A few times this past summer, customers approached me and asked for recommendations.  The conversations went something like this:

Customer: What do you recommend?

Me: What kind of book are you looking for?  Light and fluffy?  Serious?  Uplifting?  Funny? 

C: I just want a really good read but I prefer books that end on an uplifting note. 

M: .........

I am quite sure that every such interaction leaves the customer shaking his or her head at the illiterate help that the bookstore employs.  It would really be much easier if I just had a sticker on my name tag that said "I am constantly reading but none of the books have ever been part of a tv program's book club."  Because, despite what people tell you, they in fact are scared off by titles that have never been endorsed by a celebrity.  Except for one woman to whom I recommended Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible.  The copy I found had an Oprah's book club sticker on it and the woman stopped listening to me once her eyes spotted that.  "Oh I'd never read anything that Oprah picked."  I tried to tell her that the book had been released and received accolades long before Oprah touted it, to no avail.  But that woman seems to be the exception to the rule, at least as far as I've experienced.

But when someone walked in wanting a light summer read, with an uplifting storyline, all that came to mind were the two books about the Holocaust I had just finished.  Uplifting!  Light reading!  Err- not exactly.  Even the more hilarious books I read are not your normal humor books.  Sarcastic to be sure, but, unfortunately, not for everyone.  Recommending books is hard work!

So how DO people find out about what they want to read next?  Well, some readers stick to the same tried and true authors, as several customers proclaimed as they gladly bought the new Nicholas Sparks book from me Tuesday.  Some stick to a certain genre, getting leery if a title is classified where they aren't comfortable roaming.  Some read the local papers and then ask for an obscure local book that hasn't been printed in ages but was just profiled "recently".  Some listen to NPR and come in with no title or author because they had no opportunity while driving to scribble down such needed information.  Some read the Sunday New York Times Book Section and are shocked to hear that a book might be profiled before its release.  If one visits a local library, they might have recommendations from Bookpages, a free monthly publication if the library carries it.

Well, as less communities have bookstores for publishers to display their wares in, publishers have been looking for new ways to reach out to readers. 
Which brings us to this:

This is a trailer for Chuck Klosterman's new novel The Visible Man which was released last week.  A video preview for a book?  It just doesn't sit well with me.  I rarely read a book after I've seen a movie version of it because the movie influences what my mind's eye visualizes from the book.  The main character now looks suspiciously like the Hollywood actor cast in that role.  The locale is strikingly similiar to the movie shoot's location.  Even when a movie is said to be so different from the book, I still rarely find myself coming up with a story independent of the movie's influence.

But in this age of technology ruling every aspect of our lives, can books survive without technology intervening?  The e-book revolution is happening.  Will a trailer for each new book be the next big thing to take readers by storm?  I hope not, though I'm also a holdout of the e-book revolution.      

 

In August, this East Coast girl went to the West Coast for the first time.  I'm certainly not opposed to travel, having been to London a few times and a couple quick stops from there to other parts of Europe as well.  But somehow it took until my 33rd year to make it to the West Coast of my own country.  I went from the Northeast to the Northwest, Seattle to be exact.  As the plane was starting its descent, I was welcomed with this sight of the Cascades.

 
When preparing for my trip, I borrowed some travel guides for Seattle from my local library.  The volumes in stock were the old standby series, Fodor's and Frommer's.  I'm relieved I brought both with me, as one had the wrong (old) address for a bookstore I wanted to check out.  Yes, I work at a bookstore and yet, on vacation, I wanted to visit one of the local independent bookstores.
This one in particular.  

The Elliott Bay Book Company could quite possibly be my dream store.  Well, maybe if they had a fireplace like the fondly remembered Market Bookshop from my youth.  When a store looks as amazing as this, how could it not quickly worm its way into this book lover's heart?!

The two above photos are from the store's flickr page.  This next one is a photo I snapped while browsing through the store for a few hours on my last day in Seattle.

If I remember correctly, this is part of the fiction section, roughly around the B's.  Each piece of paper flowing down from the shelves is either a staff recommendation or information you should probably know about an upcoming release or author appearance.  The vast majority are staff recommendations and I spent some of my browsing time checking out what the staff had written about books that I had also enjoyed.  I often feel compelled to do that in a bookstore, as if I'm investigating whether I'd find myself a book reading best friend in one of their employees.  I do the same when I check out music stores as well.  Just a weird little habit of mine, much like needing to visit bookstores despite working in one.

The last morning of my trip, I woke up with the belief that the opportunity to check out Elliott Bay Book Co. had been missed.  I reasoned with myself that this was ok; I could indeed survive for six entire days without surrounding myself with books.  That convincing wasn't really working.  I felt a little shaky.  Going cold turkey isn't for everyone.  I tried telling myself that I've done it before, living for almost an entire week without stepping foot inside a bookstore.  In fact, the last time that had occurred was probably during the last century.  I was definitely getting lightheaded at that realization.  The longest time I have taken off from work previous to this trip was a vacation to London about five years ago.  That trip definitely included some time in bookshops, as my two traveling companions were friends and co-workers from the bookstore.  Now I was seriously getting concerned that my body  mind would not be able to handle this separation.  A week without the internet, as I don't own a smart phone and didn't bring a laptop on the trip, was proving to be fairly easy.  But no bookstore visit might have ended up being the death of me.

So it was that I found myself meeting up with my sister and brother-in-law on my last day in the northwest and joining them in their search for a tattoo shop.  Our cousin had suggested two places, both in the Capital Hill area of Seattle.  My heart skipped a beat.  I think I think that's where the bookstore was.  Upon finding the second tattoo shop, and, more importantly, an artist who had time to work on a tattoo for my sister, I realized that there could be some time for me to fill that afternoon.  I discretely opened the travel guide and flipped through the pages.  My heart skipped a few more beats.  The store, in fact, was in this area!  The angels sang, the light shined down on me from the heavens...ok, maybe not from the heavens.  I was still inside the tattoo shop after all.  I deserted my brother-in-law and went in search of my Mecca.

Relief washed over me as I walked in the door.  My cold turkey experiment had thankfully come to an end.  I swear those angels were singing again too as I realized just how amazing this store is.  The gleaming wood floors, the towering walls lined with books, the tables neatly stacked with new arrivals; this was exactly how my mind imagined this store.  I perused the local interest section and looked over the display of their current bestsellers.  I happily found myself to be one of numerous customers in the store despite it being a perfect Seattle day outside, both warm and sunny.  I browsed their table of bargain books and noticed the sign that indicated that even more bargain titles were on the mezzanine level.  I admit to being a little giddy at the prospect of another floor of books.  I continued onward and upward for two hours.

I have never been so disappointed in myself as when I realized my lightheaded feeling could be real.  I had browsed my way straight through lunch time and into the early afternoon.

I reluctantly took my treasures to the front counter to purchase.  The employee suggested a frequent shopping card for me, but, with a true sadness that I hope I properly relayed to him, I declined, as my time in Seattle was quickly dwindling.  

Perhaps I can find solace in the belief, however misguided it is, that I was an employee of this store that afternoon.  The bookseller's impulse in me to straighten misplaced books could not be suppressed that day...                 

Ten Favorite Reads From 2010, in no particular order

I wish certain books were marketed as much for adults as for teens.  The Book Thief is one title I feel would be widely read by adults if only it wasn't listed as YA (young adult) fiction.  It shows up on many school reading lists and a recent obsession with WWII finally got me to crack it open.  It was finished over the course of two nights even though I continually told myself I would read just one more chapter before bed.  Narrated by Death, The Book Thief follows a little girl through the horrors of WWII and the unfolding of events that deeply affect her even as she doesn't understand much of what happens.

Having worked at a bookstore for over ten years now, its not hard to collect recommendations from coworkers.  Ella Minnow Pea is one such recommendation I was told about numerous times and my only excuse for not reading it sooner is that, well, sometimes I can be dumb.  It's a relatively thin volume and yet it really got me thinking.  Essentially I feel this book is a warning cry for the masses who do not pay attention to the events that surround them until it directly affects them.  The small island community that Ella Minnow Pea is set in could easily be any of many American towns and cities where the citizens willingly keep the blinders on until it is too late for both them and their community.  A wake up call that I wish more people would read.

Faithful Place is the third of Tana French's mysteries about the Dublin police squad and the cases it investigates.  Despite eagerly anticipating its release, I waited a couple weeks before reading this latest one.  But only because I knew that the sooner I read it (and finished it) the longer the wait for French's next book.  While all three of her books have focused on the Dublin detective squad, the main character of each book changes and that new focus keeps me coming back.  I can't wait to see which character I get a deeper look at in her next book.

After reading Julie & Julia when it was released a few years ago, I wanted to learn more about Julia Child.  My Life In France details her time in France when she first starts cooking and attends Le Cordon Bleu cooking school.  Perhaps one of the aspects of Child's life I warmed to first was the age at which she found her calling.  She was in her early thirties when she dived into the world of cooking and never looked back.  It is reassuring to know that a woman who helped transform the way cooking was viewed in this country and the world over didn't start young.  Maybe I'll discover my own calling in the next few years as well.

I enjoy books set in a location that's familiar to me.  Let's Take the Long Way Home chronicles a friendship and the subsequent loss of it.  Set around Boston, I knew the places that were referenced and somehow that made me feel like I was a part of their friendship.  Two authors, dog lovers, middle aged women with no children or husbands, and one strong friendship that anyone would be blessed to partake in.  The book is sad; the friendship is lost not through missteps on either of their parts but to cancer taking down Caroline Knapp.  I would also recommend almost any or Knapp's other books; I only haven't read Pack of Two.

Every so often, I find myself wanting to throw modern life to the curb and go retreat to living off the land.  Reading The Blueberry Years certainly brought that feeling up once again for me.  The Blueberry Years chronicles a husband and wife team as they embark on a dream of owning a blueberry farm.  The book pulls no punches on a sentimental level; the work is backbreaking and luck has as much of a hand in their success as all the hard work they put into the soil.  They find many obstacles to overcome and not all of them are on the fields.  Transplanting themselves far from family into a small farming town created an isolation they had not anticipated, but by the end of their experiment, they have created a family out of their customers and neighbors and local wildlife.

Next up on the list is another book that I feel is begging me to go seek out the simple life.  We Took To The Woods tells the story of a young woman in the '30's who marries and follows her husband away from the bustling city she called home to the great north wilderness in the state of Maine.  This book is some of her tales from that life.  How they made it through the winters when the ice literally blocked them off from the outside world.  How closely one came to rely on neighbors though they live so far away that one might rarely see them.  Neighbors in her life came to meant anyone within miles of her, maybe even someone on the other end of a series of lakes that spread through the forest.  She wrote of the daily trials of a life so separate from a society she had previously been comfortable in, yet without ever making her question her love of this new life.

My Neck Of The Woods continues the stories from the wilderness of Maine but focuses more on the people encountered than the mere act of day to day living.  I never went searching for this volume of work;  I like to think it searched me out.  The library copy of We Took To The Woods that I checked out included My Neck Of The Woods and, once I had enjoyed the first half of the book, I knew I'd have to read the latter part as well.  In this day of dwindling in person social contact, it was refreshing to read about the relationships that helped form her time in the wilderness.  Some people made brief appearances while others were long time fixtures in her life and she treasured the connections of both kinds that she made.

I've already included two books from one author on this list, so I had less qualms about doing it again.  I Am The Messenger was written by the author of The Book Thief.  He's had a few other books, but after reading these two volumes, I can't wait to see what he comes out with next.  I Am The Messenger follows a young man on his quest to deliver messages he mysteriously receives to the proper recipient.  As quickly as I had been drawn into The Book Thief, I was drawn into I Am The Messenger and didn't want to put it down.

American On Purpose rounds out my list this year.  American On Purpose follows the rise of a Scottish comic on his way to rule America's late night tv.  Well, maybe rule isn't quite the right term.  But Craig Ferguson was my favorite of the late night hosts and still remains so after reading his memoir.  A book that could have merely exploited the misadventures of his early years managed to avoid that without leaving any of those events out.  He is not viewing his life through rose-colored glasses and he doesn't expect the reader to either.  As someone with casual knowledge of his life, this book put me squarely in the fan category.    

          

 
 
      

Books Read in 2010

(chronologically)

Schulz and Peanuts by David Michaelis

Lamb by Christopher Moore

Cleaving by Julie Powell

This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman

Shakespeare: the World as Stage by Bill Bryson

Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

American On Purpose by Craig Ferguson

Andromeda Klein by Frank Portman

Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

I Am An Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler

Shit My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs

I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee

Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone by Eduardo Galeano

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life by Steve Almond

After the Kiss by Terra Elan McVoy

Running Waves by T.M. Murphy and Seton Murphy

Requiem, Mass by John Dufresne

Art of Eating In by Cathy Erway

Cakewalk by Kate Moses

Weeping Underwater Looks a Lot Like Laughter by Michael White

Octopus Pie by Meredith Gran

Faithful Place by Tana French

Molly Fox's Birthday by Deirdre Madden

Spiced by Dalia Jurgensen

Talking to Girls About Duran Duran by Rob Sheffield

My Life in France by Julia Child

Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

Let's Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell

My Best Friend Is a Wookie by Tony Pacitti

Two Cents Plain by Martin Lemelman

Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me by Ben Karlin

Blueberry Years by Jim Minick

Drinking at the Movies by Julia Wertz

You're a Horrible Person, But I Like You by Believer Magazine

Room by Emma Donoghue

Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists by Courtney Martin and Courtney Sullivan

We Took To The Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich

Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames

My Neck of the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich

Dark Rain by Mat Johnson

Great House by Nicole Krauss

Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse

Naked by David Sedaris

Art & Lies by Jeanette Winterson

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

Beet Queen by Louise Erdich

Outermost House by Henry Beston

Ten Favorites That I Read In 2009

In no particular order, here are my favorite reads from the previous post's list.

84, Charing Cross Road records a correspondence between a New Yorker and employees of an English bookstore after World War II.  I am envious of an age when handwritten letters arrived on one's mailbox frequently and, during this internet age, it was a pleasant reminder to read of the connections made when responses were not instantaneous.  

The Likeness is the second mystery from Dublin author Tana French.  I discovered her work almost by accident;  a customer was returning her first novel and, while waiting for my manager to authorize the customer's return, I flipped open to the first few pages of In the Woods.  I was immediately sucked into the story of Dublin detectives on the hunt to solve a murder.  After finishing that first mystery in near record time, I lucked out and learned that her second novel was just arriving in stores.  I couldn't put The Likeness down either.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is another collection of correspondence, though fictional, again taking place around World War II.  The book had been on the bestseller list for a while and I admit that I never took much interest in it.  Then a friend recommended it, the book having been sent to her by a friend.  Over the course of a couple days, I devoured it and was upset with myself that I had not looked into it before.  Since then I have given this book as a gift and can only hope that each recipient has enjoyed it as much.       

This next title was suggested by the same friend and am I glad she did.  A Homemade Life has managed to rise above other books in a category that has enjoyed an increased popularity thanks to books like Julie and Julia.  Are the books cookbooks with bits of personal story thrown in or memoirs with recipes sprinkled throughout?  I think A Homemade Life is a great read that also happens to contain great recipes, though I should probably hang my head in admitting I've never tried to make a single one.  Though the chocolate cake recipe is suppose to be amazing.  

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is another book that had been flying off the shelf at the store that I never really looked into.  Then, while browsing a bargain remainder bookstore, I saw it for $4 and figured for that price, I could take the plunge.  I had also just given it as a gift, based on the fact that "everyone buys it" and figured it would be good to know if I had given a dud of a book or if it really was the gem customers had said it was.  I recognize how dicey it can be to rely on how frequently a book sells to decide if the book is worth the paper its printed on, but, at least in this case, I wasn't let down.

I started reading Big Oyster because the library copy of another Mark Kurlansky title, Salt, was checked out and for some reason I apparently decided that I needed to read about the history of the oyster in America.  Kurlansky does an excellent job of making a readable story out of a topic one thinks could be utterly boring.  I still haven't tried oysters,  but I at least find their role in America's history interesting and am glad I took the time to learn it.  

Set in the time of 9/11 NYC, Love Is The Higher Law looks at that day and its aftermath through the eyes of several teenage narrators.  It took me quite some time from when this book was released to finally read it.  I shouldn't have been hesitant to read it; author David Levithan is known for his expert handling of "adult" topics that have always affected teenagers as well.  And he did that again here.  

As an adult reader, I say its a shame if you've never delved into the teen section.  There are many selections that should never be confused as being anything close to the "Gossip Girl" genre of teen books.  Because I Am Furniture is one of those titles that rise above the genre.  Because I Am Furniture also reminds one to investigate books that don't just fall into a normal prose format.  Through poems, the reader follows high schooler Anke as she discovers that she is more than just furniture in the lives around her.

Wintergirls is by another author known for her hard-hitting teen books.  If you haven't read Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, I recommend that title highly as well.  Anderson manages to immerse herself into the minds of teens as the characters go through some of the toughest challenges any teen can face.  Wintergirls is not a light read, and left me feeling the character's emptiness long after I finished reading the last sentence.  

The Elegance of the Hedgehog was one of my picks for the book group I'm in.  Not only did I really enjoy it, so did the other (two) members of my book group.  You might think that a book about the concierge at a Parisian apartment building and one of the teenage inhabitants of that apartment building could draw you in so completely, but by the end of the book, none of us wanted to stop reading about those characters.