chasing the moon

I just finished The Girl Who Chased the Moon, the latest novel by Sarah Addison Allen. It took me all of one day. Darn it. Her books slide down so smooth you hardly notice. I wanted this one to last longer.

I really needed one of her books. I’ve been on a reading jag lately, finishing up a book every few days. And as good as much of the writing has been, they haven’t been very nourishing or uplifting.

I like my literature to be better than real life.

I’ve been in love with Allen’s work since her first, Garden Spells, was chosen by Barnes & Noble. I snapped up her second, The Sugar Queen, as soon as it hit the shelves.

She is my favorite kind of novelist—a total original—who surprises and delights. I can’t get over how her mind works.

The stories are all set in imaginary small town South, peopled with quirky characters. Oh, then there’s the magic. Not your ordinary magic, mind ya. And not too much of it. It dances around the edges. Her characters take to it naturally—natural magic? Does that make any sense? It sort of reminds me of a warmed-up version of the old TV series Northern Exposure, an all time fave.

Two examples from her latest which won’t ruin anything: bedroom wallpaper that changes patterns according to the occupant’s mood; and a sugarholic that can not only “sense” but “see” cakes being baked from afar in the form of sparks in the wind.

It’s not that her works are devoid of tragedy. But they are never allowed to overpower the plot or the book’s inhabitants. What can I say? I like a happy ending.

I repeat: I like my literature better than real life.

Then there’s her impeccable sense of place. She breathes life into those Southern towns, as only a native can. She does for her mythical South what Harlan Coben does for the real New Jersey. And I’ve already read his latest.

Now what the heck am I gonna do?

adventures in bookselling—sex

MADE YOU LOOK!

Seriously, though. Among the store sections that most of us HATE to straighten is the SEXUALITY section. It’s located—either by accident or design—on the far side rear of the store. Walk back there at any time and you’re likely to find bunch of crusty ol’ guys or giggling young would-be studs—depending on the time/day of the week.

For some reason I can’t fathom, the Kama Sutra comes wrapped in glossy, bright red paper, which naturally gets pulled off by those I search of, shall we say, enlightenment of the sexual nature. OK, so maybe pulling off a wrapper is no big thing, But why CONTINUE to take them off? It’s all the same book, folks.

(An aside: as a young child my mother would often return from shopping with a box wrapped in blue and white striped paper. When I inquired as to what it was, she replied “napkins.” For years, I wondered why our paper table napkins came gift wrapped. Only to discover in my early teens that Modess wrapped their sanitary napkins in that paper for discretion, I assume. Like anybody who knew what a sanity napkin was, wouldn’t recognize the paper, eh? Let’s hear it for the 1950s.)

Back to the 21rst century, people.

So the other day I’m heading to the head and glance down at an attractive, obviously enamored young couple, laying all over each other in one of our large armchair. As I’ve said before, many of our “customers” confuse our store with their living rooms.

I can’t help but notice the book splayed in front of the them—which they are studying—displays an intimate coupling I’ve never been limber enough to attempt, even in my youth.

“Hey guys,” I say softly, bending over. They look up, the girl turning scarlet. “No worries about me,” I add. “But the way you are sitting, anyone heading to the restroom will get a full view. You may want to switch to the chair on the other side of the table."

When I come out of the restroom, they smile and wave from the other seat.

Now for something completely different. A small case of sexual confusion.

A colleague adopted a tiny kitten a short time ago, which he named Bea Arthur. He would often regale us with tales of the trials of bringing up a toddler cat.

Last week I saw him sitting in the break room and inquired as to what Bear Arthur was up to. He grimaced a bit before explaining he had noticed during one of his daily bathing (Yes, his pet was bathed daily.) , something odd. Upon further examination, Bea turned out to be Bentley.

Who knew?

singing american pie

I break into song at the slightest provocation.
OK, so oftentimes with no provocation.

When I was growing up, we just sang with gusto around house, in the car, wherever. I thought everyone did. Needless to say, I soon learned otherwise.

When my children were young, it humiliated them. As they grew, they responded with snide remarks, sneers and the reaching over to increase the volume of the car radio. Even as adults, that hasn’t changed.

What has changed is me. I no longer care. As I’ve gotten older, the opinion of others, including me darlin’ offspring, matter less...and less. I’ve now reached an age where Simon Cowell could be sitting before me, rolling his eyes and I doubt it would touch me.

I will add here that I have a pleasant enough alto voice. Think Karen Carpenter, with dashes of Ethel Merman and a sprinkle of Judy Garland. People—not related to me—have commented favorably.

This is a good, as I often handle story time duties in my bookstore kids department. And I sing. I find it easier to keep the kids’—and their parents’—attention. And I freely confess I enjoy it. The tunes are simple. The standard children stuff to which I add Puff the Magic Dragon and the Marvelous Toy, all books. I often require participation and receive it. Occasionally, I indulge my yen to play Adeline in Guys & Dolls by including Bushel and a Peck which is also now a children’s book.

Back to Don McLean’s American Pie, a VERY long narrative tune from back in the day, written as an ode –“The day the music died”-- commemorating the death of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper in that famous Feb. 3, 1959 plane crash.

When it comes on the car radio oldies station, I naturally sing along. If I get to where I’m going, I just keep sitting there, singing, until its done. (The same is true at traffic lights, by the way.) In the spirit of full disclosure, I add that I don’t just sit there, I emote.

Yupper, that’s me.
I’m that crazy lady sitting in her car singing out loud—and strong.

So sue me.

more adventures in bookselling

In the spirit of my previous post, I continue with the latest list of quirky bookselling experiences.

I recently went to customer service to relieve a young bookseller for her 15-minute break. She was on the phone with a customer and online, frantically scrolling up and down on Ticketmaster.

“I’m sorry, I can’t find a phone number,” she kept repeating to the woman, who apparently refused to accept the fact that she would have to call information herself. At least I was there to witness that the bookseller wasn’t online purchasing concert tickets, should she have been questioned.

None of us is immune from these over reaching customer demands. Our store manager told me of a phone call in which a customer refused to be convinced she could not print out her airline boarding passes in the store after accessing them on our free wifi because THERE IS NO PRINTER.

I was on the phone with an elderly man the other day who wanted to order a book sent to his house, but did not want to give me his credit info on the phone, as required.

“I would go to Amazon,” he said, “but there’s none near me.”

While working café register for breaks, I asked a customer what she would like.

“I’ll have a large tai chi.”

With a smile, I suggested a large chai tea instead. She burst out laughing,

Back in my kids department one hectic Saturday, the Thomas Train Table was crowded with tots of varying ages jostling each other. A burly woman yelled across at me, waving closed Thomas cars packages.

“Do you have a scissors to open these?”

“No, ma’am I’m not allowed a scissors in this department, nor am I permitted to open up items until they are purchased. I’m sure they will be glad to open them at the cash register.”

As half a dozen stunned parents watched, she ripped open the packages so her children could play with them at the train table, since she “forgot to bring in her own.”

When she complained about me to a manager, the other customers leapt to my defense.

Oh, then there was the fellow who called asking if anyone had seen his dentures.

Who says life among the books is dull?
To be continued...

adventures in bookselling, part 2

This is my continuing commentary on the sometimes quirky experiences that are part and parcel of spending one’s working life as a bookseller for a large chain.

When the weather is cold and rainy in Florida, as it was yesterday, the store tends to be extremely crowded. When it is a Saturday, the kids department—my department—is a zoo.

In addition to the actual shoppers with kids, kids off from school, non-custodial parents in search of a free time waster, there are those who treat the section as in indoor playground. People who haven’t a clue as to appropriate behavior in a bookstore, or the difference between such a store and a library.

So I was coming to the close of a particularly stressful day, counting the minutes until the end of my shift, when a burly, boisterous young boy and his mom came in. The lad, who turned out to be an extremely large 5-year old, demanded in a booming voice that I show him the “romance books.”

“Is there any particular author you have in mind?” I replied, with a glance at his mom, both of us suppressing a smile.

“NO, I just want the falling in love books.”

I look up at his mom, commenting he is certainly an evolved young man. She laughs.

She explains his sister reads to him and he has heard of the Twilight books, knows teenage girls like those books, and he likes teenage girls.

The youngster loudly rejects my suggestions of books like Cinderella, as “baby books.” I usher him over to the classics section, where we have abridged versions for younger children. I try Little Women, (It has four GOOD LOOKING teenage girls, says his mom.) No go. The same with Anne of Green Gables.

Then he spots his choice: Dracula. Very discerning. The original vampire story which some scholars do consider a love story, certainly a precursor to the Twilight saga.

He leaves happy, as do I.

Something funny happened on the way to the publisher...

I became a blogger.

So I’m pausing to pat myself on the back—a bit—for crossing the year-one blogging divide. Not a small feat, or so I’m told. According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned.

I started this site last August 19, with a post about my daughter, without whose help I never would have made it off the ground.

I was not what you would call an enthusiastic blogger. Publishers and agents, who said they liked my second book, a few even loved it—yet they would not take it on. Since I no longer had my newspaper column , I was left without a “platform” they moaned, a demonstrable readership. (Even being called “early Nora Ephron didn’t help!)

Enter blogging. By casting my writing out onto the web, they opined, I would attract a following, create such a platform and thereby become publishable. That’s the theory, anyway. Reality, as always, tends to get in the way.

Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, has reported that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but “it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views...There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.”

Okay, so my audience exceeds that, but not by nearly as much as I had hoped. Like many folks of my generation, I find myself so overwhelmed by the marketing of this thing that it freezes me into inaction.

So until/unless I figure it out, I have come to terms with what is. I am determined to continue—even if I am an audience of one. It is, at a minimum, a date with myself, a date to show up on the page at least once a week, to continue and not get tossed away. This is no small thing in my life. I meet this commitment—others, not so much.

I’ve had three months of free time to work on my second “novel” and have done next to bupkis, nada. Whatever creative juices have been given over to me dried up. I am the Sahara of the literary world. Continuing here, on this site, is helping me make peace with that and move on.

Next week I will be back in my “real life”, back in Sarasota, back at work in B&N. This blog will continue and at some future time I hope to find my way back to that book or on to new ones.

Hope you stay tuned...and it wouldn't hurt if you would pass the word along to others. Thanks.
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twilight in the garden of predicable & sophomoric

A few well chosen words about the Twilight Saga, an insanely popular teen series written by Stephanie Meyer and published by Hachette. I feel eminently qualified to do so, as I have spent the past four days buried in the four novels—and a good part of the past year lugging and stacking hundreds of copies, almost daily.

I tend to resist reading such overwhelmingly hyped franchises. I’ve never had the urge to read any Harry Potter, for example. And it took over a year before I would pick up Marley. But I digress

These phenomena are so profitable that publishers and bookstore owners drool. They burst forth from their designated markets to become “crossover books,” in this case from teen girls to women to film. I can’t begin to guess how many I’ve personally placed in the hands of moms, enamored by the “greatest love story ever.”

Now that I am on leave from my bookseller duties, I took the time to see what all the fuss is about. I still don’t know. I knew I was in trouble after 30 pages when I was so bored, I started riffling through chapters in search of some action, with no sense of loss. For those of you without a clue, it’s the story of a teenage girl Bella and a (teenage-looking) vampire Edward who fall for each other in the classic star-crossed love affair.

Listen. I was all prepared to fall under the spell. I’m well-up on my vampire lore, Buffy the Vampire Slayer being among my all time favorite TV shows. Of course, that series was created by Josh Wheden. ‘Nuf said.

Meyers is a competent enough writer, and she does a few interesting takes on vamp and even werewolf, mythology but... I list below a few of my turnoffs.

--The books are way way way too long. Situations are repeated in a seemingly endless loop. Book editors, it seems are a truly endangered species.

--We are asked to believe that a good “family” of vampires, some closing in on three digits age-wise, thinks it would be fun to do small town high school for what must be the umpteenth time. Really. What immortal being wouldn’t jump at the chance to take bio and calculus (not to mention gym) one more time?

--The foreshadowing is so heavy handed the pages are almost striped. Example: Bella moves from sunny Southwest when her airhead mom remarries, to live with her clueless father in the dreary Northwest town named—wait for it—Forks. Can you say “a road less traveled” ?

--These vamps are all things desirable, super strong, good-looking, magical, rich, smart etc. Being human is so, well, inconvenient. You have to eat, sleep, age and go to the bathroom. The messy business of feeding off humans is swept aside by these “vegetarian” vamps who make do by hunting wild animals on frequent “camping trips” .

--One interesting (and recurring theme in all vamp lit) is that sex between us humans and vamps is always dangerous. This enables the Bella-Edward love story to drip in desire but remain chaste, cannily effective in the teen genre.

--After pushing myself through 1,200 plus pages, I finally arrived at the final book, Breaking Dawn, an almost 800-page tome. I came close to skipping it and that would have been a mistake. It’s far and away the best—and in my view—the only one worth reading. Editing it down and adding some back story from the first three bloated books would have made one engrossing read. It actually managed to surprise me a bit. I love that.

--In the end, though, it’s really just another girl-falls-for-guy-and-gives-up-all-in-the-quest-for-happily-ever after—emphasis on ever. Is that really the best message to send to our young women?

I could go on, but why.

A final note: For a REALLY intensely well written series, one hell of a touching first love story with the complex layers of real literature, skip the teen section and head straight to the children’s department. Pick up Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, including the Golden Compass, the Subtle Knife and the Amber Spyglass. Buy all three at once, cause you won’t be able to put them down.

A modest proposal

Bear with me here for a bit and I’ll get to it.

The “high season” is now behind us in Sarasota. The roads are clearing and restaurant tables are once again available. At times over the past month, the children’s department at the bookstore where I work, resembled the Tower of Babel. Not only could I go hours without hearing “American” English--of any dialect, but I often couldn’t make out the language being spoken. I find differentiating between the Nordic languages impossible. The decades I lived and toiled at the Jersey Shore, a Canadian “o” was as exotic as it got.

This gave me pause to consider why I choose to live where others come to play. The oft repeated phrase “another day in paradise” takes on a less than glorious sheen when you’re working--usually at a low paying service job--amid the smell of coconut suntan lotion and the echo of flip-flops. We are intimate with the upscale but the perennial outsiders, not a comfortable place, lacking the honorable service class history of our foreign brethren.

I used to dine out frequently with an affluent friend, one in a second marriage to a millionaire. She is in most respects a caring individual. And yet, I found myself so uncomfortable with her treatment of the wait staff that I finally had to say something.

One of those interminable emails making the rounds a while ago got on my last good nerve. It was one of those whinny pieces about customers doing all the work at check-outs (such as lifting their hand to swipe a credit card through a reader) while those of us behind the counter are goofing off—talking, chewing gum etc. Pleeease!

I am college educated, a former journalist with several awards to my credit. I’ve taught, written two books and once even earned well into the high five figures. The company says it takes two years to master selling books on its floor. Yet recently, a customer--irritated that I referred her to customer service when she interrupted me during story time--called me a “clerk.” The air of entitlement among many customers coupled with a general disrespect for those of us in the service field led me to this modest proposal:

Dear President Obama,

I would like to propose a new mandatory American youth service corp. Upon leaving high school—by graduation or dropping out—each and every one of our young people would spend two years in the service profession of his or her choice. The list of fields will include those of food service, retail, recreation (e.g. boardwalks, NOT Disney), health aide, farm work and the like. Corp members will be expected to live on their salaries, with any family support held in trust until their term is complete. Failure to live out the allotted term of duty will result in a dishonorable service discharge, a permanent part of a person’s record available to colleges, medical schools, employers etc. as is a dishonorable discharge from our military services.

The only exemption from this service would be extreme mental or physical disabilities—and this, too, would become a part of their record. If someone left the country, their service requirement would resume upon their return.

OK, I’m not naive enough to think this is perfect, or that the some of the wealthy and connected won’t find a way around it. They always do. Perhaps making the list of exemptions public would be some help.

But it’s time we recognized those “invisible” folks who tend to our needs. I suggest this in hopes a short walk in such shoes will have some lasting impact.

All honest work deserves our respect. Case closed.

Yours in the audacity of hope,
Roberta

adventures in bookselling

Dispatches from the frontline of publishing.
You know, that part of the biz where the book actually makes it into a reader’s hand for the first time. And that reader forks over cash.

Life in these retailing trenches occasionally amuse and startle. When my book is written it will include the following incidents.

I take the middle-aged woman to the section and hand her the requested book, The Yeast Syndrome.
She looks up at me asks, “Can I buy this?”
For a tiny part of a second I am too stunned to speak.
“Of course,” I reply. “That’s the point. You can purchase everything but the fixtures.”
“Well, I’ve never been in here before.”
Huh? Perhaps the name above the door should have been a clue.

OK, so maybe one such oddity is to be expected once in a blue moon. But this is the SECOND such inquiry I’ve had in the past two months. And neither was approaching senility.

In the early days of my employment, I am working the register in the hectic post-Christmas rush. A woman of no more than 50 steps up to my station, complaining her computer is not functioning. Where, she demands, is the line for returns. I lean in close, so as not to embarrass her.

“Ma’am, do you think you are in Best Buy? (on the other side of our mall)
She stops, straightens up and looks around.
“I guess you got your laugh for the day.”
I do.

A colleague reports a phone call from a customer requesting, “A bible for someone new to walking in the word.”

I recently took a call from customer requesting the author of The Anderson Method. Perhaps, I thought, it's the same person buried in Grant's tomb.

As the lead bookseller in the kid’s department, the bane of my existence is adults who think nothing of dropping/sending their young children to my department and trotting off to sports, self-help, investing or whatever. I am not a babysitter, and small folk are not to be left unsupervised in the section. I once caught a toddler hanging from the metal hooks of a display he had climbed.

One day, I notice a child who really does toddle, she’s so young--not much beyond a year--wandering about with no adult in sight. I am just about to call a manager, when her father (I assume) strolls in, unconcerned. Overcome with outrage am I. What can I say? The Jewish mother part of my psyche is easily activated.

“Sir, you cannot leave a child this young alone in this department.”
He looks genuinely surprised.
I wonder how his wife—or the judge supervising his visitation—would react.

The recent installation of a security system creates its own indignity, constituting a downright hostile work environment. While covering breaks in the music department, I am subjected to repeated shots of my butt in the monitor. Talk about cruel and unusual punishment!