Monday, March 8, 2010
A Must-Read for Bookstore Lovers
Please put "The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, A History" (Graywolf Press, 2006), by Lewis Buzbee, on your to-read list! I recently came across this book when I was chatting with a bookseller at The Depot, an independent bookstore near where I live in Marin County; when I told her how much I loved bookstores, she pressed this book on me and told me I absolutely had to read it. She was right! Buzbee writes vividly and engagingly of his lifelong love affair with books and bookstores. He worked in bookstores and later as a book sales representative for many years, and is a published fiction writer himself, so he knows this world very well. As the title suggests, the book includes Buzbee's own very well-told stories, interleaved with (just enough, not too much) historical background about books and bookstores. For me, the book's interest is enhanced even further by the fact that Buzbee lives in San Francisco, and writes about bookstores that I know as well. And, coincidentally, I found out after I finished the book that he teaches creative writing at the university where I teach too. "The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop" begins as follows: "When I walk into a bookstore, any bookstore...I am flooded with a sense of hushed excitement." How could you not want to continue reading?
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...and then there is the sad fact that those independent bookstores are becoming fewer and fewer. Borders started in Ann Arbor where I live, and I still remember what a wonderful store it was for many many years. All the sales people had to take a rigorous test before they were hired, and every department had at least one specialist. It was the first bookstore I saw that had comfy places to sit all around the store...it really was a special place. Now of course it is a huge corporation...and when you walk into the store instead of a sense of hushed excitement you are greeted with a perky salesperson who most likely knows very little about any of the subject areas, which is probably a moot point since there is no depth of inventory. About a quarter of the store is taken up by greeting cards and "fun" knickknacks By the way, maybe you should make Buzbee's acquaintance and invite him to visit your blog!
ReplyDeleteI agree 100 percent, Mary.
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