A Ramble Before Caffeine

Poking about a bit and updating the links over to your left there. I'm trying to keep a blogroll that has sites I actually trust and read on a fairly regular basis. Resisting the urge to fill it with every blog/site that makes me go "Ooooh, shiny" is tough. So, if there's a site you think is missing, or one you'd like me to peek at, please holler. There are tons and tons of book blogs out there and I'm trying to find the gems.

One thing I realized was missing was a link to American Booksellers for Freedom of Expression. They're fighting not only against banning books, but also against the USA PATRIOT Act and other legislation that threatens free speech.

I used to have this bumper sticker which read "Free people...publish books, buy books, sell books, read books...DON'T BAN BOOKS." I actually still have it somewhere because when I found it, I was driving this monstrosity that was just waiting to head off to the junk yard and couldn't bear to put it on a car I knew I wouldn't have for long. The sticker is from a long ago Banned Books Week and was most likely my first exposure to ABFFE. 2007's Banned Books Week is just over a month away. Expect ramblings and recommendations.

Three-quarters of the way through King Rat by the way. Over half of that list read...now I have to actually review them.

Housekeeping

Before I digress, an update on posts to come:

1. On On Writing: never before have I underlined so many passages in a book, thinking to myself, "Yes, oh, he's so very right." I've loved King's writing since I was in junior high, so maybe I was predisposed to clicking with the book, but still. He is a genius.

2. I do not recommend reading King Rat when one is eating. The book is brilliant, I love Mieville's descriptions. However, I was having lunch while reading about Saul's first breakfast. Eep.

Okay, now I digress.

In part of my crusade to get more things accomplished, I'm trying to keep on top of housecleaning. I live in a perpetual state of clutter - junk mail waiting to be shredded or used as fuel for our chiminea, books that need to be put away, comics waiting for a new long box, clean laundry waiting to be folded, stuff everywhere.

I have in my mind this idea that everyone in the world is neater than I am, and while I know it's not true, going to family parties and seeing spotless houses doesn't help. (Yes, deep down I know that chances are the place was a mess twenty-four hours before, and the host/hostess frantically shoved anything that doesn't have a place into closets and under beds to be dealt with later, but still.)

Which means that this post from Bitch, Ph.D and the resulting flickr community make me feel a whole lot better.

Now, I know that having a neat house won't magically open a bookstore for me, or make a manuscript spring forth, complete and edited, from my forehead, but it's strangely related in my mind. Get the house in order, other things fall into place. Plus, if there's nothing to clean, I won't be vacuuming cats when I should be writing. No, I won't be abandoning that hour of writing I mentioned in the last post, but I will be tacking some extra straightening up onto the evenings.

As a matter of fact, I can tie this into bookselling. At the end of the night, when the store is quiet, you straighten the shelves. Walk around, look for the books that have been shoved back in on top of the others, alphabetize, find the stack of books someone left on a stool and put them in their rightful places. Replace the books that have been bought from displays and fill in gaps. Sweep the floor. Clear away the coffee cup that someone left balanced on a shelf - whether it was forgotten or left because he or she couldn't be bothered to find a trash can, it's trash now.

You do that because it's your store, and you're proud of it. When books are in their rightful places, you can find them for customers without having to cast about muttering, "It's supposed to be right here..." A cluttered store isn't very inviting.

So, without a bookstore to straighten, looks like it's the house. And the same philosophy applies: I straightened one section at a time - what good is it to alphabetize the top shelf and walk away if the six beneath it are still a mess? So. One section at a time, one room at a time.

Onward.

Devil's in the Dreaming

Five years since I last worked there, two years since it closed its doors for good, and I'm still having Booksmith dreams.

Usually it's the one where I want to close the store but I can't, because there are still customers browsing. There's probably some deeper meaning to that, something about unfinished business or things getting in the way of stuff I want to get done, but I never really stop to examine what's going on in my life when I have them.

Last night, though, it was about going back to work there. I was in the back room, and Pat was sitting at the supervisor's desk doing something. Laurie was standing on the stairs, or maybe she was over by the back door, receving books. Maybe both. I don't know. Dreams are fluid like that.

I stood there shooting the shit with Pat and pulled the schedule (a hand-drawn, photocopied grid on an old clipboard, which was suspended by a rubber band hanging on a nail) towards me. There were empty spots on it, places where I knew they needed someone else on the shift, and I said, very casually, "You want me to come in? I can."

That was it, really. Nothing exciting, just me offering to fill in some shifts, come in 6-9:30 some nights, or work Saturday mornings.

It's pretty obvious that I miss it a hell of a lot, but it's more than that, too. I seem to start feeling restless over the summers, like there's more I could and should be doing. I like my current job very much - good people, a place I know and a company that treats its employees well, customers I get along with. The only thing dragging me down is all the lost time - I leave my house at 7AM and don't get home until 6PM. That's an eleven hour day, and I only get paid for seven.

It's the kind of job where I could absolutely justify working from home two or even three days a week. Hell, I could argue for working full-time at home, but I'll admit it's helpful to be able to get up and walk over to the credit department, or our shipping person, or someone in customer service, and get an answer right away. I know that it won't happen; it's wishful thinking.

That desire to work from home, or closer to it, makes me start poking through the classifieds. There are a couple of small presses near where I live. Sadly, there are no indie bookstores close to home (until I open one...) Nothing, though, compelling enough for me to put in a resume.
Another thing that probably prompted the dream was that I am, finally, reading On Writing. Stephen King had short stories published before he was out of his teens. I'm fast approaching 30, with lots of things started, a couple things finished, and nothing submitted. Believe me, I am not wearing rose-colored glasses and thinking I could make a handy bit of pocket cash through writing. I know it doesn't work that way. You write for love of the craft, not for the piles of cash you might rake in if you get lucky. Same thing with bookselling - you don't do it because you're going to make millions.

But if I have to have a part-time job, it's going to either be in a bookstore or sitting my ass down and writing more.

Do I need a part-time job? No. We do all right for ourselves. It's simply something I toy with from time to time. Money is one of those worries always hanging out in the back of my head. What if...? What if...? What if...? My current job prevents me from working in a bookstore - it's considered a conflict of interest. And really, even if I could, where would I find the time? I know there are people who do it all the time, working 40 hours at one job and 20 at another, or working one job during the week and another on weekends. That's not something I'm willing to do right now.

Which leads me right back to writing more. My availability might suck for a retail position, but dedicating an hour or two a night to writing, that I can do. Plus, it's something immediately tangible: this is what I've done today, this is the progress I've made towards a goal. It's hard to measure my progress towards opening a bookstore in any sort of terms besides "Sent in monthly student loan/car payment." Writing - whether it gets published or not - feels like doing something.

Two different goals, but the rewards of one - the sense of accomplishment I get from writing - will help make the other seem more achievable.

On Spoilers

I'm not quite ready to review the last Potter book (notice how I haven't quite lived up to my other self-imposed reviews. Must structure time better...). However, this time last week the issue of spoilers came close to rivalling, if not overshadowing, the book's impending release.

Fans asked that people keep the details to themselves. J.K. Rowling asked that people let those who have waited ten years for this book find out how it ends on their own. Bookstores, newspapers and online newsletters made pledges that they'd avoid spoilers. And yet, when it came down to keeping that promise or getting the scoop, many chose the scoop. Most often, in the follow-up apologies sparked by the fans' outcry, the contrition has an asterisk - "We're-sorry-but..."

"We're sorry, but we didn't think any of what we said was a real spoiler."

"We're sorry, but why are you even reading reviews if you don't want to know what happens?"

"We're sorry, but this is news."

The parties in question seem genuinely surprised that anyone got offended, including at least one industry publication which sent out its newsletter with Harry's fate in a headline and quickly sent another message warning people not to open the first one.

And of course, all over the internet, people are gleefully spoiling the books - threads on forums with plot twists in the titles, sneakier ones where the subject seems innocent, but the message inside holds the revelations. What's the point of it? I suppose the cynical answer is simply that some people are jerks. What I really need to do is rephrase the question.

Why is it that this series in particular draws such maliciousness?

Is the amount of people looking to ruin the ending for others disproportionately large, or does it just seem like there are more because of all the hype and because the series is so successful?

I don't remember anything like this happening when Stephen King finally released The Dark Tower VII. I never felt like I had to hide myself away from message boards and media in the days and weeks leading up to its laydown. Granted, the audience for the Dark Tower books is very different - you probably wouldn't want your ten-year-old doing a book report on it. (I read The Gunslinger for the first time when I was twelve. My mother was afraid one of my teachers would see me reading it and take it away.)

When the season finale of Battlestar Galactica aired, I was away from home and the hotel didn't get Sci-Fi. It was only a day's wait for iTunes to make the episode available, but I wasn't worried that anyone would post the names of the Final Five on any websites I frequent - at least, they wouldn't post them without hiding them behind spoiler warnings. I know that, again, the audiences are very different between Battlestar and Harry.

Are there any better examples? Did this happen with the last Lemony Snicket book? What other series might have the same potential for asshattery in the future?

Still mulling this over. Thoughts and theories welcome while I better flesh out my own.

Cue Queue*

All right, so the list is a wee bit overdue. I have so. many. books. on my shelves (still not organized) that I've finally decided to suck it up and pick five - the three that always seem on top of my mental "I'll get around to it" list, one lent to me that has to get passed on in a timely manner, and one that's currently being buzzed about - sure, I have five years of catching up to do, but by the time 2012 rolls around, I don't want to say I skipped the books that were hot in 2007...

1. Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rackhoff. I'm slightly cheating here, as I'm already about halfway through it.

2. King Rat by China Mieville. I started it a long time ago and had to put it down for other things, but I know I was enjoying it.

3. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. We had a book club at work several years ago. It met three times and then never again, although the books and the people were excellent. The first book we read was Murakami's Underground, a non-fiction examination of the 1995 sarin gas attacks in Tokyo's subways. I ride the trains to work every day. It was a sobering, chilling book, especially in the wake of September 11th. Murakami's coverage made me a fan.

4. On Writing by Stephen King. I own it. I've read passages of it. I can tell you any number of points he makes in the book. I've never read it cover-to-cover. King is one of my favorite authors - I was remarking the other day that I haven't reread The Stand in far too long. I hang my head in shame.

5. The Kite Runner by Kalid Hosseini. I mentioned it in the "hot books I haven't read" post, and it just came out in paperback.

So, there's my next month's worth of reading. Well, I'll read more books than the ones on the list, but those are the ones I'm promising to write about. Keeping it simple to start. My literary preferences are probably pretty easy to figure out, although I'll try to mix it up a bit, read outside of my genre every now and then.

I'll let you know what's good and what sucks.

*the gamers that read this are wincing.

Lilacs: A digression

My bridesmaids held a trivia contest at my wedding shower. It was a game of "How well do you know the bride?" and they set up a list of twenty or so questions about me. I don't remember very many of them - did they ask what my favorite book was? Anything about music? I don't even remember who won. But there's one question I always remember at this time of year.

After everyone had filled out their responses, the bridesmaids plunked me down in a chair facing the room and asked me for the answers. I was a bit flustered by this day full of people fawning all over me, and there I had something like fifty relatives staring.

They wanted to know what my favorite flower was.

I forgot. And, in a panic to say something, I blurted out "Calla lillies." They were what I wanted in my bouquet, and I do like them. I heard my mother-in-law squeal at getting it right.

My dad sat at his table, grinning and shaking his head. (It was a co-ed shower - most of my friends are male. Thank god for my bridesmaids and my mom insisting it was okay to invite the guys.)

"Not a Calla lilly?" I said.

"You know what your favorite flower is," he said.

Still, I drew a blank.

"What do we have growing right beside the house?" he asked. "What kind of bush?"

It dawned on me. "He's right," I said, "It's lilacs. Purple ones."

I don't know why I love them so much. Whether it was a little girl obsession with anything purple, or whether it was simply their scent that attracted me to them, they've remained my favorite part of spring over the years. Partly, they remind me of home - my parents still have the bush of purple lilacs beside the house, and another bush of white ones in the far back corner of their yard.

I know they make my dad think of his own mother, who also loved them. She died in May, when I was small. His last call to her was on the way to go see her in the hospital. He told her he was bringing her lilacs. She was gone when he arrived.

We have a bush here, at our house. It takes me by surprise every year - suddenly there's this burst of color in the back yard, and there they are. I noticed it Saturday morning, while sweeping pine needles, and put the broom down to go see. They're not fully open yet, but it didn't stop me from cupping one in my hands and inhaling its scent. I'll take a cutting soon, when they're fully bloomed, and set it on my desk.

Certain things signal the seasons for me. It can't be Christmas until I hear the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" on the radio. Fall doesn't have a song or a flower, but a feeling in the air - a change in temperature, the earlier fading of daylight - one day it's summer, the next, something in the breeze tells me to dig out the jackets and give up sandals.

Spring's not real for me until the lilacs bloom - even though they don't come until it's nearly summer. The equinox is at least a month gone by then. Leaves are coming back on the trees. They just don't seem as green until there's that burst of purple to go with them.

The lilacs are here. Spring has arrived at last.

Still here, still planning

Now that the nice weather is finally rolling in, I might see productivity increase. I got hit hard with a case of the winter blues that pretty much lasted into and through April. I don't usually get them; I don't know why this year was different. I can't really call it any sort of real depression (not that I'd even know how to diagnose it), just... a general feeling of being down.

It didn't help that winter stayed through April, and just when it should have started getting sunny and warm, instead it was cold and rainy for what felt like weeks on end. We had a few bouts of nice weather, but the best of those came when I was stuck inside at sales conference for four days - in rooms with no windows, or when there were windows, the views were of other buildings.

I was sad without a reason to be, and it got all the more frustrating because every time I tried to put my finger on why, the best I could come up with was clouds-and-rain. How do you say to friends who have much more tangible problems, "Listen to me bitch - I'm sad because the weather sucks?" You don't. Or I don't, anyway. I'm reluctant to cry Seasonal Affective Disorder - like I said, this isn't a recurring thing. Whatever it was, though, it killed my desire to get moving on things - planning, writing... hell, I haven't read nearly as many books as usual.

Enough of the woe-is-me. This is about bookselling.

I've recently done a whole flurry of housecleaning - call it the spring cleaning I've been postponing for a few springs. In the room I call my study (which feels kind of pretentious, but "office" doesn't quite fit), I have three huge bookshelves. Two I sanded and stained myself last year, one's a Wal-Mart-special sort of deal. I transferred books from smaller shelves to them, but I'm only just getting around to the books that sat in bags, or on various piles on the floor.

My big accomplishment last week was getting them out of bags and off the floor, but they're not yet sorted on the shelves. As a matter of fact, looking at them makes my inner-bookseller cringe. Things stacked, not in any sort of order, spines turned towards the backs of the shelves. I need to take an evening and go through them - what to keep, what to give away, what to sell.

I know there are books in there that I bought with excitement and never got around to - one of the curses of my job is having so little time to read other publishers' books. At my desk, I have a journal of sorts with titles of books I want to read. Some I've purchased, some I'm telling myself I need to wait on until I have time to catch up.

Part of being a good bookseller is not just knowing what's hot right now, but also being well-versed in older titles. Frontlist's great, but how many frontlist titles make the transition to successful backlist? If a customer comes in and buys The Book Everyone's Reading This Month, what can you suggest that they read after? Sure, there are always books trying to cash in on the success of what's popular - not necessarily copycats, but books published to tie-in, or ride the other bestsellers' coattails. Take a look at how many pirate-themed books are out this summer.

But when someone's read all of those, and wants recommendations, a bookseller needs to be able to fall back on her knowledge of what's come before. I figure I have about five years' worth of lost time to make up for. I could spout backlist titles from this company, but what have I missed from outside while most of my reading has been within the same ISBN families?

I haven't read The Kite Runner. Or The Secret Life of Bees. Or The Dive from Clausen's Pier. Sure, I've made time for new Harry Potter books, and A Feast for Crows. I read Cell but not Lisey's Story. Would I have read any of those first three, were I working in a bookstore? I don't know. But at the very least I'd have a better grasp on them than simply knowing their titles.

The plan is this: at least one book a week from outside of my company, starting with the things on my shelves I've been putting off, and working through the journal of stuff to read. Continuing to books I've missed. I'll review them here, and I reserve the right to say "This sucked. I don't know what everyone was thinking."

I'll digress a moment and explain that last sentence. One of my pet peeves about some of the review sites out there is that they love everything. Not a single "the plot was weak." Not a hint of "The dialogue tags ripped me out of the story." Just praise, praise, praise, because (I suspect) publishers are swamping them with advanced copies, and who wants to piss off the publisher and stop receiving books?

So. Here, I'll let you know what I'm thinking about old books and new, as I read them. While book reviews aren't really getting me closer to owning a store of my own, they're at least tangential to the purpose of this blog. Because, really, what right do I have to call myself a bookseller if I don't know anything about the books I'm selling?

I'll post a list of titles in the queue when I've stared at the shelves and chosen some.

Sunlight. Warmth. Getting back into the swing of things. Clock's a-ticking.