View from a Small (AKA Tiny) Resort Bookstore

A few years ago when I was vacationing on the Outer Banks I stopped by Duck's Cottage, a small bookstore/coffeeshop in Duck, North Carolina. I told Jamie Layton, one of the store's managers, that I like to frequent bookstores when I travel as I own a company that has a number of websites about books. She shared that one of her favorite websites was ReadingGroupGuides.com, not knowing that it was one in The Book Report Network. Needless to say this comment sparked a conversation that sparked a friendship that has flourished over many more visits to the Outer Banks. I love talking books with Jamie --- and she also is one very inspirational water aerobics teacher. When I join her class it becomes an exercise class/book group discussion as participants share what they are reading. Enjoy this post where Jamie weighs in on "bookstore point of view." -- Carol Fitzgerald

I'm the manager of a small, independent bookstore on North Carolina's Outer Banks. When I say 'small' please read that as 'tiny' --- about five hundred square feet dedicated to books, the remaining four hundred is the best coffee shop in town.

Due to these size limitations, I have to be very selective in deciding which titles will grace our shelves. For instance, after five years of selling books in a resort area I no longer bother with personal finance, self-help or diet books. People on vacation don't want to think about any of these subjects much less purchase a book telling them how to start saving $9.99 a day by buying a $24.95 book when they're spending $500 a day for a week at a beach house that's probably more luxurious than their own home.

So I have to really pick and choose and wade through the miasma of new titles constantly belched forth from publishers. I've developed an inventory that I refer to, with pride, as 'an eclectic, interesting selection you won't find in every other bookstore'. When I was asked for a description of what this monthly blog would be about, I really couldn't settle on any one topic though I considered many ---book clubs, the musings and meditations of a bookseller, my personal bestseller list for the month, politics, fashion, prose...the list kept getting longer and longer.

Finally I realized that my blog post, like myself and the bookstore, would be a constantly changing, ever evolving affair --- an eclectic, interesting mix of thoughts on a wide variety of topics --- most book related, but sometimes not.

With politics in the air, I find that people's personal leanings show themselves in very peculiar ways. I constantly am amazed by customers who come into my store and take it upon themselves to rearrange my shelves and displays in order to better match their political preferences. I can't tell you how many times I find Hillary Clinton's biography turned backwards on a shelf. Or a liberal author's work that has been set out on an easel replaced with Bill O'Reilly's latest diatribe. If I put Bill Clinton's Giving or anything by Bob Woodward in a prominent position, we are verbally accused of being too liberal a bookstore. (Keep in mind, the politics genre only makes up 5% of my inventory, if that). But if I display Ann Coulter up front, I hear as many complaints from the left and, frankly, have to fight my own nausea every time I pass it.

Any small bookstore is going to take on some characteristics of its book buyer and staff and what can I say? I would describe myself as a liberal independent who usually votes Democratic. Do you prefer a faceless big box bookstore with nary a shred of personality that tries to be everything to everyone? And why don't I ever see books turned around in their stores? Would these same people feel comfortable doing that in, say, their lawyer's office? While we're on the subject, I must also tell you I believe children's fiction to be just that --- fiction, which is why I get doubly annoyed when I find all the Harry Potters turned spine inward by some religious zealot who really needs to take a good long look at the Christian Coalition. If Harry Potter promotes magic and witchcraft then should Romeo and Juliet still be taught in 90% of American high schools? Doesn't it promote suicide? Shouldn't we be worried?

Look...there's room for everyone on the planet regardless of political leanings and religious beliefs. Just as my bookstore may be a little left of center, there are plenty of bookstores a bit right of center with the big boys sitting dead center. So please, resist the urge to rearrange and accept the fact that the next person in the door might just be looking for the very book that's making your fingers itch. One last observation --- in a race in which the leading Republican candidate and both Democratic front runners all have books on the shelves there are NO excuses for not getting better acquainted with your candidate.

And be sure to check out my other new blog- -- queenbeaches.blogspot.com. I'll be back on March 28 with another indescribable custom blend of sheer me.

Men and Books: Who Doesn't Read?

One of the questions that I am asked most is about men and book clubs. Are they in book clubs? And WHAT do they read? We did an interview with Andrew McCullough, the founder of the Man Book Club in Marin County, California on ReadingGroupGuides.com and when we decided to do this blog he was one of the first people who we invited to join as a regular contributor. Uniquely qualified to share his insights on men's reading habits, Andrew balances discipline and humor to keep his gang of men reading and sharing. The Man Book Club culls titles from award-winning authors (always men!) and every member votes on the proposed selection. This month, in a departure from fiction, they are reading THE NINE by Jeffrey Toobin.

As an oppressed minority, I'm occasionally asked to generalize about the experiences of men who, like me, quietly belong to book groups. It's easy to describe what men like to read (shorter books, no chick lit), but much harder to tease out the subtler differences between men and women. So, for now, I won't pretend to. Instead, I'll stick with what I do best and generalize wildly about men and reading.

My all-time favorite topic (after professional football and climate change) is the I Don't Read canard, which is manifested in this particular brush-off: "I can't be in a book group because I don't read." The variations on this theme are: "I don't like to read fiction" and "I don't have enough time to read." The inconsistencies point to an obvious conclusion: men do read but hate to admit it, especially if it means being drawn into a book group.

The evidence is overwhelming. Men are voracious consumers of anything sports. We proudly subscribe to scientific and technical periodicals. Everything from Atlantic Monthly to Vanity Fair is comfortably within our range. Heck, we'll even admit to reading our equivalents of Shape and Self (and that does include Maxim!). But the difference between magazines and books is where the trouble starts.

With magazines, we define ourselves as tech-savvy or politically informed or socially conscious. But books, especially those picked by others in a book group, risk pulling us down a slippery slope. There are certain authors that are poison to most men. (That's why we stopped reading Jane Austen, if we ever did, in high school.) There are others that provide just the right masculine halo. (Norman Mailer, may you rest in peace.) And then there are all those other titles and authors of unknown provenance. They're the ones that make us nervous.

But it's not just author and subject matter that worry men. The prospect of actually discussing a book can terrify some of us. The liberal arts types may forge ahead, but the contractors and engineers find dissecting books alarming. Reading guides help, but they sometimes contain words that only an English major could love. The solution for most guys is to steer clear of jargon and go with simple declaratives like, "The main character was such a jerk!" or "What a lousy ending!" or "That book sure was looong!"After a few shared sound bites, most men loosen up and then the real discussion gets going.

When a man tells you he's not really into the book club thing, listen to his protests and decide if they're genuine. But if he tells you he just doesn't like reading fiction, offer the following coded response: "I don't either, except for maybe Cormac McCarthy...that dude is phat!"

Today's Librarian: Concierge to Readers

Today's post is from Nora Rawlinson who recently started a website for collection development and readers advisory librarians called EarlyWord.com. When we decided to do this blog, Nora was one of the first people who I reached out to and asked to become a regular contributor. She has been "my" personal advisor on the library market and over the years she has given me intros to some truly wonderful librarians. You can read Nora's bio here.

I love the movie Sophie's Choice and end up watching it every time it shows up on TV. There are many painful scenes in the movie, but there's one that makes me cringe but it may not be the one you expect. In it, Sophie goes to New York Public Library in search of books by the American poet she's just discovered. Her native language is Polish and she doesn't have the unfamiliar name exactly right. Haltingly, she asks for "Emile Dickens." The imperious, I-have-more-important-things-to-do reference librarian tells her there is no such American poet and waves her in the direction of the English literature collection, assuming she means Charles Dickens.

This is completely counter to the nature of today's librarian, who often will go to great lengths to find exactly the right book for a library customer. I've seen this first hand, back when I worked in a library and today, by lurking on the library listserv, Fiction_L. Librarians go to Fiction_L to get advice from peers on books to recommend, titles that customers want but can only half-remember and to get ideas for the many book clubs they run. I had to stop subscribing to Fiction_L, because the responses from this passionate group began to overwhelm my inbox. Now I just visit the site when I can and always am reminded that there librarians out there who really live up to their position.

Last week, a librarian posted this typical puzzler -- "I've got a patron looking for a book she read as a child. I'd guess twenty-five years ago to give you a time line. She thinks it was about a boy with new neighbors. The neighbor gives him some old, dried up fudge and it causes him to shrink." Within 90 minutes, a librarian from many miles away had correctly identified the title as No Such Thing as a Witch, by Ruth Chew.

There are dozens of such needle-in-the-haystack moments weekly, but the really lively discussions are about reading groups. Requests like "books on Venice that are good for discussion," or "books in which the main character makes a radical change in lifestyle," or "books for a prison reading group" bring a deluge of suggestions.

Because of their enthusiasm for books and reading, librarians organize reading groups, host them in their libraries, and support them in any way possible. Some, like Seattle Public Library have discussion groups not only for adults and teens, but also for families, the visually impaired as well as Spanish- and Chinese-speaking customers. Seattle has such an active program that they have a collection of 400 Book Group titles and keep 24 copies of each on hand, ready for groups to use them. They also have excellent reading group guidelines on their website.

The Williamsburg Regional Library (VA) works with reading groups, but also tailors services for individuals. By filling out a thorough questionnaire (http://www.wrl.org/bookweb/RA/), library card holders create their own "reader profiles." Within a week, they receive customized reading lists from the Williamsburg librarians (note: this service is only available to the library's customers).

I have to admit that there may still be some Sophie's Choice librarians out there. But if you ever run into them, remember that they are not typical. If you have a librarian who works well with you and your book club, we'd love to hear about them. Just post your comment below.

Survey for Book Clubs

I wrote about this survey in a ReadingGroupGuides.com newsletter back in January, but I wanted to share it here as well since I would love to have our book groups participating in this. The American Library Association (ALA) is working on a study about book groups. They have a survey that they would love book group members to answer.

They are trying to get as broad a picture as possible of book groups in America, so feel free to pass the link to the survey along to other book group members and bookgroup support organizations in your community.

To visit the survey, go to http://www.readersadvisory.org/. Click on the link on the left that says Book Group Survey.

Preliminary results will be presented at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim, CA at the program "Reading Group Therapy: How to Repair, Revamp and Revitalize Your Book Group," which I plan to attend.

Please note that we will be doing our own Book Group Survey on ReadingGroupGuides.com in the next few months so we can better learn about our own readers and how they interact with their groups.

School Book Clubs

My note in the newsletter last week about book clubs in schools and high school summer reading brought some good suggestions from readers. For those of you who missed it, I was pondering why schools have clubs for sports, arts, theatre, music and seemingly everything else under the sun, but not book clubs. The idea of reading for pleasure and talking about it seems like it would be a natural, but it's not.

Our readers weighed in with some ideas and feedback on this.

Cammie said, "I emphatically agree with you about having a book club in high schools. What a wonderful way for young people to embrace reading, not only for the pure enjoyment of it but for the learning aspect as well. I've been reading since I was old enough to get a library card ( and before that as well) my teenaged years included. I was never "popular" in high school, so reading for me was my oasis. I would have loved to have been involved in a book club then!" Her suggestions: The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne.

On the topic of high school summer reading, Marion weighed in with this. " I have a friend who is head of the English department at one of our local high schools. She turned me on to Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. Kids would LOVE it. It's not too long, with lots to talk about and very very clever. If the kids are reading "Farenheit 451", this would make a wonderful side read." My older son read this book and really enjoyed it.

Carolyn from Cincinnati suggested the following titles. "I liked Nineteen Minutes but I like Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas even better and would suggest it for high school students. Most students know little about the incarceration of Asians during WWII and the impact in the neighborhoods. I particularly like Dallas' writing as she does not exploit sex and violence in her books.

Some schools use A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd in their curriculum. If your son's classmates have not read those two, they generate marvelous discussion about race, obligation to family and other topics that are concerns for young people."

MH weighed in with the following, "Having taught high school English, I would suggest books about teenagers for a high school book club. An old standard would be A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Newer suggestions might be The Book of Marie by Terry Kay (To Dance with the White Dog) or The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. She goes on to mention that "although it isn't a high school, my granddaughter is in a book club at her school, Woodward Academy, in Atlanta. She is in 2nd grade and read (an abridged version of) Marley and Me last month."

Mary who works at a library had the following ideas, "I read a book not long ago that I thought would be a great book for teens. It's called The Penny, by Joyce Meyer. Now you might ask, how did I happen to pick it up to read, especially since I'm a mere 63 years old. Well, I read mostly audio books because if I'm not doing two things at once, then I'm wasting time! This was an audio book and we don't catalog young adult audio books separately from the adult audio books. Before the first CD was over, I was already thinking that it would be a good book for teens, and then I hit that barrier again: How do we connect the books and the teens? Your idea of a book club at school is a good way to reach a limited number of teens and I could go for that!

We've struggled for years to find a way to connect teens with our books. My first, and I think best thought, is to make a separate section for teens only. I picture a nice corner with a sofa or cushy chairs, low square table -- large -- and floor cushions. The shelving in this corner would contain young adult books, audio books, and rotating fiction and non-fiction choices from the adult book collection that we think would motivate teens to look inside and see what it says. Unfortunately, our town is small as is our library. There is no room to do something like this.

I would be interested in any ideas you might have on the subject. I'll definitely look into whether our High School has ever tried to start a teen book club. A small inroad into that age group is better than none!"

Soooo great ideas from readers on this subject. I will add more as I get them.

Missed Opportunity

Our first post is appropriately from Shannon McKenna Schmidt, a former staffer here at The Book Report Network who worked on the initial launch of ReadingGroupGuides.com and continues to contribute to the site today. This first week I am going to jump in with a few postings and by next week the team of early contributors that we have assembled will start writing. --- Carol Fitzgerald

I missed my book club's first gathering of the year due to a last-minute work obligation. My belated resolution for 2008: That will be the last get-together that does not include me. I've been a member of the same reading group for a dozen years. It's comprised of a smart, interesting and wonderful cast of characters (we all used to work for the same publishing company). I look forward to our meetings for the camaraderie and the discussions. And since we take turns selecting a book and present the choice monthly, I also enjoy the anticipation of finding out what we'll be reading next.

This time I was dismayed not to have the chance to discuss the current pick: Away by Amy Bloom. Maybe it was because I had approached Away not as a solitary experience, as is most of my reading, but with the understanding that I would be talking about the novel with fellow bibliophiles. For whatever reason, I felt compelled to know what the other members thought of the book. Did it coincide, I wondered, with my own opinions about Bloom's writing style (engaging and descriptive) and her use of a plot device that I thought was particularly effective (and a kindness to readers who often wonder what might have happened after the story concludes)? Were they as taken as I was by the plight of the main character, Lillian, who escapes tragedy in one country only to find herself in dire circumstances in another? And ultimately, did they experience a sense of disappointment at the story's ending?

Whatever one's thoughts about Away, it's a book that begs to be discussed, and I lost the chance to do so. Lesson learned. I'll be there for our conversation about Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth and eagerly anticipate the other literary treasures in store for 2008.

---Shannon McKenna Schmidt

Welcome to the ReadingGroupGuides.com Blog

A few months ago I realized that while we update ReadingGroupGuides.com monthly there always is news, interesting tidbits and ramblings that I want to share with our readers throughout the month. I also recognized that over the last eight years since we launched this website we have come to know a very interesting group of readers, authors, book club facilitators, librarians, booksellers and publishing contacts who have shared their own ideas for what make a reading group something that gives people both joy and satisfaction.

I wanted to give these people an opportunity to share their book club insight and wisdom on this site beyond the features like our interviews and our message board. Thus we are starting this blog. Throughout the month we will hear from regular contributors and special guests. The regular contributors will have their photos and biographies added to the site so you can get to know them better. The special guests will have their photos with their postings.

We'll start out five days a week, and then move to daily postings once we get some momentum going.

I look forward to your feedback on this blog, and if you would like to be a contributor, please write me (Carol@bookreporter.com) with some background about you and the topic that you would like to share. Oh, one more thing. I still would like to title this blog, but nothing is coming to mind just yet. If you have a suggestion, I would love to hear it.

Happy Reading and Discussing.....
Carol Fitzgerald