Customer walks into a bookstore and asks, “How much do your books cost?”

Customer walks into a bookstore and asks, “How do you know where everything is?”

Customer walks into a bookstore and asks, “Is this a liberry?”

Customer walks into a bookstore and asks, “What do you have all these old books for?”

Customer walks into a bookstore and asks, “Have you read all these books?”

Customer walks into a bookstore and asks, “Do you actually make a living, doing this?”

And so on.

Well, the bookstore is Reed Books Antiques/The Museum of Fond Memories, and these are representative questions asked us practically every week for more than twenty years.

I never know what to answer.

When I’m feeling Bugs Bunny-ish, I make a wisecrack—just to entertain myself (“Yep, I’ve read every book here–except for that one!”).

But I’m learning over time (maturity is highly overrated) that a lot of people don’t have a sense of humor—or they don’t have my sense of humor, and think I’m just being a wise guy, which, after all, Bugs Bunny is, right?

Besides, many of the questions are asked by customers who don’t know what to do, once they’re inside the store. Some of them have never been to an old bookstore, some have never voluntarily read a book from cover to cover (no kidding—they brag about it), some actually mis-read the sign and think it says Free Books (thus the library question), others have been told by librarians that any book more than seven years old should be de-acquisitioned (thus the old books question), others don’t see lots of folks lolling about drinking coffee and eyeing other customers (thus the make a living question), others don’t associate computers and databases with old books, thus the know where everything is question.

I try to assist these folks and am sometimes successful in making them feel comfortable.

I do enjoy the anthropology of it all, but I’m also grateful for folks who come in and get excited about the fact that we are a wonderful emporium of memories, dreams, reflections, thoughts, feelings…a bumper car-turned-rollercoaster kind of place where anything can happen, where anything can find you and beg you to adopt it, if you’ll only just stop and listen for a mo’

© 2009 A.D. Jim Reed

www.jimreedbooks.com

HAVEN’T READ A BOOK SINCE HIGH SCHOOL, EH?

“I haven’t read a book since high school, when they made us read Silas Marner–and I hated that book,” one of my lunchtime compatriots told me recently.

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that said, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time. Many people just give up trying to read because of the way in which reading is taught. Too much criticism, too much handed-down dogma about what a book means, what an author was trying to say. Not enough attention is paid to reading for the sheer pleasure of it, reading to find one’s own meaning separate and apart from what the author meant to say. Indeed, do we ever really know what an author intended to say? Does the author even know, most of the time?

Besides, it’s not true that this compatriot doesn’t read books. He happens to be one of the great sports fans of all time, and he knows as much about his special sports and his favorite players as Ken Burns knows about the Civil War! In other words, he’s read Sports Illustrated cover to cover this week, read the sports page in the paper every day, and read other fanzines to keep up with his field–not to mention having watched a couple of dozen ball games on TV, when he isn’t busy listening to one on the radio. If you place all the pages of material in a pile, all the transcripts from the broadcast shows in the same pile, then place hard covers on the top and bottom of the stack, you’ll find that this fellow has read the equivalent of War and Peace in no time at all.

Yet he refuses to call this reading a book.

My only point is, this reader finds something off-putting about the term book, so he doesn’t use that term. Perhaps we booklovers and scholars have done something to make him shun the word books. Maybe we’ve made bookie things sound too elitist or effete or affected. That’s too bad–because if it’s true, we’ve also painted him into a corner about wanting to write something about his life–in other words, if he won’t read a book, he certainly won’t write one!

“I don’t know any poems, and of course I don’t read poetry!” another diner companion vows.

This diner is denying the obvious: that there are literally hundreds of poems rattling around in his head, and he knows damned near every one of them by heart: They’re called songs! Songs are just poems with some background noise thrown in. This guy drives around the city listening to all these poems and even reciting them aloud.

Have we turned him away from poetry, too?

No wonder the average American doesn’t donate to the fine arts or go to libraries or frequent bookstores or write family reminiscences. Something has spooked the average American away from the printed word. It just ain’t cool.

Your turn to rant.

Comments, please

(Adapted from How to Become Your Own Book by Jim Reed)

© 2009 Jim Reed

www.jimreedbooks.com