Penny Post #51: Literature with a Capitol L.
My independent bookstore pitch.
Working at a bookstore, one encounters a whole cast of characters. There is the young mother rushing from one activity to another, flash flushed in mild embarrassment, quickly paying, out the door as quickly as she arrived. There is the grumpy old man browsing the children's section for his one-year-old granddaughter until we speedily wrap his uncertainty—something totaling one hundred dollars. There is the young college graduate (much like myself) who stops at our store on her way to Boston, where she will be surprising a friend with a gift. This was perhaps the most interesting encounter of the day, her requests sharp and capricious.
Her friend, a philosophy major, was pointedly well-read. The customer wanted to know if we had something like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky that isn't Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. She wanted to know if I'd read the book her mother co-authored with James Patterson, and although I didn't, I feigned interest while she took an awkward selfie and rearranged it front-facing on the shelf. Many of my suggestions—including Marcus Aurelius' Meditations—she quickly dismissed given that her friend isn't a stoic and would only be interested in reading mysticism, something by Rumi or Waite. To refer to an author solely by their last name requires a sort of literary elitism, a belief in the highbrow, a participation in The Academy (capitols intended) of which I'd never belonged.
Did I mention that it was my first day on the job?
She was one of many customers who entered our shop, requests ranging from the steamy and seductive Colleen Hoover to the serious and sobering Demon Copperhead. Yet this young college graduate’s requests dripped with conceit.
She threw out long-forgotten literary and philosophical movements as if they were second-hand knowledge and had formed a friendship seemingly based on classical literature and intellectual prowess, and who needed everyone in the store to know she was quoted in the Anxious Generation, Jonathon Haidt's 2024 bestseller. In that moment, admittedly, I’d thought I would’ve been a better interviewee.
My love of reading started when I downloaded ninety-nine cent books by no-name authors who wrote about werewolves and covens and fantastical realms. I visited their self-published websites, accidentally downloading virus' and loosing connectivity, just to read and re-read their series. This was my beginning. It took years to cautiously wander into Charles Dickens, Emily Brontë, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Authors of whom inhabit my shelves next to Sarah J. Maas, Stephanie Meyer, and Sally Rooney.
Exclusivity is where things collapse. Especially in the already fragile standing of independent bookstores nationwide. In fact—and I can attest to this personally—bookstores are remaining afloat because of the avid readers of Fourth Wing and A Court of Thorns and Roses, not, as I’m sure you’ll find extremely hard to believe, the readers of something like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky that isn't Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky. To imbue shame in the act of reading is to dismantle the practice entirely.
Working at a bookstore, one encounters a whole cast of characters, none as potent as the character of the space itself.
We wear aprons and give personal recommendations almost as often as we tuck bookmarks in the pages of a book. Our shelves are mildly disorganized and we often embark on a scavenger hunt with every new request, but the charm of our nook-of-a-store is as prevalent as the pages and pages of books stacked on each shelf. Our passion blisters and fills the space with a sparkling “have you tried…or…how about…”. Our ninety-six year-old owner and founder is also our sole book buyer, whose taste is far-ranging and whose mind is as sharp as a tack.
Read your Emily Henry or your Jenny Han or your E.L. James or your Dostoyevsky for all I care, yet get books in your hands, in your brains, and eventually, they will find their way into your soul.
Let the record show that the young college graduate did not purchase Tolstoy nor Dostoyevsky nor Rumi nor Waite. She purchased The Secret History by Donna Tarte, a book I didn’t recommend given her haughty requests, yet had loved reading myself. There is some kind of literary joke here I don't know how to tell.
I'll laugh anyway.
Until next time,
Kiera