Genre Jumping: Young Adult: Love is the Higher Law

Last week I read LOVE IS THE HIGHER LAW by David Levithan.  It is alternating stories from 3 teenagers as they experience 9/11 in New York and the year following.

Full disclosure: I was in Manhattan on 9/11.  I had no direct connections to people in the towers, but I knew friends of friends; I knew someone scheduled for a breakfast meeting at Windows on the World, but he slept through his alarm; I stood in the milling chaos of Times Square, listening to panicking parents as we heard rumors of bombs at Stuyvesant; couldn’t work for a week because I was working below the 14th St line (yep, that was during my time at The Strand).  We all have a hundred stories from that day, but all my stories led to me crying from page 2 of reading LitHL this past Friday, repeatedly thinking, “yes. That was it exactly.  That was exactly how it felt.”

Yes, the book stars young adults, the publisher has marketed it to young adults, but here’s the thing:

I want adults to read this book.  I want them to understand that it is great, not despite being a young adult book; it is great because it is a young adult book.

We’ve seen 9/11 popping up in quite a few books now.  We’ve seen it as a catalyst for events, we’ve seen it as shorthand for placement in time/location.  I feel like the further we get from the reality, the more it is used as a writer’s tool, the more we see authors giving us people with very complex, intellectual responses to 9/11.

In LitHL, we’re watching teenagers and because they are teens, they are crazy, pendulum-swinging, emotional roller coasters. They are in turn angry, idealistic, scared, tragic, uncomfortable, joyous, you name it… Every emotion is confused, raw and to the nth degree.  They place drastic importance on their first date after 9/11, their first concert after 9/11.  In most adult novels, they would get toned down, but because they are teens, it is allowed here.  And this is the secret… we were all like that in those weeks, no matter our ages.  This is exactly how a 9/11 story should be.

I admit, I worried whether I was enthralled because I had been present at the events.  I wondered how it would be received if I gave it to someone with an entirely different experience.  So I gave it to a fellow bookseller who had been in 6th grade in MA on 9/11.

She loved it.  She said it had the pieces that speak to her inner teen fangirl… a very sweet love story and friendship story, strong enough to stand on its own.  But more, she had always felt removed from 9/11.  She was too young, too far away.  She heard the people with their “never forget” and always felt apart from them.  But she read this and felt connected in a way she never had.  And she felt this book had come at the perfect time: for those, like her, who had seen something, had heard, had witnessed from a sheltered place; now she gets it.  Now, she too will never forget.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.  I think it is special, it is important, but mostly: it’s a great read.  And no one should let its young adult category stand in the way.

Genre Jumping

A couple weeks back, The New York Times reviewed THE MAGICIANS by Lev Grossman.  One of the biggest problems they had with the book seemed to be the fact that it was a fantasy for adults.  ”Perhaps a fantasy novel meant for adults can’t help being a strange mess of effects. It’s similar to inviting everyone to a rave for your 40th-birthday party. Sounds like fun, but aren’t we a little old for this?”

Publisher’s Weekly had a nice response wondering why they would bother to review a book in a genre that never had a chance.

I think all booksellers have experienced that moment: you’re recommending books to a customer and you mention a title that happens to be categorized as science fiction, horror, young adult, fantasy or *gasp* a graphic novel.  No matter how wonderful the book, no matter how perfect for the customer, it is automatically rejected because of where it’s shelved in the store.  If the book is not on our paperback fiction wall, don’t bother.

I am here to tell you, fiction wall snobs, you are missing out.

So here’s what I’ve got in mind: we’re going to do a little genre jumping.  I’m going to write a series of posts featuring my current favorite books that I wish everyone would read.  Everyone.  Not just their typical audience. Not just their intended audience.  Everyone.  Because these are great books, no matter what shelf they came from and they deserve to be read.

I’ve had the idea for this series in my head for a while now and had a book planned to kick it off.  Then I read a young adult novel last week that knocked my socks clear off and into the washing machine.

(Confession: I heard Paula Deen use that phrase on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me last year and I’ve been waiting for a chance to use it ever since.  It sounds ridiculous coming from me.  I don’t even have a washing machine.  *Sigh* Oh, to be an over-the-top Southern Lady instead of a nasal neurotic New Englander. Digression over)

Anyway, this book’s been on my heart and mind for a week solid and I can’t seem to talk about anything else, so check back in a few hours and we’ll make our first genre jump to young adult.

I Know We’ve Been Quiet

Hi.  I just want to send out a quick note.  I know the blog’s been sparse lately, but you know how it is in the summer on the Vineyard and the real life store has to take priority.  Labor Day’s in just a couple weeks and we should be able to get back to regular updates at that point.

In the meantime, I have been putting up interesting links that are sent to me on our Facebook page.  So if you become a fan there, you can see some of the interesting bookstore news that comes my way.  You can find the Facebook page here.

But just to get your book juices going… here are a couple books you may not have read that have been selling pretty well at the BoG: check them out next time you’re in…

On the adult side:

BENNY & SHRIMP… an unlikely love story between a farmer and a librarian, each chapter alternating whose viewpoint we hear. Karen calls it a “laugh out loud love story”.

From the kids corner:

THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY… In the future, aliens have taken over Earth and renamed it Smekland.  A student is assigned an essay for a time capsule explaining the true meaning of Smekday.  That is where the story starts.  It is bizarre and hilarious.  Different from anything you’ve read before.

And a reminder that we still have a couple summer events left…

August 26, 7:30 at the bookstore, Paul Karasik discusses the collection of Fletcher Hanks comics which he edited: YOU SHALL DIE BY YOUR OWN EVIL CREATION.

August 29, 4:00 at the bookstore, We are too excited to wait for Kate DiCamillo’s new book, THE MAGICIAN’S ELEPHANT, coming out September 8, so we will be having a sneak preview of the first chapter.  We’ll read it out loud, guess what might happen next, and share with each other what other great books we are reading in the meantime.

September 5-6 at the Ag Hall, we’ll be selling books at the Artisan’s Fair.  Check back as we get closer for a specific line up of local authors who will be signing books.

September 11, 7:30 at the bookstore, Benjamin Wallace discusses and signs THE BILLIONAIRE’S VINEGAR.

See you soon…  (and no, we haven’t seen Obama yet.)

100 Years of Association

About a month back, I saw a blogpost about books that ought to be ejected from the canon.  http://thesecondpass.com/?p=1663 They included One Hundred Years of Solitude, with the following explanation:

“I can’t decide whether I was bored when I picked up García Márquez or whether García Márquez bored me. Either way, it was the wrong moment to dig into a long, winding, mono-paced magical realist yarn. The book snakes and winds and digresses in a way that seemed rather lifeless to me.”

For me, One Hundred Years of Solitude is about the experience, not the story.  Initially, reading it felt like a tube ride down a lazy river.  The sun beating oppressively hot on your face, currents dragging, no idea when the final destination will be reached, or even where it will be.  There are moments spent swirling by the bank, moments you’ll never get past if you don’t stick a toe out to push off.  But you keep going… the time, the route are no concern… every sensation distills down to the sun on your skin, half-heard memories and dreams playing in the back of a blissful mind.

That is what reading One Hundred Years of Solitude felt like to me, but my experience of the book has now been forever linked to one night five years ago in NYC.  I was out with my friend Richard, who was half way through 100YoS at the time. We were at a little bar on Sullivan, maybe Thompson, a place that only existed for a couple months.  A Mexican restaurant with a sidewalk section, chilled guacamole and 50 tequilas.  They actually sprinkled rose petals on the sidewalk.  We sat at one of the three sidewalk tables on an August evening, staring at the parking garage across the street, the heat  seeping through the cement into our toes.  We sipped tequila and smelled roses.  Richard turned to me and said, “I will never forget this moment or this book.  This moment is this book for me.”

The Gabriel Garcia Marquez moment I will never forget involves a roadtrip.  My spring break during my senior year of college, driving south to go camping in South Carolina, I stopped at a bookstore and bought a cheap audio cassette (yes, I said cassette) of Of Love and Other Demons.  I listened while driving and enjoyed, but there was one moment… when the sky rained paper cranes, when the message written inside them was read, I gasped.  Out loud: a huge, exaggerated, horror-movie-style gasp.  I will never forget that moment or that book.  That moment is that book for me.

So yes, I initially read Marquez and it felt like a float trip, but now every time I read 100YoS, I am propelled back to a night on a NYC sidewalk.  Every time I read Of Love and Other Demons, I relive a gasp that stopped my heart and left me shaking on a highway in Delaware.

And that is what the canon ought to do.  They change the patterns of our thoughts, they enter the conversation.  And they stick.  They occupy a space in your heart, your mind that will never change.  For the rest of your life, there is a moment that will always bring you back to that initial experience, that joyful, heady trip and fall into a book that will never leave you the same.

Actually, I’d say it costs more

Every so often there’s something we hear at the bookstore.  Someone asks whether we have a book, we track it down, they obviously want the book.  Then there’s a whispered comment from a friend, “That book costs less at (you fill in the blank with another retailer)”.  The book is put back on the shelf.  I’ve heard it a couple times the past few weeks, so I’d just like to give my reasons why I disagree with that statement.

There are a lot of reasons to shop local instead of going to a chain store, a big box store or ordering online.  The first, and most important, reason is very basic.  You are in my bookstore for a reason.  We provide a service… whether it’s advice, book recommendations, help searching, the ability to touch and flip through the book before making your choice, the atmosphere, the events, a place to take the kids on a rainy day, or just that we act as the town watercooler.  Is that service worth the extra few bucks?  Think of it like the tip at a restaurant. Sure, it’d be cheaper to go to a take-out place, or even cheaper yet to cook yourself, but you make the choice that the convenience, the atmosphere and the expertise are worth it.

Second… follow the money.  Of every $100 you spend here, $68 stays in your community.  For a big box store, $43 stays in the community, shopping online changes that to a big fat zero.  (There’s lots of great info on shopping local at indiebound.org)

What exactly does that mean?  Because you’re shopping at my store, I get a paycheck.  What do I do with that paycheck?  This week, I ate at the Art Cliff, I shopped at the Down Island Farmer’s Market, I bought toothpaste at Leslie’s and bought a present at LeRoux.  And hopefully, the waitress I tipped, the farmer I bought chicken eggs from, the people working at Leslie’s and LeRoux will then use some of that money to buy a book at my store.  The same goes for every one of our employees, as well as our owner.

We pay taxes in your town… our building and our business and our owner.  More money that stays in the community, through schools, public works, etc.  The sales tax you pay through us goes to your state.

Our business, our owner and our employees contribute to your local charities.  Every year, the Red Stocking fund, the schools, Habitat for Humanity, Island Affordable Housing, the list is long.  Some of the national chains do contribute to charities, but they are not local ones, some do not contribute to charities at all.

I know that a lot of people here have the impression that we make a whole lot of money at the BoG, but the fact is bookselling is a rough business.  The luckiest of us only make about a 2% profit.  We would love to promise that we will be here on Main St forever, but in order to do that, we need people to continue to support us in the amazing way they always have.

That’s the obvious stuff; now here’s a couple things you may not have considered:

Discount stores and big box stores may be changing the future of the book.  This is a really interesting article on the ways that big box stores lower the price of merchandise so drastically that they sell it at a loss in order to drive competition out of business.  Once the competition is gone, they then shrink their commitment to that inventory to make way for higher margin goods. What it comes down to:  The future of the book depends on their bottom line, whereas our bottom line depends on the future of the book.

And speaking of the future of the book… we all know that e-books are here and not going away.  I think that devices like the Kindle are amazing.  If I were still commuting on the subway every day or traveling lots for my job, I’d want one tomorrow.  But there are a few disturbing things on the horizon… turns out, when you buy a book on the Kindle, you don’t really own it, you’re leasing it, as they proved this week.  And if you didn’t hear, Amazon has applied for a patent that allows them to put advertisements in ebooks and print on demand titles.

Which leads me to another thing… Amazon has made it pretty clear that in their perfect world they would get rid of the middlemen completely… go all print-on-demand… why have publishers and booksellers when technology means you don’t need them?  You know why?  Because, yes, there are many talented authors out there, but their editors make their books better; the book designers make them more attractive, easier to read, you name it; there are people who spend countless hours choosing fonts, illustrators, paper weight, editing, proofreading… and all those things MAKE BOOKS BETTER.  If we remove them, what will we have lost?  If we remove the marketing department, the sales reps, the booksellers, how will you get the right book in your hands?  Sure, this industry could stand a lot of trimming in certain places, and it needs to change the way it does business, but in the end, this is one industry where the middle men are good things.

And now let’s consider the environment: Here’s a fantastic video from The Regulator Bookshop that illustrates my point better than I ever could:

No we don’t produce our books here on island, so there are transportation costs, but it is much more efficient.  And I will add that in the publishing industry, stores are allowed to return unsold merchandise… and so it is shipped a second time, then possibly destroyed.  The return rate at the big box stores is a whopping 40%, whereas independent bookstores average about 10% returns.

Times are tough.  I get it.  And to be honest, I’d rather a book were sold somewhere else than not at all if the price really does make the difference between a book being sold or not.  But please, next time you set down a book, you should say, “it’s CHEAPER somewhere else”.  Because I would argue that, in the end, it actually COSTS more.

A Random Post with Random Thoughts

A ways back I promised a video of the new store for those of you not on the Island.  It does not do the space justice, and there’s obviously a reason I sell books and don’t make movies, but here you go:

Next… up in the kiddie corner, we (and our readers) have been getting into a lot of debates lately about the merits of vampire books and whether there are just plain too many of the things these days.  So we’ve started a vote this summer.  You can submit the title of your favorite vampire or NOT vampire book and at the end of the summer we’ll see who wins.  The winners get an event & bragging rights.

Last… I’ve been much better lately about putting things on our facebook page (besides just importing this blog).  Our events are being posted, we’ve got photo albums up, and today I even started something on the discussion board…  the vampire debate from above.  So please visit us there, become a fan, join the discussion, and help me make it the lively page we’d like it to be.

OK, so that wasn’t last… we haven’t 100% finalized the date yet, but our dear friend Judy Blume will be doing a signing again this August… keep checking back so that you can put it on your calendar.

What a difference a year makes.

Last year on July 4th, I was supposed to sleep in.  I didn’t have to work until 1:30 and had a lazy day planned.  I was shot straight from sleep to sitting bolt upright when I heard the upstairs neighbor to my basement apartment say, “Cafe Moxie’s on fire!”

I probably scared the heck out of them as I charged upstairs with a “What!?!”  They looked at me like I was crazy until I reminded them that the bookstore shared a wall with Moxie.  Within 3 minutes, I was in a car.

The 5 minute drive to town lasted about an hour.  I heard on the police scanner someone asking for another ambulance to be sent to Main St.  All I knew was it was after 9.  The bookstore was open, full of people I had scheduled to be there, and they were calling for an ambulance.

When we saw that traffic would block the typical route to Main St, I got out of the car and ran down a side street.  Some grace led me to choose the one where my staff just happened to be standing.  I don’t remember ever being so happy to see them all.  Everyone was safe.  And I learned that they had been evacuated, but so far, the bookstore was fine.  Turns out, I got there about 10 minutes after 911 was called.

Then began the slow process of realization.  At first, it was just Moxie, then the perimeter kept moving back.  We were asked to stand further and further away from the store.  More trucks came.  More firemen came.  It probably started to really sink in that the bookstore would be lost when we saw the firemen breaking the second story window and black smoke billowed out.  Then watching them spray hoses directly into our doorway, a stream of water pouring over our awning.

I held it together pretty well until I decided I had to call my mom (a born worrier) in case she heard something on the news, just to let her know everyone was safe.  The second I heard her voice on the phone, I sobbed.

We ended up holding our first vigil at the outside seating of Mocha Mott’s.  We sat at the table and just watched as one sign after another confirmed our worst fears.  Everyone had left the bookstore with nothing, but I had a copy of The Giver in my bag, so we set it on the table while the wonderful staff at Mott’s gave us bagels, and people periodically broke off to play a game of pool in the back room of The Devil’s Dictionary.

Ocassionally, someone would get up, too restless to keep waiting, and try to get more news, locate more co-workers, look at it from a different angle.  The most frightening for me was looking at it from the Moxie side and seeing what looked like a gaping hole in the side of the building. (It turned out later it did not actually go entirely through into the inside.)  Seeing that, knowing exactly what books had been located there added one more layer: guilt.  All those books that were burning that were in the store because I had brought them there.  Which is ridiculous.  But there it was.

Eventually, we all went up the street to Dawn’s house.  We gathered, chatted, probably drank a little too much (absolutely drank a little too much).  And, as always happens, we couldn’t keep up a state of constant grieving.  We went back to sharing old favorite bookstore war stories. The ones that will never stop making us laugh.  This time we had a new one to add to the bunch: the last customer of the day had bought a copy of Edgar Sawtelle as a gift for a friend.  When Karen told everyone the building was being evacuated, she wouldn’t leave until she had purchased it.  When Karen said that everyone needed to be out immediately, her response was, “Don’t worry… I won’t make you wrap it.”  And there were also way to many bad attempts at humor over the 4th of July “fire”works at the the BoG.  And the incredible fact that one of the books sitting in our window display… When You Are Engulfed in Flames.

Eventually we went home, feeling like we had a lost a dear friend that day, exhausted from what felt like the longest day of my life.

Fast forward one year.  Skip past the boredom and terror of filling time, not knowing when or whether there would be a bookstore again; skip past the excitement of a new owner, the godsend of the temporary store, the frustration of delay, the joy and stress of restocking and reopening.

This year on July 4th, I woke at 6, mind already buzzing with the hundred details still to be attended to before the grand opening celebration, starting at 10.

Supposed to be starting at 10, anyway.  See– we normally open at 9 and while we thought it had been clear that the celebration started at 10, people had begun lining up at 8 on the promise that the early birds get free t-shirts.  Well… how to put this… you know how all those fangirls keep trampling each other when Robert Pattinson shows up at the mall?  Just call us Hot Topic.

We opened at 9.

We had a few wonderful surprises… Rose Styron, here to sign her poetry, brought some signed William Styron books, as well as houseguest Carlos Fuentes, also willing to sign.

One of our volunteers, Van, with David McCullough

We had a great time with a slew of Island authors (is there a collective noun for local authors?  A ream? A quill? A joy?)  We had 24 authors over 4 hours, balloons, face painting, story hour, lemonade that was always too strong, 800 cupcakes, a raffle.

We had chaos.  Complete.  Utter.  Exhausting.  Chaos.  And the 16 hour work day passed in the blink of an eye.

The last 3 weeks, we’ve had so much to do, so many lists, sometimes it feels like you’re trying so hard to do what you can for everyone, that you can’t

Ward Just

manage to satisfy anyone (BTW if I haven’t responded to your email, forgive me.)  You find yourself wishing, every day, for just 5 hours extra… then maybe, you could manage it all.

We kept saying let’s just get through Grand Opening.  If we can just get past the 4th, we’ll be OK.

So, what difference does a year make?

Jules & Kate Feiffer

I look at last year… every desperate hour stretching, waiting, stretching… vs. the eye-blink of this year.

And….  I can only hope for continued chaos, shorted sleep, upset correspondents, angry t-shirt mobs and bitter lemonade.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

What did we ever do to offend independence?

So, everybody knows we had a fire last year on July 4th.  What you may not know:  Yesterday, the start of the long July 4th weekend, we were hit by lightning.  Hail the size of golf balls came down on the Vineyard.  And the lightning fried some of our wiring and blew some of our fuses.  It took us until this morning to get all computers up and running again, so we had to close for much of yesterday.  What you didn’t see from outside was that we also had a minor flood in the basement.

So, I think next year for July 4th, I’ll celebrate by hiding under the covers. Or, as one onlooker said, “Maybe that place ought to have an exorcism.”

So, I’m asking whatever power resides above, for the rest of this grand opening celebration, would you mind not throwing anything down fom the sky that could be used in the instrumental case with the verb “to smite”?

That’d be awesome. Thanks.

You Should Have Been Here

“Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.”

– William Styron

As we’ve compiled our list of Island authors who will join us for signings to celebrate our reopening, we’ve been continually amazed by the depth of talent that lives here.    We are incredibly lucky to have such a community of authors, all so willing to support us.

But as we get closer, we keep coming back to a few authors who will be sorely missed this July 4th.  William Styron, Art Buchwald, Phil Craig and John Walter, publisher of Vineyard Stories.

We know without doubt that you would have been here, supporting us, celebrating with us.  You are in our thoughts, and we take comfort that we will always have our memories and your words.

Security Blanket Books

My sister just asked me whether a raccoon ate me since my net presence hasvanished in the past week.  That means that no matter how busy it is, it’s time to blog.  So here’s to finally putting in writing something I was thinking about a few weeks back (I’m actually finishing a draft post that was dated June 3rd. Yikes!)….

I spent the last couple days very much enjoying When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.  It’s out in July from Random House and I’ll have to tell you about it then because it’s really fantastic.  But one of the things that first caught my attention in the book was that the main character is always reading/talking about/carrying with her a copy of her favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time.  She’s never without it.  I thought it was funny that she latched so tightly to that one specific book and refused to move on to others.  But then again…

This month I’m experiencing the very Vineyard summer shuffle.  I lost my housing right at the worst possible time to find a place on the Island and the apartment I found won’t be ready until July 1st.  So I’m camping for a month. (That’s right, America: we’re actually insane on the Vineyard.)  The hardest part of putting all my stuff into storage was choosing 1 measly little box of books to keep with me.

Like all of you, I’m sure, I never quite know what I’ll want to be reading next, so to try to project out a month was daunting to say the least.  (And yes, I know I work in a bookstore and not only can buy books every day, but am sent free ones on a regular basis as well…  Logic means nothing to the anightstandophobia.)  I went for an assortment of target ages, genres, lengths, hoping that I would be able to find something in that box to fit any mood.

But as I packed, I realized that I had to take up space with a book that I probably would not read this month.  Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.  I’ve had it with me since I first read it in high school.  I used to go back to it more often than I do now, but I haven’t been able to put it anywhere except right on my nightstand or desk, always where it won’t get lost among all the other books.

So the letters came camping with me.  Probably silly, but they make any place I am feel like home.

And now it’s gotten me wondering: do other people have books like this? Books that have gone beyond the words, or the story, so that the physical object acts as a security blanket? I know plenty of people who must always have books around, but what about one specific book?

What’s your security blanket book?

(And yes, I’m refusing to put a picture of Letters to a Young Poet on here because I can’t find a picture of the book with the cover I own…  or the creased edges and coffee stains…)