It was a busy week at Parnassus Books! On Tuesday, I did my signing for Resurrection Bay and had a great time. Three days later, my old friend Cathie Pelletier did a signing for her new novel, The Summer Experiment.
Cathie and I have known each other for twenty-eight years. In 1986, I just happened to walk into the-long-gone Bookworld Bookstore in Nashville, where Cathie was signing copies of her first novel, The Funeral Makers. We struck up a conversation and I confessed I was trying to publish my first novel and she very graciously (and amazingly) offered to read it…
We’ve been pals ever since. Congratulations, Cat!
I am so glad you brought up this aticrle! That NPR piece reminded me so much of Kathleen’s Kelly’s Shop Around the Corner from You’ve Got Mail (I’m sure you all have seen it, right?), but the plotline is in reverse. In this case, the big bad Fox Books (the equivalent of Barnes & Noble, the superstore) doesn’t win out in the end. Something I’ve been thinking about for my Future of Literacy essay is the way in which libraries (and, as evidenced by this aticrle, small book stores with real books) bring people together and foster a sense of community. E-books don’t do that. As a DC native, I often see businessmen and women on their commute with e-readers. My dad reads the “newspaper” every day on his Nook on his way to work. I can absolutely appreciate the convenience of not having to lug a book or newspaper around. My mom, more of a traditionalist like me (and an incredibly avid reader), always has a library book for her hour-long commute, but only checks out paperbacks because they’re lighter and more compact. Both she and I have gotten into conversations on the Metro with people because they have been reading a (physical) book that we had read and enjoyed, and we struck up a conversation about it. This may seem minor, but in an age in which we are increasingly “plugged in” and we shut ourselves off from our surroundings, there’s something meaningful about reading a (literally) page-turning book. So, I don’t think it’s just about the physical differences. Real books foster community, helping readers to make connections with a familiar librarian or book owner (or even stranger!). I am also finding that, as I read the novels and books of poetry that my mom has kept for decades, I am getting to know her as a teenager and young adult as I read her notes in the margins. Try doing that with a Kindle.