WordWacky

Today’s Shelf Awareness had a couple of interesting ideas from a thriving new/used bookstore in Stoneham, MA, Book Oasis – one of which is to give money away!

The biggest key to our success this summer was the huge amount of early preparation we did for the school summer reading programs. We have developed good relationships with the librarians and English departments of more than 15 schools. By the time the kids got their lists, we had already created an 8′ by 7′ high summer reading section. Each school had its own shelf with books organized by grade. This made it easy for the parents to find their school and get in and out, and made it much easier for our two-person staff to assist the crowd without having to run all over the store. Happy parents are a good thing.
 
Second, we took a page from another local bookstore and decided to offer The Tales of Beedle the Bard at full cover price and then donate $3 from each book to the local food pantry. If customers bring in a non-perishable item when they purchase their books, we are giving them another $1 off. The pre-Christmas timing made the food pantry a logical choice, and they couldn’t be more excited. Our customers are thrilled with the idea. This has kept our August sales strong.

I wasn’t intending a Part 1.5 originally, but these ideas were great ones, and didn’t involve major changes like relocation or selling. They simply represented more investment in their community, and the community responded!

This Sunday’s Seattle Times had a sad tale about my city’s bookstores:

Seattle has more bookstores per capita than any other city in the country, according to the “America’s Most Literate Cities” survey conducted by Jack Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University — 174 at last count. But running a bookstore has always been an occupation for dreamers, and area independent stores have had to confront the realities of wresting a living from a low-margin business in an increasingly expensive town.

M Coy Books, on Pine Street between First and Second avenues in the Pike Place Market neighborhood, could not survive a major rent increase. All for Kids Books in the University Village area, a treasured children’s bookstore, closed down this summer. Jackson Street Books at the corner of Jackson Street and 23rd Avenue, specializing in African-American literature, science fiction and other genres, shuttered its Seattle operation this spring. In Kirkland, Parkplace Books resorted to a campaign for donations from its fans and customers to avoid closing its doors.

I refuse to surrender the neighborhood bookstore as another idea whose day has passed. Here are some success stories from bookstores who have recently fought to stay alive, despite the “business is down, rent’s up” story that seems all too common these days.

Fundraise

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. This old truism may be cliché, but it’s also true. Faced with seeing their beloved neighborhood bookshop close, many residents are willing to put a few dollars into the bookstore. Maybe a bookstore isn’t non-profit, but often the profits are none.

As mentioned in the Seattle Times story, Parkplace books did just that to keep their business going. So did Wordsmith Books in Decatur, Georgia – they recently led a successful fundraising campaign. From their blog:

We have reached the end of our two week campaign to save the bookstore. From August 4th through August 17th, we asked for your help. We asked for the chance to take this business and turn it forward, to get out from under the weight of immediate costs that were threatening to close our doors forever and begin the task of paying down debts that were accrued in our original location. And you responded. Our call for help hit the AJC, was broadcast on NPR, was rehashed and debated on countless blogs, commented on, emailed about and discussed in bookstores throughout the country. We received help from 18 states, Canada, and a handful of people in the U.K.

Relocate

Little Professor Bookstore in Fenton, Michigan moved downtown to avoid the rising prices in the shopping center where they made their home for 12 years.

Carpenter said she is paying significantly less rent for smaller quarters at 150 W. Shiawassee Ave. — a few doors down from the popular French Laundry restaurant.

She sees other advantages.

“There’s more foot traffic downtown,” Carpenter said. “It’s not like you can walk from Wal-Mart to my store. And where we were located, it was hard to see our signs from the road.”

Sell

Sometimes new energy can be just what a burned out bookseller needs. Just because you may be through with the never-ending race of sales versus bills and rent doesn’t mean that someone else isn’t willing to step up and take the baton.

As mentioned earlier on Wordwacky, another option when faced with imminent demise is to sell the shop. The Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis was saved this year when someone stepped up and bought it – after the closing sale had already happened.

Then last week, Skujin’s partner ran into Barb at a concert, who told her the 38-year-old store had lowered its price but had not found a buyer, and was now in its final days. “I called Barb the next day, we met last Thursday, came to an agreement, shook on it, and I still can’t believe it, but I own a bookstore,” said Skujin.

Go Virtual

In Culpepper, Virginia, one bookseller’s decision when faced with closing up shop was to expand his web presence. The 32 year-old Corner Shelf Bookstore will close this month, to be replaced by only a website. But according to the Free Lance-Star, the bookstore won’t lose its personal touch.

Those who don’t like to shop online will be able to call Gordon Dickerson using the same telephone number the shop has had since it opened in August 1976: 540/825-4411.

And customers will have three options for receiving their books. Dickerson says he will mail them to whatever address you want (postage will apply, of course) or you can prepay and the books will be left at the Raven’s Nest Coffee Shop on East Davis Street. Dickerson has even worked out an arrangement with the Raven’s Nest’s owner to hold author book-signings at the coffee shop.

Next time: Some ideas around opening, not closing a bookstore, even now…

Two word and book related stories made the news in the last week, in which people who do things we all might do – or at least might be tempted to do – were actually caught and booked for their offenses.

The first took place at the Grand Canyon – the crime: conspiracy to vandalize government property.

Two self-styled vigilantes against typos who defaced a more than 60-year-old, hand-painted sign at Grand Canyon National Park were sentenced to probation and banned from national parks for a year. They had removed an extraneous apostrophe and added a comma to the sign.

Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson pleaded guilty Aug. 11 for the damage done March 28 at the park’s Desert View Watchtower. The sign was made by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect who designed the rustic 1930s watchtower and other Grand Canyon-area landmarks.

The second reminds me of my mother, who told me so often that it was burned into my consciousness (perhaps to my own detriment): “There’s no debtors’ prison in this country.” Heidi Dalibor of Grafton, Wisconsin was arrested for not returning her library books, and failing to pay the fine.

Dalibor couldn’t believe the day two Grafton police officers came to her house, armed with an arrest warrant for failing to return library books and a $171 fine.

“We just went to the car and he told me he had to handcuff me. I was a little surprised and told them I didn’t think that was necessary. He said that was procedure, cuffed me, grabbed my head and put me in the car,” Dalibor said. ”

Daliber checked out “Angels and Demons” and “White Oleander”, but never returned them.

[This rogue editor's disclaimer: The above excerpt is quoted exactly as posted -- all errors are the author's, not mine.]

That’s an awfully big smile. Did the photographer prompt her, “Say lawsuit”?

As a member of the LGBT community who reads, there is often overlap between my literary life and my queer life. I tend to read contemporary lit, if perhaps not lit with a capital Literature. I don’t read many romances, though my reading material often contains romance. I don’t read many mysteries, though every good story should have a mystery or two. I don’t read much sci-fi, though magical realism/fabulism often crosses my nightstand. And when I go to the bookstore, if I’m not searching for something specific, it’s the staff picks table, or the new paperbacks table that I gravitate toward. Only rarely will you find me in the LGBT section, and then I’m usually looking for an obscure title.
 
Last week I attended the Lambda Literary Retreat. While I was there, I heard the author of  The End of the World Book, Alistair McCartney, speak on a small panel of debut authors. He talked about feeling ghettoized originally to find himself in the LGBT section. But eventually, he realized he had a niche market, and in these times of many books, few readers, this was exceptionally valuable.
 
I didn’t tell Alistair that I never would have found him in the LGBT section. I stand among those writers (if I should ever get something finished and released to the world) who does not wish to be relegated to the LGBT section, if only because I would never find nor read my own work that way.
 
I do not like the term crossover. What exactly am I crossing over to – or from, for that matter? Have I somehow become a part of a netherworld of outcasts, who have to rise above a certain high-jump marker before we can make it out of the “ghetto”? I live in the everyday straight world. Some of my best co-workers are straight. I take the bus with straight people. I read their literature. I answer their e-mails. Why when I become an author would I suddenly have to be crossing over in order to appear on the shelves and tables that I regularly choose my books from – indeed, where my inspiration lives?
 
On the American Bookseller’s Association blog, Bookselling This Week, is a recent article called “GLBT Titles: Not Just For GLBTs Anymore”. It begins:

With the success of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and just about every David Sedaris title, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender lit has long since moved from off- to center-stage at general bookstores. With so many choices for GLBT books, the tricky part for a bookseller is creating optimal GLBT section visibility, shelving titles that can span two, three, or more genres, and winnowing a rich field of contenders for shelf space.

 
And my response to the ABA: when were they ever just for GLBTs? While I’m sure that some were written expressly for the queer audience, many others were not. Who exactly determined that these books were just for GLBTs?

There’s a family story about my cousins’ first visit to New York. After having taken a few subway rides, the kids were ushered into a brand new subway car, clean and gleaming in its stainless steel perfection. One cousin spoke up: “How come this one doesn’t have pictures?”

You do get used to the sight of graffiti on New York City subways. These days the cars are all graffiti-repellant, but there is still opportunity, and in New York, there is no such thing as an opportunity not taken.

At Written on the City, people post photos of interesting graffiti by the city in which it’s drawn:

And at Pictures of Walls,  there are both wordy walls, such as these, and artsy walls:

The Story of Forgetting: A Novel by Stefan Merrill Block

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

If I didn’t really like this book, I’d hate Stefan Merrill Block. The kid – and yes, I mean kid – was born in 1982, as his book jacket brags. He’s still in his 20’s. And this book is good, not good like macaroni art is good, or good like that time that your 12-year-old cooked you pancakes and forgot the eggs, it’s bona fide good. Maybe it’s not great, but jeez, he’s gotta have something to do with the rest of his life, right?

Block creates a familial mythology that is interwoven with a genetic disease, an imagined variety of early-onset Alzheimer’s. On his website, stefanmerrillblock.com, he details the personal origins of his fascination with Alzheimer’s:

When I was a small child, my grandmother was diagnosed with probable Alzheimer’s disease. At that time, I hardly knew what the disease was (I thought the word was “Old-Timer’s”). For the first year or two of her decline, her symptoms were subtle and I was too young to notice anything unusual. By the time my mom invited my grandmother to come stay with us, however, the disease was in its middle stages, and I was old enough to understand that something was deeply wrong. Just before my grandmother arrived, my mom explained to me what I should expect: cognitively, I was now more advanced than she. Difficult as it was to comprehend, I would now have to think of myself as more mature than my grandmother. I would have to watch out for her, like a brother would for his little sister.

Like the disease, the myth of Isidora is carried from parent to child, from one generation to the next. The Isidorans start out unable to remember anything – this is not considered a flaw, but key to their bliss.

Complicated are his ideas on memory, but they are ideas, not permutations of characters at play, but actual ideas. He could have been more coy with his ideas, weaving them seamlessly into stories, but he states them outright, with poetry and grace, and I, for one, am glad he does. Take his ideas of DNA as Memory, birthed of its parent, Chance:

…Chance also created some astoundingly complex and resilient successes, and memory didn’t miss a chance to take these opportunities as far as it could. Eventually, with higher domains of complexity, Memory took on new responsibilities. Once Chance and Memory devised the nervous system, for example, Memory found work for itself beyond its endless, monotonous transcription. Chance interred Memory in their mutual creations, allowing, for example, a simple fish to remember not to eat a bluish alga, or swim too close to the coral. Chance encouraged Memory’s new work, and in new organisms new forms of memory were invented all the time: instinctual memory, procedural memory, sensory memory, short-term memory.

Perhaps the ending, which carefully leaves some laces untied, is still a little too perfectly assembled. I can’t say that I understand how you strike that balance between order and potential, though. Maybe in the next ten years, either Block or I will get there.

View all my reviews.

Garrison Keillor and Andy Warhol may not have much in common. At all. But today’s Writer’s Almanac celebrated the birthday of someone much more well known for his visual art than his writing. Maybe.

Today’s poem, “Andy Warhol for Familiar Quotations” by Peter Oresick is one with repeating lines (if anyone can identify it as a specific form, please let me know — I couldn’t find it anywhere). It begins:

Andy Warhol said, Always leave them wanting less.
Being born, Warhol said, is like being kidnapped.
Everyone will be famous, Andy said, for 15 minutes.
I thought everyone was just kidding, said Andy.

Being born, Andy Warhol said, is like being kidnapped.
Think rich, said Warhol, look poor.
I thought everyone was just kidding, said Andy.
Dying, Andy said, is the most embarrassing thing….

At first I wondered what Andy Warhol was doing on the Writer’s Almanac, but as the quotes wedged their way in again and again, I realized how pithy and quotable the man was. While quotes may not be exactly writing, they require thought, editing, and precise wording. Sounds a lot like writing to me.

Back to Andy and Garrison: there’s a pleasing converse, parallel effect between them. Andy was the very epitome of cool and — despite what he said — for a lot longer than fifteen minutes. He took the popular and ordinary and lifted it from its day to day to make it extraordinary and even more popular. (Are you gonna tell me you don’t think he sold soup?)

Garrison, on the other hand, is the very epitome of uncool. He’s midwestern, nerdy, and old fashioned. He takes the bizarre and unpopular and makes it extraordinary and at least a little popular.

I don’t know if I’m right, but I suspect they’d be friends, were Andy still around.

Be well, do good work, and always leave them wanting less.