pulitzer Prize winner and a National Book Award winner--for work.  And I'm reading more than ever, which, as you know, is saying something.

I fear that my television viewing--already well below the national average--is going to suffer.  As these things go, I've probably read more new titles than the average bookseller.  My iPhone tells me that I read an average of 4.3 books a week last year.  But surely I can up that number?  I would really like to read at least 5 books a week this year.  250 books in 2014 sounds like a reasonable goal.  After just a few days in the store, it's become incredibly obvious just how much easier it is to (a) sell a book, and (b) help a customer, if you've actually read every book in the store.  Happily, I was able to compare and contrast The Goldfinch and The Luminaries for a customer this week.  (That's 1,600 pages right there.)  I was able to give my personal seal of approval to Lisa O'Donnell's debut novel, The Death of Bees to a nervous book club reader.  I was able to recommend Robin Sloan's Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Ernie Cline's Ready Player One for the woman looking for something light to bring a sick friend.

Oh, can we talk gifts?  I wrapped a lot of gifts this week!  (This is actually pathetic.  My family will attest that my gift-wrapping skills are remedial at best.  So much to learn.)  But the subject of gifts reminds me of the best thing I saw this week, and it happened on my very first day.  It was the best omen imaginable.

Bookshop West Portal is tremendously valued by the local community.  It's so incredibly obvious.   Any number of customers mentioned how important it was to support their local independent bookstore as I rang them up.  And there's a terrific core of super-friendly regulars.  They're greeted by name, as I am in so many bookstores across the city.  I was warmly welcomed by all that I met.  That first day I met a customer that I'll simply refer to as "the Hungarian Gentleman."  He came by to pick up a special order that included hardback copies of Wildwood and Under Wildwood by Colin Meloy (which are already out in paperback).  "How many copies of these books do you think I buy?" he asked my colleague.  His guess of "a dozen" was a little low.  Apparently, it was more like 30 copies of each book.  This lovely man, this Hungarian Gentleman, buys these beautiful books to hand out to random young people that he meets as he goes through his daily life.  He'll stop and gift them to a kid on the street and go on his way. 

The Hungarian Gentleman had to feed his meter.  He dropped off the books in his car and came back.  While he was browsing, a teenage girl came in looking for a copy of Veronica Roth's latest, Allegiant.  I didn't witness this interaction, but he must have approached her.  He wound up buying her copies of both Meloy books, as well as her copy of Allegiant.  It was a not inconsiderable total, and he was so clearly happy to do it.  This Hungarian Gentleman is a literary Santa Claus!  (I'm not kidding; I've heard he sometimes takes poor booksellers out for meals.  Amazing.)  This man is doing everything possible to foster a love of reading in these young people, no strings attached.  I didn't know people like this existed.  I mean, I've been a Bookcrosser for years, but this is taking the  Random Act of Literary Kindness (RALK) to a whole new level.  And I get to work in a store where such people congregate.

I've only been on the job for a week.  I haven't had to schlep boxes of books until my back aches.  I haven't had a customer give me grief over a bad recommendation.  I haven't had the slightest negative experience.  I'm not an idiot.  Shiny, new jobs fade, and bad days are a part of life.  But, you know what?  Everyone who knows me knows that I was born to be a bookseller.  I already have been a bookseller.  I think that this is going to be a good fit.

“There are no free stories in the secret library of the Unbroken Spine.”

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
by Robin Sloan

What is it that bibliophiles everywhere love to read about? That’s right; all things bookish! Debut novelist Robin Sloan uses this insight to great effect in Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. It’s guaranteed to charm any just about any book lover. As for me, I just want to quote from it at length. There were so many delicious passages!

The novel is told from the first-person perspective of 20-something San Franciscan Clay Jannon. Laid off from his corporate design job and desperate for work, Clay takes the graveyard shift at this most unusual bookstore:

“Penumbra sells used books, and they are in such uniformly excellent condition that they might as well be new. He buys them during the day—you can only sell to the man with his name on the window—and he must be a tough customer. He doesn’t seem to pay much attention to bestseller lists. His inventory is eclectic; there’s no evidence of pattern or purpose other than, I suppose, his own personal taste. So, no teenage wizards or vampire police here. That’s a shame, because this is exactly the kind of store that makes you want to buy a book about a teenage wizard. This is the kind of store that makes you want to be a teenage wizard.”

I totally know that store. Penumbra’s however, is quirkier than most. For starters, they hardly ever sell any books. But there’s a bizarre collection of secret books that are not sold, but lent to a select clientele. And Penumbra has very specific rules regarding these dealings. Sloan’s novel begins as Clay’s quest to understand the mysteries of his new workplace, and it expands exponentially from there. It involves a 500-year search for arcane knowledge, a series of trippy fantasy novels, and what Clay recons is a cult that “seems like it might have been designed specifically to prey on bookish old people—Scientology for scholarly seniors.”

Despite the readerly trappings, this novel and the characters within are Silicon Valley savvy. Well, some of them are; it’s generational. Clay’s love interest, Kat, is employed by Google, and that company plays a significant role in the proceedings:

“Kat gushes about Google’s projects, all revealed to her now. They are making a 3-D web browser. They are making a car that drives itself. They are making a sushi search engine—here she pokes a chopstick down at our dinner—to help people find fish that is sustainable and mercury-free. They are building a time machine. They are developing a form of renewable energy that runs on hubris.”

Elsewhere there is talk of e-readers. When the bookstore’s customers disappear, Clay wonders if they’ve all bought Kindles: “I have one, and I use it most nights. I always imagine the books staring and whispering, Traitor!—but come on, I have a lot of free first chapters to get through.”

If you haven’t picked up on this yet, the humor of this novel really tickled me. It goes without saying that I loved the San Francisco setting. (Says Mr. Penumbra, “This city of ours—it has taken me too long to realize it, but we are in the Venice of this world. The Venice.” Amen, brother!) Yes, Clay and his friends seemed very, very young to me (When did I get this middle-aged?), but that didn’t stop me from warming to the clever and quirky cast of characters that Sloan has created.

I would think this book would appeal to Jasper Fforde fans. Sloan’s novel is not a fantasy, and is therefore somewhat more in keeping with reality as we know it, but still, his is a heightened and more literate reality. In Sloan’s world, you could walk into this bar:

“There’s a stack of books on the table and a metal cup with pointy pencils that smell fresh and sharp. In the stack, there are copies of Moby-Dick, Ulysses, The Invisible Man—this is a bar for bibliophiles.”

That’s a world that I was oh-so-happy to spend time in! I was, in fact, sorry to leave. Mr. Sloan, I can’t wait to see what you come up with next.