Uncle Jim

It might sound banal and obvious but I have to admit that I recently came to the conclusion that buying, selling and reading books are three distinct categories, separate realities ruled by different forces.
Selling involves psychology 101, decent timing, good imagination and a lot of patience.
A customer today asked me to recommend her a book for Uncle Jim who is an avid reader. What does Uncle Jim like to read? She cannot tell. What book made Uncle Jim particularly excited? Cannot recollect. What is Uncle Jim like? he watches CNN and is a retired commercial pilot. Not much to work with Clueless Niece, but damn it I'm going to find you a book for Uncle Jim! What would you recommend, Hopeful Reader? (granted somebody is still reading this blog!)
After squizing my brain like a lemon and rolling my eyes to the four top corners of the store in search for any plausible ideas.....bang....why not, it's a shot in the dark but so is Clueless Niece when it comes down to describe Uncle Jim's reading taste, so the apple might not fall too far from the tree:
The wisdom of the sands, by Antoine De Saint-Exupery. Aviator, explorer, author of the Little Prince.
The recollection of his trips and adventures will feed Uncle Jim's CNN consumption, being the author an aviator will make the retired pilot identify with the character and what sealed the deal was the fact that he wrote a classic children story, with which Clueless Niece is not familiar, but trusted my word for it, and we all love a good fable.
But most important: it was on the shelf.
Et voila': SOLD.
Now, as far as planet Buying and galaxy Reading go.....to be continued.....

I got mail

Few other pleasures equal to the one of receiving a book in the mail, by a friend, while at work.
I have never read any of her books, but apparently Andrew Wilson's shortlisted for the Whitbread award biography of Patricia Highsmith is a good start because it reads like a novel and because it includes her letters, diaries and notebooks found after her death.
Although Graham Greene described her as the "poet of apprehension", and Gore Vidal as one of the finest American modernists writers, her novels found a warmer welcome in Europe than her homeland and maybe the Dictionary of Mystery writers can in part tell us why it was so when , under Highsmith, we read, quote: " It has been said that Highsmith's work evokes horror, fear and guilt, but the guilt is all in the mind of the reader; it is the lack of guilt that makes the stories horrifying." As she said in her 'Plotting and writing suspense fiction' , she felt that, quote: " Art has nothing to do with morality, convention or moralizing".....interesting gal.
It should be an interesting read.

Demain, et . . .

Je suis tombe' aussi.

Je t'aime.

Demain, et . . .



Books carry gifts in them.
Sometimes a book can bring you the gift of wisdom, sometimes its story will change you forever and will always be part of who you become, sometimes it leaves you in the company of a character that you wish to meet one day, sometimes it can save you from lack of resources and make that coffee table work just fine.

And sometimes....

Sometimes, tucked in between the pages, quiet and patient, waiting to be found, you can find a love note, like this one: so succinct and yet so powerful.
The words are simple and exact in their simplicity and the punctuation is the work of a master in the way it frames the sentences and makes them definite and not arguable with the use of the period and it then stretches the reading rhythm with the comma and time dimension with the suspension points.
Please, don't let me get carried away with the speculation around who wrote it, male , female, why tomorrow and not today, in french therefore...we could write a whole book on it.

I also fell. ( to fall in love? I also fell for you? )

I love you.

Tomorrow, and . . .

Say no more. I am in love.

Thank you Kiddos

This week Lamplight Books hosted its first "book reading" for children.
Fifteen extraordinarily well behaved five years old kids from a pre-school in north Seattle sat on a blanket, nose up and mouth open , listening to one of those children books even adults enjoy re-reading a thousand times.
The missing Piece Meets the Big O. By Shel Silverstein.
Usually the triangle missing piece ends up being interpreted with a high pitch tone ( I think you are the one I have been waiting for)while the Big O is obviously played by a baritone ( But I am not missing a piece ).
The lively aspect of reading this book to children is that the adult can really let his/her creativity run wild on a huge variety of noises to keep the attention going: the rolling, the bouncing, the flipping and the flopping are very "noise inspiring" themselves
Not to mention the pages that bear no text, then you can press play and have the soundtrack going ( see the scene where a pac-man like piece is bumping along a flowery field with the missing piece in its mouth, any mumbled song in the style of Chariots of Fire will do ).
The kids had a terrific time and the reader was left completely dehydrated and voiceless for the following hour but loved it nonetheless.

Last but not least, this year Lamplight Books was glad to be part of the initiative " Walk for Kids" ,as one of the sponsors , promoted and organized by The Pike Place Market Child Care and Preschool, that took place June 4th 2011.
Both the bookstore and the preschool hold dear at heart the concept of high standard education, whether that be in the form of self-education through books from a bookstore or with the help of great teachers that you remember for life at the preschool, it is a privilege and an honor to be part of such a caring community. Thank you Pike Place Market! And thank you Kiddos!

Read on

if wednesdays are waky fridays are freaky

Freaky friday saw the piles
elevate through the miles...
the piles of books are rising to heavenly heights, their towering looks make me feel like I am in a temple in Athens, praying to the Greek Gods that one of these days I will have all the books into their places and off the floor.

Friday was a very strange day, for a couple of reasons; first of all an old Texan man wearing his Texan accent and Texan hat, purchased an old beat up copy of "the joy of cooking" telling me that a long time ago he used to know the lady whose name was written inside.
Not only he managed to find the book, rummaging into the various sale boxes that were laying outside, but he was as surprised as me when I told him that the reason why I had that book was because my neighbor is that woman's grand son, who took me to her house to pick up her books.
The other interesting coincidence happened when a customer asked me where he could find a bookstore by the name of: "This is not your grand ma bookstore", in the vicinities.
To my baffled expression followed my negative reply:
not only I am not aware of such a bookstore being in the vicinities, but I have never heard of such a bookstore in town at all.
However for some obscure reason the name rung a bell that drove me crazy for a couple of hours, until I realized that the day before , while cleaning up some books and looking through the pages to see what kind of treasures I might find, I happened to find a bookmark slash business card of a bookstore named " this is not your grand ma bookstore", located somewhere in the States I cannot remember where.
Freaky Friday ah?

Quiz of the post:
what is the most frequent reason why people have to re-purchase a title?
A. the previous copy was water damaged
B. the previously owned copy was smeared with coffee stains and/or baby food stains and/or wine stains
C.The previous copy was chewed by a mouse and/or a cat and/or a giraffe
D. the previously owned copy was lent to somebody and never returned

the correct answer is D.
If you got it right you just won a groupon and/or coupon and/or advantage card to redeem at the store so that, if you are the one who never returned that copy of The catcher in the rye, it is now your chance to pretend you have never lost that copy and you've also read it and loved it,
and if you are the one that never got their college copy of David Copperfield back , you might find it at the store,with your name in it still.

Read on

open sesame

Extra extra, read all about it!

Come in , look around , get lost in the dusty shelves , because now you can:

Lamplight Book is open for business.

The magic word has been said and....voila', the doors of the secret cave opened to lead you straight to the treasures....

Enjoy !

timing is everything

And so now the cells have stopped multiplying themselves erratically and are doing what they are supposed to do, each according to their own function: shelves up, most of the books on the shelves, lights on, counter delivered, cables plugged in.
It is now the beginning of the subtle and delicate phases: the art of displaying (hence the empty shelves you see) and the task of detail-caring...like my gypsy friend says : I am in the process of fine-tuning the store.
Just like at the Opera house when, right before the start, the orchestra is creating that beautiful chaotic melange of fine-tuning sounds of the instruments, mixed with the last acceptable bursts of cough and aborted laughing shrieks of the audience, before the conductor comes in:
This category works better there, let's move it...oh wait, now I have to move this other category as well because it does no longer make sense here...
This process has been going on for a week now and If I did have an audience waiting at the door for me to be ready ,they would have started rioting by now.
The time to start the show is close, very close, but not quite there yet; the books and I are a bit impatient, but we know that in order to perform well, timing is everything.