Seen Any Good Books on TV Lately?

Have you seen any good books on television lately? I know. Books are on TV all the time as adaptations, serializations or, in the eyes of many viewers, ruinations. If golf is a good walk spoiled, then TV shows swiped from the printed page can often be a good read spoiled.

There is, however, a network where books do not go to die. Every weekend, C-SPAN 2's Book TV dedicates 48 hours of programming to author interviews, panel discussions, book fairs, book signings, author readings and bookstore tours around the U.S. It may be as close as the book world can, or would want to, get to reality TV.

On Wednesdays, part of my job is to scroll through Book TV's upcoming schedule, compiling a list of programs that might be of interest to Shelf Awareness readers. And every Thursday morning, we feature a "This Weekend on Book TV" section. Imagine that: a network where books matter. Even as I wrote this column yesterday, Gen. Stanley McChrystal (Ret.) was being interviewed live at the Free Library of Philadelphia about My Share of the Task: A Memoir.

C-SPAN and the book world have a long and mutually beneficial relationship. That iconic C-SPAN bus gets one of the best parking spots in New York City every year, inside the Javits Center near the entrance to BookExpo America. I pass by several times each day (and have the tote bags to prove it). I also watch Book TV programming regularly, and am particularly fond, for obvious reasons, of the featured bookstore events, like Saturday's visit to Santa Fe, N.Mex., where a stop at Collected Works Bookstore is on the itinerary.

It's always fun to get a "behind the scenes," or at least on the scene, peek at some great indie bookstores nationwide. Popular Book TV venues include Politics & Prose, Washington, D.C. (home field advantage); Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe Ariz.; Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, Mass.; and Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, Colo., but dozens of indies regularly get their moments on camera.

One thing I've noticed is that both C-SPAN and the indies have become more media sophisticated over the years, compared to early efforts during the 1990s when the bookshop where I worked would sometimes be a site for filming events. Production values were a bit shakier then, and the cameras tended to roll longer before and after a reading than perhaps was wise.

At the first C-SPAN event we hosted, for example, the last thing viewers saw was one of my fellow booksellers and her son making their exit from the back row by trying to sneak under the camera. Unfortunately, they tripped over each other instead, adding an unintended action sequence to the otherwise civilized episode.

Book TV is in a way the second-generation effort for the network, since C-SPAN's book genealogy really began with Booknotes, which ran from 1989 to 2004 and was hosted by the network's founder and CEO Brian Lamb, whose dry but direct interview style I found absolutely irresistible. Watching Lamb was like seeing a book version of Dragnet. His "just the facts, ma'am" style seemed to go against everything television stood for, and yet it worked precisely as he intended, keeping the spotlight on the writer being interviewed.

Mark Edmundson, author of Why Read, was the guest for the final episode of Booknotes. Inevitably, Lamb's first question was: "Why read?" He never shied away from asking for seemingly obvious information--the kind of clarification most of us wouldn't dare admit we didn't already know--as shown in this rapid fire sequence:

How often do you read something that you totally disagree with?
Give us an example.
What's a nihilist?
Where's that term come from?

On C-SPAN, reading and television find common ground. Consider the question Lamb asked Shelby Foote in 2001: "What is it about the written word that's either attractive to people or separates it from television?"

Foote's reply: "I really think that the written word is what defines us as superior creatures to all the other creatures on earth. Man is characterized by a number of things. One of them is he's the only animal that knows he's going to die some day. And knowing that, he also has an obligation to make the most of whatever time he has. And making the most of it is enormously assisted by reading, by learning about the world." Now that's great book TV.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1919.

I'm Worried About My Desk

My desk is too neat. I've seen many other book trade people's desks over the years. Most glory in an organized--"I know where to find what I need"--chaos of paper, ARCs, mail (opened, half-opened and unopened) and other necessary detritus, ranging from science project coffee mugs to inkless pens.

But my desk? Barren.

I'm certainly not lacking for material to correct the situation. There's a large room downstairs, furnished with packed bookshelves, and the volume of incoming ARCs and comp copies never slackens. My desktop, however, remains unnervingly pristine.

Whether you're a bookseller, writer or publisher, you probably log a majority of your workday in Deskland. Even frontline booksellers, who spend hours on their feet, are also tied umbilically to sales floor information desks or POS counters (which are really just high desks cluttered with impulse-buy items).

One of Garrison Keillor's writing desks used to be on the sales floor at the old Cathedral Hill location of Common Good Books, St. Paul, Minn. And when he led a media tour of the new store last year, Keillor said: "I don't know where I'll hang out--I'll need a desk."

In Christopher Morley's The Haunted Bookshop, proprietor Roger Mifflin is introduced sitting "tilted back in a swivel chair, in a corner which seemed the nerve center of the establishment. The large pigeon-holed desk in front of him was piled high with volumes of all sorts, with tins of tobacco and newspaper clippings and letters. An antiquated typewriter, looking something like a harpsichord, was half-buried in sheets of manuscript."

Desks matter.

That's why I'm worried about my desk. I consulted an expert on the subject for perspective. Valerie Kohler owns Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, Tex., and her store blog's name is More Letters from the Messy Desk.

"My messy desk probably looks like most," she observed. "Our backroom is only 200 square feet and that includes the tiny restroom. Most people can't believe that we have three computers back here and at any time four-plus people might be working here. So there is no privacy and lots of interruptions. But we remain friends. My desk is vintage 1970s, which means it's not ergonomically correct and the drawers except for the one file drawer are pretty useless."

As of yesterday morning, she said her desk's inventory included:

• A few ARCs that I really want to read
• Two applications from some very qualified people whom I don't have room for
• At least 12 catalogues dropped off by reps that haven't made it to the catalogue shelf (Thanks to Edelweiss, I can keep this one tidy.)
• My lunch bag
• Some pretty Blue Willow pottery that a book club gave me. What am I going to do with it?
• Gobs of scratch paper
• A small Rolodex (Again, thanks to computers, I don't need two big ones like I used to have.)
• Lotion
• About six inches of paper that I need to deal with, including a Kobo order, a co-op clarification, notes from our World Book Night Committee meeting and a cool idea I printed from a tweet for our summer reading challenge.
• My paper calendar, which is my life support
• Two magnetic poetry boxes (???)
• A broken mouse
• Photos of my boys when they were young in swimming trunks with blue tongues; of my husband and I with lots of hair and no gray; and a great picture of my parents with me at the MPIBA show I attended.
• My water bottle

 
Valerie called her desk "command central and I love it when I see the gray metal on the bottom. This is where I read e-mails, send the Messy Desk letter, take phone calls and I love every minute!"

Should I mess up my desk?

Research doesn't help. For every study that finds a "messy desk can actually lead people towards clearer thinking," there's another countering that "office clutter undermines productivity and motivation."

Earlier this week, I visited a museum showcasing items from a now-defunct marble company. It occurred to me that the old desk on display in a mock office looked as sparse as mine does now. And yet, that desk was much too weatherbeaten to have been so neat when it was in daily use during the first half of the 20th century.

I probably can't alter my ways, but I did just put an ARC on the desk. It's lying there now, bugging me. I want to shelve it, but I won't just yet. Every journey begins with a single step, they say, and perhaps every messy desk begins with a single, unshelved ARC.--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1914.

Recommender-In-Chief

"Lesson: not to travel with so many books. I bought more yesterday, unable to resist the bookstores of San Francisco."--The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton

While the latest episode in this story occurred last Saturday at Battenkill Books, Cambridge, N.Y., it began almost 15 years ago, when I was a frontline bookseller answering the phone one day at the Northshire Bookstore, Manchester, Vt.

A man's voice asked if we carried any books by Thomas Merton and that question led, as bookseller conversations sometimes do, into a discussion of Merton's life and work. The caller, author Jon Katz, was researching a project that would eventually become Running to the Mountain: A Journey of Faith and Change (the paperback subtitle is "A Midlife Adventure"). The conversation has continued, off and on, for a long time now.

Jon Katz and Red on duty at Battenkill Books last Saturday.

Katz has written many books--Dancing Dogs is his latest--and eloquently chronicles his life in the country at BedlamFarm.com. When I learned he would be working at Battenkill Books for three hours every Saturday as the store's "Recommender-in-Chief," I had to stop by. We talked about old times and new. He handsold me John Banville's Ancient Light and Jonathan Tropper's One Last Thing Before I Go.

I wasn't the only one.

"I was very happy with my first day," Katz told me afterward. He had prepared for his shift by scanning the bookshop's inventory and "had a long list of books I had read and heard about." SInce then, the bookstore has continued to receive e-mails and Facebook messages "asking for recommendations apart from the Saturday hours." He invited Battenkill Books owner Connie Brooks to "just pass them on. Monday she e-mailed me that the orders were flying in, and I made e-mail recommendations for her. This is really worth doing."

Noting that Katz "is hugely supportive of the store, and that has let us be creative about ways we can work together," Brooks cited as an example his 2011 book Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die. When it was published, she was able to offer signed and personalized copies to customers: "This proved to be hugely popular, and we still take requests almost every day for signed, personalized copies of Jon's books. We ship them around the country, and even around the world."

Thus, when Katz suggested "serving as a 'book concierge,' or as we call him, 'Recommender-in-Chief,' " Brooks embraced the idea. "He knows how busy I am with the day-to-day running of the store, and this role allows him to share his love of reading. Jon's an avid reader: he's reading about a book per day--and he relishes what all booksellers do--matching up a person with a book he feels they will love. For us, it is a completely new way to involve an author with our store. We've had great feedback on it from customers both near and far."

Recalling his first day on the job, Katz said he "was touched mostly by people's need and eagerness--a starvation almost--to talk to a human about the books they might consider reading. I was aware of three kinds of visitors and callers. E-book readers were not prepared to order on the spot, some people only wanted paperbacks, others just wanted a recommendation for some topical hardcovers. I had to suss out who was who. When I did, it was exciting, chemical really: The Art Forger to a woman whose late husband was an art historian, Little Wolves to a woman born in Minnesota, The Stockholm Octavio to a lover of gentle historical mysteries. It was good that I was prepared, because I needed to be. There are so many people with a passion for books and they seemed so eager to talk with someone who shared the passion."

The Recommender-in-Chief concept "seems to grow and take on its own life," he observed. Noting the challenge booksellers face keeping up with the increasing volume of published titles, he added "it is imperative that this hole be filled while the country is wanting to buy local, as this is something nothing but a good independent bookstore can do and readers--like bookstore people--are struggling with so many choices and an overload of hyper-media."

Brooks agreed: "I hear all the time from folks around the country who have lost their local bookstore, so by proxy, we've become their 'local' store even if they are half way around the country. They gain a personal relationship with a store--real book recommendations and super service, and we gain a broader customer base that helps us to survive."

This is a story that doesn't end, but continues as it began, with conversations and connections, and with the enduring image of Thomas Merton, a mutual literary friend who was also "unable to resist the bookstores."--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1909.

January Is Winter Poetry Month

 

Leslie Adrienne Miller and Dobby Gibson

There's a story behind my unilateral decision to name January 8 the first day of Winter Poetry Month. It all began at the Moveable Feast Luncheon during Heartland Fall Forum in Minneapolis last October. I was fortunate enough to be at a table with Graywolf Press poets Dobby Gibson (for his upcoming book It Becomes You) and Leslie Adrienne Miller (for her much-praised and excellent collection Y). Two poets at one table happened to be a pleasant--and unprecedented--moment in my life as a poetry reader and longtime participant in variations-on-a-moveable-feast at trade shows.

But why focus on Gibson now, as Winter Poetry Month begins? For one thing, It Becomes You was released January 8 and I've read it three times. For another, he writes that "a poem is no more meant for this world than you are, dear reader." Call it a kindred souls moment. Reason enough, but there have been several other catalysts, including:

• The Friends of William Stafford are once again sponsoring more than 60 events nationwide during January Birthday Celebrations honoring Stafford's spirit, life and work. I wrote about this last year.
• Richard Blanco is the inaugural poet.
• The Boa Editions blog showcased a video adaptation of Lucille Clifton's poem "what the mirror said" by underprivileged girls at Prerna School in India and noted: "This is why BOA is here."
• Sharon Olds told the Observer that a poem "doesn't intensify experience, it adds to it. And it is not about a different person, is it? It is the same person who has made a song."
• Several times during an NFL playoff game last week, it was mentioned that Houston Texans running back Arian Foster is also a poet.
• Most of the books I've been reading since the holidays are poetry collections, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Time of Useful Consciousness (New Directions), Natasha Trethewey's Thrall (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), David Ferry's Bewilderment (University of Chicago Press) and Dispatch from the Future by Leigh Stein (Melville House).

Poetry in our world. Poetry in the winter. Words and white space are seasonally appropriate.

Gibson recently told me that while he was writing It Becomes You, he "awakened to the realization that my motivation for writing a poem was inseparable from my motivation for reading a poem: I ultimately aspire to become a poem. My new book is an extended meditation on this idea.

"The transitive experiences of writing poems, reading books of poems, and constructing an authentic self (if that is the right verb), are all so wonderfully intertwined for me. To such a degree, in fact, that the launch of It Becomes You at readings this month--and out into bookstores and whatever digital distribution channels I barely understand--doesn't feel like a finish line. It's only the beginning of a much longer process of completion, of becoming, one for which I'm grateful to share with a reader, whoever he or she may be."

Reaching out to those readers of poetry is part of the job description for David Enyeart, event coordinator at Common Good Books in St. Paul. On January 23, the bookstore will host a reading by Gibson and Sarah Fox (The First Flag, Coffee House Press, April).

Enyeart called the upcoming event "a good example of how we put together compelling readings. First off, it's two great poets. Both of them are well-regarded and active in our local writing community. Additionally, we're able to give readers a sneak preview of Sarah Fox's book, so that's something they can't get elsewhere. And of course a conversation between two authors can always go in unexpected directions. With all that, I'm confident we'll have a solid turnout and a lively evening."

He also noted that Common Good Books "is committed to poetry. From the proprietor on down, we value poetry as much as fiction, biography or any of our other areas. It's at the front of our store and in the front of our minds when people are looking for books. We're also fortunate to have a good base of customers who feel the same way about poems. They come to readings at about the same rates as discussions on any other topic, and I really don't treat our poetry events any differently from our other author readings."

Garrison Keillor, the proprietor of Common Good Books, is reading Kenneth Rexroth's poem "Snow" on the Writers Almanac today. How many reasons do we need to celebrate Winter Poetry Month?--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1904.

Reflections (Not Resolutions) for a New Year

My literary resolutions are always the same: Read more, write more, and when otherwise unoccupied, read and write more. --Author Ben Ehrenreich in Jacket Copy

While I love that quote, New Year's resolutions are not for me. "Reflections" are more my style, and this week I've been reflecting on the fact that it's been over eight years since I started a fledgling blog called Fresh Eyes: A Bookseller's Journal, which gradually evolved into this column for Shelf Awareness.

When I first decided to write about being a frontline bookseller, I wanted to convey a sense of the magic that so often occurs during that critical moment when a book finally escapes the clutches of the industry and enters the domain of the reader. Years after leaving the sales floor, I'm still intrigued by the narrow gap bridged on a daily basis as one bookseller somewhere in the world reaches out to physically hand over a copy (or, even better, a stack of copies) to one customer in a gesture that is both routine and ceremonial.

For my initial Fresh Eyes blog entry in 2004, I said I hoped to be more of a traveling companion than a guide on this reading and bookselling journey. That was how I'd always handsold books, beginning conversations not with a directive ("Read this!"), but with a question ("Who do you love to read?"). 

Reflecting this week upon the curious path I've taken professionally, I can see the trail behind me, marked clearly by the books I've read and the extraordinary "book people" I've met, both inside and outside the industry. The trail ahead, however, is largely unmarked (though not without promise) for all of us, even if our various job descriptions do propel us relentlessly toward the future, engulfing us (New Year's resolutions notwithstanding) in the usual tangle of deadlines, sales projections, ARCs, pub dates, event planning and all the other working parts of our fragile, book trade time machines.

Cuban chess legend José Raúl Capablanca was once asked how he could play so well and so fast on exhibition tours, where he might face two dozen or more opponents at a time. His answer, perhaps apocryphal yet irresistible here, was: "I see only one move ahead, but it is always the correct one." 

Few of us are geniuses (or legends, for that matter) and knowing the "correct" move has not gotten any easier in this business, as is evident from the good news/bad news roller coaster we all ride daily--bookstores opening or thriving or closing; publishers succeeding or failing or merging; authors finding readers or not; and, of course, all-consuming technology taunting "fiber-based" texts.

It can be confusing and even disheartening at times, but I draw strength, as I always have, from a single image: one reader... reading.

Now another year has begun, and we wonder if we should enter it with fear, like medieval peasants terrified by the prospect of an invading army or disease (or, these days, another unanticipated technological marvel) coming over the distant hill. But like cocktail hour, it's always the Dark Ages somewhere. As a character in one of John Berger's stories replies to an irate woman who has demanded to know "what century in God's name do I think I'm living in?... How many, Madame, do you think were not dark? One in seven?" It is, as it always has been, the best and worst of times. We literary peasants adapt to survive.

In the midst of it all, miraculously, readers keep reading. "You absolutely have to respect the reader because they're smart enough to pick up your work," author Marcie Hershman advised writers at a lecture I attended years ago. She was right. They are. We should. I do.

Those readers are everywhere. You just have to pay attention. "Wherever I met another person with even the least appreciation for artistic excellence, I was overcome with joy," observed 17th century Japanese poet Bashō. "Even those I'd expected to be stubbornly old-fashioned often proved to be good companions. People often say that the greatest pleasures of traveling are finding a sage hidden behind weeds or treasures hidden in trash, gold among discarded pottery." Sounds like a handseller in the making to me.

On reflection, 2013 will belong, once again, to readers. May they find your bookstores and your books, and may that narrow, ceremonial gap between the book trade and its patrons be bridged again and again in ways old and new. Maybe that's a New Year's resolution after all. "Nothing's worth noting that is not seen with fresh eyes," Bashō wrote. "Yesterday's self is already worn out!"--Published by Shelf Awareness, issue #1899.