working in a bookstore--the fantasy and the reality

I’m taking a wild guess here—but I imagine that 90% of all writers have, at one time, fantasized about working in a bookstore.

You know the dream: getting to read all those ARCs and discovering the next great book, chatting up like-minded literary customers, leisurely wandering among all the stacks, deciding which book to take home to review. Ah, and if your dream store includes a café, sipping afternoon coffee or tea with a visiting author.

I hate to burst the bubble. But, as I found out during my one dip into retail bookselling, it is hard work. Hard physical work—hefting cartons of books up from the basement, breaking down cardboard boxes and carting them to the dumpster. Hard mental work—learning a new computer system for checkout and looking up obscure titles. And hard emotional work (at least for the introverts among us)—remaining unfailingly polite and helpful even when your feet ache from hours of standing and you’d really rather catch up on unpacking cartons than make small talk with yet one more customer who just wants to chat, not necessarily buy. (And let’s not even talk about the rats who snap photos of book covers with their smartphones so they can order on Amazon later.)

But those lessons were all ahead of me when I got the invitation to work part-time for a couple of months at my local bookstore, McIntyre’s Books in Fearrington Village near Chapel Hill. A valued employee was taking some family leave, and they needed someone to fill in over the Christmas holidays. Would I (a fan of the bookstore and frequent customer) be interested? Would I? You bet!

I started with enthusiasm, and appreciated the staff’s support and training, from the incredibly hard-working owner Keebe Fitch (she hoped to turn me into a bookselling Ninja—alas, I never lived up to that expectation); manager Pete Mock, mystery guru extraordinaire and, behind his grumpy persona, one of the kindest guys ever; and Katherine Pinard, who, with great patience and a sense of humor, showed me the ropes before she left for her brief Sabbatical.

To be fair to myself, I was pretty good at “hand selling”—encouraging customers to consider this or that favored book. And I had a good attitude, taking to heart the store’s mantra of positive customer service. But the computer system sometimes baffled me, and a couple of sales disappeared into cyberspace forever. The hard physical work, even for a part-timer, surprised me.

I came away from my experience with a renewed appreciation for what it takes to run a successful independent bookstore. The old cliché comes to mind: ducks appearing to sail serenely on a pond, while paddling madly under the surface of the water. Considerable work and nonstop attention to books and customers are critical to an indy’s success. Basically, you have to love what you do to make it worthwhile.

And the McIntyre’s team does. And it shows. This month, they celebrate 25 years of being in business—an impressive achievement for any small bookstore. Hats off to you, McIntyre’s, for working hard to make it look easy!

http://www.fearrington.com/village-shops/mcintyres-books/

Two love stories

Wait—don’t hit the delete button!

These are not what you might think from the title. No mo ros, no heaving bosoms and intense, brooding heroes.

Rather, these are love stories that seem vibrant and real.

The first is The Wind Is Not a River by Brian Payton. It’s the kind of novel that stirred tension: I wanted to read it fast, compulsively, because it was so gripping—and I wanted to slow down to savor the language and to delay reaching the end.

The basic story revolves around the determined efforts of a journalist to learn more about World War II activity on the Aleutian Islands. Military efforts to black out any news of the conflict between Americans and Japanese on American soil—perceived as the possible first step in an invasion of the United States—stymie but do not deter John Easley. Taking on the identity of a Canadian airman, he hops a USAF reconnaissance flight to learn more about action in the Aleutians.

The plane crashes, he parachutes to safety on the beach—although safety is only an illusion. Japanese soldiers are camped nearby, but the greater danger is starvation, bitter cold, and mind-alerting isolation.

Determination also describes John’s wife, Helen, who sloughs off her passive mode waiting for John to return. Despite having no background in song and dance, she manages to join a USO group heading to Alaska to entertain American troops. Her real intention is to find her husband, who is missing and may be a prisoner of war or dead.

The ways in which these two people fight their own battles, physical and emotional, testify to their impressive strength of character and devotion to each other. It’s hard not to root for these two decent people to overcome obstacles and reunite.

The second book is Still Life with Crumbs, Anna Quindlen’s latest novel. She gives us a heroine who is too rarely depicted in fiction: a late middle-aged, long-divorced woman, strong and creative, yet dogged by worries of plummeting income and, even more worrisome, possibly disappearing artistic skills.

There’s an unlikely love interest, a man who draws Rebecca Winter into a welcome friendship after she moves to a small town to reduce her living costs. She begins as an outsider, isolating herself by choice and circumstance, but she discovers, over time, that the bonds of community enrich rather than constrain her life. And although the slow-evolving romance is central to this story, the more gripping tale is Rebecca’s rediscovery of her well of creativity.

The novel’s tone is wry and honest—no treacly feel-good stuff here. Instead, Still Life depicts an honest, winning portrayal of a woman plagued with money worries and self-doubt, full of flaws. As readers, we worry about her and cheer her success in love and art.

E-books--a grudging appreciation

Usually, I’m the curmudgeon who grumps about e-books, but I’m coming around to the view that they do have their advantages—especially for writers.

One example: Jim Conaway, a fine writer who excels in both fiction and nonfiction, recently released most of his work online. He explains: “E-books are satisfying for a writer because they open up a past thought dead and, well, published. In fact, these stories were just waiting to be re-discovered, also the inspiration, the places, the characters, even the paper trails leading to their creation.”

Jim is a friend from my college days. After studying a year at Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Writing Fellow in the early 1960s, he took up journalism, first, as a newspaper reporter in New Orleans, later as a freelance writer based in Europe, and then as wine critic for The Washington Post. In recent years, he’s concentrated on long-form journalism, writing for The National Geographic, The New York Times, Harpers, and Gourmet. In addition to three novels, he’s published nine books of nonfiction and a memoir about growing up in his hometown of Memphis in the 1950s.

My favorite of his nonfiction work is Vanishing American: In Search of Our Elusive Landscape, essays he describes as being about “lost culture and landscape.”  But perhaps Jim’s best-known book is Napa:  The Story of an American Eden, which stirred both controversy and admiration. It, and its sequel, The Far Side of Eden: Old Land, New Money, and the Battle for Napa Valley, are required reading for anyone interested in the real story of American viticulture. Jim’s latest foray into this country is Nose, a satiric novel that punctures the pretentiousness of Napa culture and celebrates the innovators who make fine wine and also protect the environment.

Jim began a blog in 2012, musing on wine, winemakers, and a few other things that catch his attention. Recognizing how powerful the Internet was in reaching readers, he recentely decided to harness its power by releasing some of his books, long out of print, online. Collectively, his books are an impressive body of work, and the online versions invite new readers to dip into his writing. Check out his blog and the site for his work:

http://cjonwine.blogspot.com

http://www.fearlessbooks.com/Conaway.htm

In another example of the benefits of ebooks, my brother, Mike Cavender just self-published, at age 68, his first novel through the CreateSpace platform (a division of Amazon).  Although Mike also started out as a newspaper reporter, his career has been less linearly literary. He’s embraced the natural world as a fly fishing guide and as director of a land trust in the North Carolina mountains. But the urge to tell stories burbled up, and he’s been working on short stories and novels for a few years now.

Impatient to get his first novel out, after years of revising and polishing and learning, he decided to skip the time-consuming, and possibly fruitless, search for an agent. So, he self-published his novel, Revenge on the Fly, and has been working hard to build his audience—which is small, but growing, mostly through word-of-mouth and strong reviews on Amazon. He’s learned, to his chagrin, that many independent bookstores won’t take the book, because of its association with Amazon, indy bookstores’ natural enemy. A few—notably FlyLeaf Books in Chapel Hill and Park Road Books in Charlotte—have liked the book and taken a chance on it. But Mike’s main outlet is Amazon, where his sales are running about 1:3 ebooks and print books. For more, check Mike’s Amazon listing and his blog on politics and writing:

http://www.amazon.com/Revenge-Fly-Michael-Cavender/dp/1484915100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392149769&sr=8-1&keywords=revenge+on+the+fly

http://www.noveldistraction.com

The Real Ann Patchett

OK, I have to admit it: Ann Patchett intimidates me. She is a prolific writer (six novels, two nonfiction books), successful (PEN/Faulkner award, Orange award, glowing reviews), and she owns an independent bookstore (surely the fantasy of most readers and maybe a few writers).

Now, she’s gone and published a terrific collection of nonfiction pieces—essays that reveal her to be brave, vulnerable, funny, generous, compassionate, and hardworking.

The intriguingly declarative title, This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, might lead you to expect a treacly memoir. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, she does tell you about her winding path to meeting Mr. Right (actually, Dr. Right) and resisting him for years before she finally agrees to marriage—an institution she’s always regarded as dangerous. (She explains her reluctance: “I figured that if I never got married, I’d never get divorced.”).

Most of the essays were previously published in magazines like Granta, Harper’s, Bark, Vogue, and the New York Times Magazine, which give you an idea of her professional stature. Patchett is perhaps best known for her novels, but this collection of nonfiction shows the range of her work and style.

She writes about topics that could veer toward the sentimental—her deep love for her dog, Rose, her compassionate caretaking of her grandmother who’s sinking into dementia—but her economy of style and open-heartedness pack an emotional wallop.

Patchett travels for magazine assignments and book tours, but her heart is in Nashville—the very place she longed to escape in her youth. Now, it’s home. So, it’s only natural that, when the remaining two bookstores in the city close their doors, she decides that Nashville needs an independent bookstore—and she’s the one to make it happen. “The Bookstore Strikes Back,” Patchett’ tale of opening Parnassus Books (with co-owner Karen Hayes), will gratify readers and indy bookstore fans everywhere.

Moreover, in promoting Parnassus, Patchett discovers that she has, inadvertently, assumed the role as spokesperson for independent book stores everywhere. Through interviews, appearances on television shows like The Colbert Report, talking to readers, she is adamant on the subject: bookstores are not dead. She writes: “Now that we could order any book at any hour without having to leave the screen in front of us, we realized what we had lost: the community center, the human interaction, the recommendations of a smart reader rather than a computer algorithm… I promised whomever was listening that from those very ashes, the small, independent bookstore would rise again.” And so it does. See http://www.parnassusbooks.net

So, actually, now that I think about it, Ann Patchett isn’t intimidating—she’s impressive, yes, and famous. But through this collection of articles, she reveals herself to be a warm, witty, and thoughtful person—and very real.

(And can she write! But that’s a topic for the next post.)

In Praise of Libraries

     I live about equidistance between two county libraries. One is my home county library, housed in a new, airy building on the campus of a community college. As I enter through glass doors, one of several librarians greets me and asks if I need help. After a leisurely browse through the fiction shelves, with a quick stop in the children’s section, I check out. The librarian asks my opinion about a book I’ve chosen, and we chat for a minute, before I bundle up my books and leave.

     The other library, located in a more affluent county, offers a far richer range of holdings. This, too, is a new building, or at least, newly renovated, and it, too is an airy and welcoming structure. But the librarians there—ah, not so friendly. In fact, the library offers an automated scanner so patrons don’t even have to engage with a librarian in person at all.

    I pay an annual, out-of-county fee here because it’s convenient to my grandchildren’s homes and because the selection of books on CD is wonderful. But still, I never experience the same little flutter of pleasure when I go to this library as I do when I visit Chatham County’s Library. Like a top-notch department store or an independent bookstore, the Chatham County Library staff emphasize customer service in a way that seems genuine and welcoming. It reminds me of the libraries of my childhood, where, over time, I formed a relationship with the librarian: she (almost always a she) knew my name, remembered what series books I liked, always had a suggestion for a new title.

     Many elements combine to make a good library: comfortable spaces, a strong collection, access to computers—but most libraries these days have such basics. It’s the people who make the difference in our—or, at least, in my—experience. The Chatham County Library wins that contest, hands down. I thank them.

Sharing the pleasures

"Neither a lender nor a borrower be"—fergetit!

This early-morning email made my day:

I am leaving in the basket on my front porch for you: a piece of mail that was delivered to us by mistake, and Sonya Sotomayor's, book, My Beloved World.   I have finished the book and thought you or someone else from the Monday group would like to read it while I am gone.  It is a quick read and interesting.

One of the pleasures of the reading life is sharing books you love with someone you know will appreciate them just as you do—or, that’s the hope. It’s not just the exchanging of the books themselves: it’s what embedded in the exchange. My friend Ruth remembered that we’d talked about Sotomayor’s memoir, My Beloved World, and that I’d expressed a keen interest in it. A friend who listens—priceless! And she knew I’d be glad to pass it on to the other members of our Monday morning coffee group. Thus, one book read and appreciated becomes a shared pleasure, an emblem also of shared interest.

Last year, my daughter Katherine passed on to me her copy of Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo, saying she loved it and thought I would, too. I pay attention to her passions, so this endorsement overcame my reluctance (laziness) to read what I knew, from reviews, to be a heart-wrenching book.  Now, when I read the book, I will be thinking of “my” Katherine and how she responded to the story. So, another layer in experiencing this book.

So, without beating a dead horse, this is one reason why I don’t like eBooks. You can’t share them. 

Tiny mosses, big theory

The Signature of All Things

I’m not a big Elizabeth Gilbert fan. I found her famous memoir, Eat, Pray, Love annoyingly self-involved. I liked the eating part in Italy, the guru/praying section in India less so, and the love part in Indonesia too gushing. I turned my nose up at her next book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, which detailed her capitulation to that institution.

So, I’m not sure why I decided to read Gilbert’s latest book, The Signature of All Things. But I did and I’m glad. It’s a sprawling (599 pages) novel that could have benefited from editing and trimming. But maybe not. After all, it addresses the whole of the known physical world and our place in it.

The core story follows the education and career of a 19th century botanist, Alma Whittaker. Born into wealth and a family that values discipline and learning over love and compassion, Alma develops her natural gift as a scientist, completely self-taught. Ungainly and unattractive, she relies on her considerable intelligence to make her way in the world.

And does she ever make her way. First, she explores her immediate home environment, learning about mosses in a deep and profound way. Then, she travels from her sheltered home in Philadelphia to Tahiti—this time seeking enlightenment about her late husband rather than exploring the natural world. But the natural world persists in calling to her in mysterious ways.

Over time, Alma develops a theory of evolution, very nearly mirroring Charles Darwin’s. But she grapples with a central weakness in her theory, so refuses to publish her views. Also, she is a woman and a relative unknown in the late 1800s scientific world—so who would listen to her anyway?

For me, the most fascinating part of this book was exploring the ways Alma develops her theory and makes peace with the reality that she will never be acknowledged for it. And the sections describing her passion for mosses and other elements of the physical world are beautiful. The book’s weakness? At times, too much exposition, and at other times, too much Gothic heavy breathing.

Still, Gilbert has given us a rich portrait of a female scientist who persists in her quest for knowledge and a rich life of the mind.