The Written Nerd

This definitely comes under the listing of tooting my own horn, but I'm hoping some of you will get a kick out of it. Thanks to the graphic design help of my brilliant sister Sarah... You can now purchase your own Book Nerd T-shirt! Just imagine -- bookish types walking around, all over the country, with their hair-band/L.A. gangster/motorcycle-mob typeface t-shirts, proclaiming their unrepentant book nerdism. It's a beautiful thing. The Cafe Press thing is something I've been thinking about for a while, for a couple of reasons: 1) Several people have asked where they could get their own Book Nerd shirt like the one in my profile photo. Since that was something the ALP had custom-made for me, I didn't have anywhere to send them. Now I do. 1) I'll make a couple of bucks on the sale of each t-shirt, which will go straight into the Future Bookstore Fund. It's not likely to be a major source of funding, but the overhead price is right (i.e. nothing), and I figu...

From Dickens' A Christmas Carol , which the ALP and I have been reading aloud: "The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do." I love the splendid joke of Christmas in retail. Impossibly busy, we nevertheless find more time than we do at any other part of the year to give recommendations, to have a little human interaction with our customers. And it's glorious. Though we depend on it to pay our rent, it does seem to have less to do with making a buck and more with the pageantry of generosity and abundance. I spend a lot of time in the back office these days, but it's wonderful to have Christmas come along so I get to be a bookseller again. Here's wishing all of you bookselle...

Just a brief review today, though this one deserves much more. WHY WE BUY by Paco Underhill (Simon & Schuster, 1999) I heard Paco Underhill speak at Book Expo last year, and my coworkers and I left the room gasping. A professional "shopping scientist," Underhill's insights into how customers actually interact with the bookstore sales floor had the astonishment of something that's been right under your nose all along. We did some serious rethinking of some of our displays and placements after that presentation, and have continued to keep his principles in mind when making changes in the physical bookstore. But I'm lazy when it comes to reading anything other than fiction, so it took me until this past month when I found myself with a spurt of interest in practical nonfiction to finally pick up Underhill's most famous book. (The ALP had read both, and told me he preferred this one to its sequel, THE CALL OF THE MALL.) And I was utterly enthralled all the...