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https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-do-readers-dream-of-running-a-bookshop-books-about-booksellers-are-having-a-moment-the-reality-can-be-less-romantic-216750>
"My mother and I wanted to open a bookshop. We signed up for a CAE course,
which was cancelled when the bookseller who ran it went out of business. I
learnt this later because I went on to work in a bookshop and the book business
is a small world.
As are bookshops. And books. Worlds within worlds within worlds.
My first job was in hospitality. It was hard work; physical labour. I cased
city bookshops, handing out my CV, dreaming of a different life. My new boss
saw me coming: I spent my first day unpacking box after box. Stacking, shelving
– book after book. He tried to teach me they might as well be bricks, albeit in
pretty packaging. Not-so-fast-moving,
never-moving-as-fast-as-booksellers-might-like consumer goods.
But “handselling”, that mainstay of the independent “High Street” book trade,
was everything I hoped it would be. I loved – love – the aesthetic object of
the book. The artefact at the heart of an exchange that is rarely as simple as
a commercial transaction. (Except, you might say, when someone is buying
something as a gift that says “I spent this much. I know this much about you.”
But even then, it seemed we were engaged in a storytelling exchange. Swapping
literary histories. Imagining reading futures.)
It wasn’t only the book-based conversations with customers and colleagues that
fulfilled my expectations. Part of the pleasure of bookselling was the sense of
satisfaction I got in being a bibliotherapeutic matchmaker. Reader, I had been
training for this my whole life."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
