Oh my, am I jealous of Molly getting to be a Tumbleweed? Heck YES!
'What It's Like to
Live at a Bookstore in Paris'
"One minute I
was a visitor just like any other, and the next minute I
was welcomed in to
this huge, historic community of writers and
expatriates,"
said Molly Dektar, a Brooklyn College MFA student who
lived at
Shakespeare and Company http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz20337777
in Paris as one of
the store's legendary "Tumbleweeds"
in January and
June 2013.
Young writers are
invited to stay at the legendary bookshop "without any
form of payment,
as long as they work in the bookstore for a couple of
hours every day
and commit to reading and writing every single day,"
Buzzfeed noted.
They are also asked to write a one-page autobiography,
including a photo.
"I spent many
happy hours reading these pieces, some overblown or silly,
some heartbreakingly
poignant," Dektar said. "There are maybe ten
thousand....
Because it's such a rare and lucky experience, the shop
brings out
everyone's best side--people are creative and selfless and
fascinating. But
more than that, there's this feeling that things are
better when they
are shared.... I think every Tumbleweed ends up with a
more optimistic
sense of human nature."
This is so awesome, because Peter O'Toole was an awesome actor and a wonderful Irishman and a good human being. His like will never walk this earth again.
Robert Gray:
Shoplifting Books--Stop! Thief! Oh, Never Mind
"Time: 1985
or thereabouts. Place: Shakespeare & Company Booksellers (as
I remember it) in
Manhattan." A New York Times "Metropolitan Diary"
entry last week
opened with that CSI: Bookstore intro, then shared a
brief but amusing
tale involving a few classic ingredients of the crime
suspect, witness
and potential theft, with a devilishly clever
comeuppance at the
end.
The witness
recalls seeing "an unmistakable tall, reedlike figure with a
jutting jaw and
blondish hair, wearing a floppy knit hat that could not
disguise
him." She recognizes the celebrity and begins stalking him
through the aisles
until, quite suddenly, she's astonished to catch him
in a criminal act:
"He doesn't seem to notice me as he stops and pulls a
book off the
shelf. He examines it. Then, he quickly snaps it shut,
slips it under his
oversize coat and strolls away."
Still in shock,
the witness continues to trail her suspect until his
"pace, slow
at first, begins to quicken as he approaches the cashier
through the front
exit. Wait! What do I do? Do I rat him out? I am
stunned into
silence."
In a dramatic plot
twist, the suspect "magically flips the book out from
its hiding place
onto the counter along with a $20 bill. He then flashes
a conspiratorial
wink at me and my gaping jaw. Peter O'Toole then exits
the stage, leaving
this sole audience member both amused and amazed."
I love that story.
It brought to mind any number of incidents from my
bookselling days,
including the time a new manager at the store where I
worked thought he
had the goods on an elderly customer who seemed to
frequently walk
out with unpaid books. The case was quickly solved,
however, once
clues were assembled and he was informed, Inspector
Lestrade-like,
that the suspect was actually the co-owner's mother.
As sometimes
happens, the Peter O'Toole story tempted me not only to
stroll along my
own guilt-lined memory lane, but down the Internet
rabbit hole as
well, where I found a gem from the June 6, 1968, NYT:
"A film about
shoplifting
that included an
episode about a woman slipping a vacuum cleaner under
her skirt and
walking out of a store evoked horrified laughter yesterday
at the American
Booksellers Association convention. The audience was
told afterward
that unexplained shortages in bookstores probably run
from 2.4% to 4% of
total business handled....
"After the
shoplifting film, Hubert Belmont, a Washington book
consultant who was
a shop manager for 15 years, told the booksellers:
'Now that we have
all decided to close our stores we will still go on
with the program.
However, we will no longer wonder why some of our
friends walk away
peculiarly when they are leaving the store with
encyclopedias
between their legs.' "
I should mention
(call it a confession, just to keep with the theme)
that bookstore
shoplifting is a subject that has long intrigued and even
haunted me, for a
few reasons:
* I often feel
irrationally guilty when I'm browsing in a bookstore I
haven't visited
before.
* I wouldn't
snitch on another customer I saw shoplifting and I feel a
little guilty
about that, too.
* When I was a
bookseller, I never once caught anyone stealing, even
when I was sure
they had; even when they set off the security alarm
while leaving. I
was a master of the slightly delayed leap into action,
hoping one of my
colleagues would beat me to the door and the
confrontation.
* I knew I would
be lousy at the chase-and-apprehend nature of catching
shoplifters, so I
didn't try.
* The standard
rule that you could never let suspected shoplifters out
of your sight for
an instant (lest they dump the goods and increase the
dangers of
litigation) reinforced my natural inclination to inaction.
Maybe I should
have been more vigilant. Certainly I was no Paul Constant
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz20337827,
who wrote in
the Stranger:
"In my eight years working at an independent bookstore, I
lost count of how
many shoplifters I chased through the streets of
Seattle while
shouting 'Drop the book!' I chased them down crowded
pedestrian plazas
in the afternoon, I chased them through alleys at
night, I even
chased one into a train tunnel."
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz20337828Jerry
Seinfeld was willing
to rat out his own
Uncle Leo for shoplifting books at Brentano's
Jerry: Leo, I saw
you steal.
Leo: Oh, they
don't care. We all do it.
Jerry: Who,
criminals?
Leo: Senior
citizens. No big deal.
When I was a
bookseller, I just couldn't take the pressure of being an
anti-shoplifting
enforcer, and now I'm an oblivious bookstore customer,
avoiding any
temptation to snitch. Oblivious... and maybe just a little
guilty. --Robert
Gray, Shelf Awareness editor
Of course Americans love their public libraries! I've been a fan since I was old enough to walk into one. My mother recalls me walking out of the Kirkendahl Library when I was a kid, carrying a stack of books that was almost as big as I was!
Pew Report:
Americans 'Actively Engaged with Public Libraries'
More than two-thirds
of Americans are actively engaged with public
libraries
according to a new
survey from the Pew Research Center, which polled
6,224 Americans
ages 16 and older. The study, which was released
yesterday,
examined the spectrum of Americans' relationships with public
libraries to shed
light "on broader issues around the relationship
between
technology, libraries and information resources in the U.S."
Among the key
findings:
* 30% of Americans
are highly engaged with public libraries, and an
additional 39%
fall into medium engagement categories.
* As a rule,
people who have extensive economic, social, technological
and cultural
resources are also more likely to use and value libraries
as part of those
networks.
* Deeper
connections with public libraries are often associated with key
life moments such
as having a child, seeking a job, being a student and
going through a
situation in which research and data can help inform a
decision.
"Building
this typology has given us a window into the broader context
of public
libraries' role in Americans' technological and information
landscape
today," said Kathryn Zickuhr, research associate at the Pew
Research Center
and a main author of the report.
Surprises in the
data, according to the Pew Research Center, included:
* Technology users
are generally library users.
* There are people
who have never visited a library who still value
libraries' roles
in their communities--and even in their own lives.
* 18% of Americans
say they feel overloaded by information, a drop from
27% in 2006.
Lee Rainie,
director of the Pew Research Center's Internet Project and a
main author of the
report, said, "A key theme in these survey findings
is that many
people see acquiring information as a highly social process
in which trusted helpers matter."
I live in Maple Valley, which is about 10 miles from Kent, so I am excited about Amazon opening up another fulfillment center close by...perhaps that means when I do buy a book from them, or some other item, it will get here faster! I hope it also means more jobs for this area of SE King County.
Amazon to Open
Fourth Warehouse in Washington
Amazon plans to
open a nearly one million-sq.-ft. fulfillment center in
Kent, Wash. This
will be the online retailer's fourth fulfillment center
in the state where
its corporate headquarters is located.
Mike Roth,
Amazon's v-p of North America operations, said the company is
"grateful to
local and state elected officials who have supported Amazon
in bringing a new
fulfillment center to the state of Washington."
Governor Jay
Inslee called Amazon "a marquee company for how Washington
innovation can
change the world."
I just finished "Summer Island by Kristen Hannah, and it was such a lovely book that I didn't want it to end.
Summer Island was one of 8 books that I found at Goodwill this past weekend, and I just knew that it was going to be un-put-downable when I read the cover blurb. "Years ago, Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left her daughters
behind. Now she is a famous talk show host. Her daughter Ruby is a
struggling comedienne. The two haven’t spoken in more than a decade.
Then a scandal from Nora’s past is exposed, and Ruby is offered a
fortune to write a tell-all about her mother. Reluctantly, she returns
to the family house on Summer Island, a home filled with frayed memories
of joy and heartache. Confronting a past that includes a
never-forgotten love, a sick best friend, and a mother who has harbored
terrible family secrets, Ruby finally begins to understand the complex
ties that bind a mother and daughter—and the healing that comes with
forgiveness"
Nora Bridge, the talk show host and lousy mother works for a Seattle radio station, KJZZ, and her rise and fall are reminiscent of Dr Laura's rise and fall, especially when Dr Laura had naked photos of herself that were taken by a lover surface when she had been giving advice to women to not cheat on their husbands and to be more moral and stay at home with their children. Nora Bridge has pretty much an identical problem of naked photos taken by her lover surface when she's been giving moral advice to women for years both on the radio and in print. So, once the powers that be at the radio station catch a blackmail demand for a half a million, which they refuse to pay, Nora does what any famous talk show host would do, she gets drunk and gets into a car accident. Fortunately, her estranged daughter Ruby is having no success being a comic in LA, and ends up getting fired from a crappy diner job, so she decides to go back to the Summer Island home her family has had for years, and help her hated mother convalesce. Of course, a tabloid has offered her 50K to write an expose of her mother and Ruby accepts with the fervor of the poor and disenfranchised. Into this mix is added Nora's friend Eric, who is home dying of AIDS and his brother, who was once Ruby's best friend growing up, and whose heart she broke when her parents split up.
All of the action takes place in Seattle and Lopez Island, which is exciting to read for those of us who have lived in the Seattle area for any length of time. It's also exciting to read about the radio biz when my husband was in that business for 25 years. As usual, the print journalists comes off as being the worst sort of people (and having been a print journalist, I hate that we're always the villains) but Hannah's portrayal of radio people was fairly accurate.
Though I didn't like the first protagonist, Nora Bridges, very much at all (I thought she was weak, venal, a liar and a fraud, and a crappy mother to boot), I LOVED her daughter Ruby, and I thought the "perfect" sister Caroline was kind of like the female version of my older brother, Phil. I could relate to Ruby and her disgust and hurt at the way that her mother left her children behind with an alcoholic father and no explanation as to why. At least when my parents divorced, they were both very open about their infidelity and their abhorence of one another. Still, Ruby's desire for the spotlight (I have a theater degree) and her anger at her parents being such weak people was completely understandable to me, and it resonated with my own late teen years. Though the ending was a bit too tidy, the HEA was satisfying and the book itself a joy to read as pure escapist literature.
I'd give it an A, with the caveat that this is one of those "beach reads" that can be consumed in about 5 hours and isn't meant to be "literature." It's comfort food, rather than gourmet cuisine. But sometimes, comfort food is just what you need when you're recovering from day surgery and just need something to keep your mind off the pain.
Next up, "The Invention of Wings" by Sue Monk Kidd, a book that just arrived on my doorstep today.
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