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02/03/2006: "The Bookseller's Curse"

Okay, maybe it isn't a curse; more like an enchantment. It goes like this: whenever I've just about finished off processing all the new incoming books, a scout or a customer shows up and offers me more books. So, the Incoming pile grows again, sometimes to monumental proportions!

Such was the case last week, when I was down to two small piles of paperbacks. Once they were done, I had planned to sit in the leather Chair of Doom (so named because once you sit down, it's hard to get up again) in front of the counter, and read a vintage copy of Herb Caen. Then the door opened, and the executor of an estate walked in and said he had a library he wanted to give me! What bookseller is going to turn that down? Forty-three boxes later, I knew the curse had struck again!

Here's a few titles which came into my hands: America Wide, by Ken Duncan; Interactive Mathematics; The Creative Classroom, by Kathryn Shoemaker; Home Cookin' with Dave's Mom, by Dorothy Letterman; Piper, Pipe that Song Again, by Nancy Larrick; Above Paris, by Robert Cameron & Pierre Salinger; Above Yosemite, by Robert Cameron; The Meaning of Relativity, by Albert Einstein; Walt Disney's America; The Robber Bride, by Margaret Atwood; The Power of Positive Dog Training, by Pat Miller; and many more titles.

But, the Fates were not through with me yet. The following day, a bookscout appeared with eight boxes of religious materials from the library of a Baptist minister. These I had to buy, but again, well worth it. Seven different kinds of Bibles (six, because one of them has already sold); From Bacon to Kant: Philosophical Classics; The New Testament Background, by C. K. Barrett; the Life of Our Lord, by Charles Dickens; the Encyclopedia of American Religious History; and much more to keep me busy.

Three days later, when I was out on errands, eight bags of stock appeared, dropped off by a friendly soul. Contemporary paperbacks, but several titles I didn't have.

I'm not complaining, by any stretch of the imagination. This is one of the few businesses where people give you stock! More importantly, books are more like good friends. They feed your needs, often when you don't realize you have the needs in the first place. Books provide wisdom, insight, and further our need to discover new things. Books are teachers who speak only to us, and when we have learned the lessons, we want to pass them on to others. What better way to ensure that they will go to needy hands than to pass them into the care of a literary shepherd who will care for them and see that they go to a good home?

So, my friends of the written word, do stop in soon. There are new friends waiting for you. I'm cleaning them up and setting them in their proper place, awaiting your arrival. I hope to see you all soon.