I Voted for Ann Patchett - have you?

You know that list Time Magazine does?  The 100 Most Influential People in the World?  This year, I want you to vote for Ann Patchett, so click here - and we only have until Friday, April 6th.  (I wouldn't have known about the Vote except for the fine people at the American Booksellers Association - but alerting their membership to important issues is what fine trade organizations do.)

If you trust me, you don't need to know more than that.  Just go here and vote - it'll help take the sting out of Justin Bieber getting put on the list last year.

If you don't trust me, if you need to know more about Ms. Patchett before you vote, I'll tell you this:  she's a terrific writer.  Bel Canto is my favorite - it's South America, it's opera, it's terrorists.  Just go read it.  And if you love it - and you'll love it - there's more.  There's State of Wonder, her latest, out in paperback next month.  Or there's Truth and Beauty if you want a devastating and beautiful memoir.

In other words, Ms. Patchett is a brilliant wordsmith.  But the funny thing?  She hasn't been nominated by Time because she's an author.  She's been nominated because she recently opened a bookstore.  Since then, she's become the face of your local independent bookseller who's fighting the good fight - championing voices, young and old, famous and undiscovered.  Fighting to give those voices a chance to sing.

Oh ho! you think to yourself.  That's why Nick wants me to vote for Ann Patchett, because he's a self-serving so-and-so.  And to that I say, Absolutely.

Look, I know some are tired of me ranting about the good that bookstores do.  But the littlest thing will set me off - like having a stranger come into my store (and yes, I say stranger, not customer, because she didn't actually buy anything and she was strange) all I need is for the Stranger to come in, all excited, and say, Do you have Adriana Trigiani's new novel?

Why, do you mean the Shoemaker's Wife? I ask.  And I'm excited, too, because I love Ms. Trigiani.  Ask me about her first novel, Big Stone Gap, and the great event we hosted for her - great because she was there, and wow, once you meet Ms. Trigiani?  You're going to want to be friends immediately and you'll want to have read her books yesterday.

So when the Stranger asked about the Shoemaker's Wife, the Stranger with her sunglasses on even though she'd been inside the bookstore for about fifteen minutes, I matched her excitement with my own.  It's right here, I said, as I plucked a copy from our shelf.

Do you discount hardcovers? the Stranger asked as she refused to take the book and instead pushed her sunglasses tighter against her face.

No, I said.  We just go ahead and charge the price the publisher has conveniently printed on it.  Kind of like magazines and newspapers.  It takes the guesswork right out!

Well, that doesn't make you very competitive, does it? the Stranger said.

Looking away from the Stranger for a moment, I saw that I had a patron who actually wanted to patronize my shop, and she was waiting patiently for me at the register.  When I looked her way, she kind of shooed me with her hands.  It's ok, her gesture said.  You go right ahead and talk to that Stranger a little more if you need to.

So friends, I did what I instruct my coworkers not to do.  I engaged the enemy.  And the reason I engaged is because even though there was no way this Stranger was going to buy anything from me, I decided to make this a teaching moment.  Isn't that what the cool kids call it?

With whom should I be competitive? I asked.  There used to be a Borders down the street, but they went bankrupt.  It seems their business model - offering books at oftentimes insanely low prices - was, um, unsustainable.  There are some other Indies around, but we don't consider ourselves competitors, more like complementors.  And I smiled.

No, no, the Stranger said.  I mean online.  I'm sure Amazon has it cheaper, right?


  Friends, I've had this conversation so many times.  Yes, you can get It cheaper on Amazon - whatever It is.  And while there are a host of reasons why I believe Bookstores are important - and yes, many of those reasons are highfalutin - the reality is that I am running a business.  Kind of like, you know, Amazon.  Just cuter, smaller and tax-paying.

So, yes, I'm trying to turn a profit on the books I sell.  You know what I also try and do?  I try and hire people who live where you live.  I pay my taxes - did I mention that already?  Oh, and I try and give back to my community.

Go on, the next time you want a donation to benefit the Silent Auction of your choice, ask Amazon for a gift certificate.  Or the next time an author is launching a new book, like Christopher Moore with his novel, Sacré Bleu, and you want to attend an author event where you can meet him, where he might sign your copy, give Amazon a ring.

(Oh, and hey?  For me?  Don't go to that event at your local bookstore with the book you purchased at Amazon.  That's kind of like going to the French Laundry with a steak you bought at Costco and asking the chef to cook it for you.)*

Or how about this?  The next time you want to talk to interesting people who might share your taste in books, or the next time you want to talk to someone who might turn you onto a book that you wouldn't otherwise have thought twice about, click on Amazon and see what People Who Bought This Also Bought.

I mean, you won't get to actually talk to anyone - it's an algorithm doing all the work - but talking?  To, you know, a person?  That's so old-fashioned.

I wish I was as succinct as Ms. Patchett.  She was interviewed in the New York Times last year, just before her bookstore, Parnassus, opened.  Near the beginning of the article, Ms. Patchett described why she would launch a bookstore during a horrible economy - especially since bookstores in particular are struggling against the mighty Amazon.  Her opening salvo:

“I have no interest in retail; I have no interest in opening a bookstore,” Ms. Patchett said ... “But I also have no interest in living in a city without a bookstore.”

The article closed with these words: 

Ms. Patchett said that she is counting on her store to drive home a sharp, tough-love message to book lovers:  buy books at independent stores, or the stores will go away.  “This is not a showroom, this is not where you come in to scan your bar code,” she said. “If you like this thing, it’s your responsibility to keep this thing alive.”


Friends, that's all I wanted to say.   I feel passionately about this thing.  This thing called books.  If you want your choices determined by the shelf-space that Walmart will allocate to the ten picks they think you should read, then don't shop Indie.

I'm selfish, though - and I want selection.  I want to browse.  I want to talk to people who care about this Thing, and so what I want is for this Thing to survive.  I want new authors to be discovered and cheered on by a bookseller near you.  I want that book from 150 years ago, if it's still in print, I want it to have life on my shelves if I can put it into your hands.  I want authors to have a venue to interact with their readers.  I want a free exchange of ideas - in person - not in some comment-thread between grumpyoldguy123@aol.com and sexyvixen@gmail.com.

I want you to be excited about what you're reading and to come in and tell me about it.  I want to give your dog a treat, ask about your Uncle, and tell you that the best burger on the Island is at American Oak (their whiskey selection is also extraordinary).

So, I want all that, but did I mention I also want you to vote?  For Ann Patchett?  Because I do.  Because I think it's important that she, in the words of Time Magazine, has placed "herself on the front lines of several ongoing battles for the fate of the printed word."



*(Thanks to Michael Barnard at Rakestraw Books for this fine example of the odd choices made by the Strangers among us.)

The Legend of Telegraph Avenue, or - why Michael Chabon is more powerful than a locomotive

Booksellers may not have many perks - besides being in an industry with such growth potential - but when perks do come along, they're pretty much outstanding.

Last Sunday, the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association hosted their annual Spring Fling.  You got your seminars, you got your authors signing books, you got your free food (never underestimate how powerful the lure of free food is to your local bookseller).

For me - for many - the highlight was hearing Michael Chabon speak.  We're lucky to have this Pulitzer Prize Winner in our midst (and if you haven't read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, please - just go do that, ok?  We'll talk later) because to hear Mr. Chabon talk is to listen as a master storyteller reveals some of his secrets.

We don't give enough attention to Master Storytellers.  When they do receive it, say when a Master Storyteller is lauded on the cover of Time magazine, instead of celebrating Jonathan Franzen's coup - instead of acknowledging that one of their own was actually recognized for being a terrific writer - other scribes carped and caviled.  Their complaints?  Often their complaints came down to - It shoulda been me.

That kind of well-reasoned argument will get you thrown out of most bars.  Folks?  Can we keep our eye on the ball?  We live in a world that doesn't often descry the power of wordsmiths.  So how about a Bravo before you sharpen your knives?

Sorry, I have a tendency to wander afield.  This was supposed to be about Michael Chabon, Master Storyteller.  Supposed to be about last Sunday in the Presidio.

The grass was still wet from an early morning rain, but by late morning?  The sky was a brilliant San Francisco blue, that blue highlighted against the whitewashed buildings of the Presidio's Main Post.

There were more than a hundred of us gathered there.  Undoubtedly, some had been drawn by Mr. Chabon's appearance, to hear about the novel he has coming out in the Fall.  He began his remarks by saying that whenever he has a new book, there are a few questions he'll always be asked.  One of the most popular?

Where oh where did you get the idea for the book?

And he told us that what he wants to say is - I don't know.  What he wants to say is - I just started writing.  But that doesn't satisfy readers.  They need more than that.  They need a Legend.

(I'm beginning to paraphrase Mr. Chabon.  This is akin to me singing Only the Good Die Young some late night at the Mint on Market Street and expecting you to hear Billy Joel.  You ain't never going to hear Billy Joel.  Never ever.  So you aren't going to get Mr. Chabon's nuance, his poetry.  What you have is me.  Apologies all around.)

You'll let me paraphrase, then?  Mr. Chabon says we need the Legend - need to hear how Moses drifts down the Nile in an ark of bulrushes, how Uther Pendragon beds his enemy's wife and sires Arthur, how Superman came from Krypton.  Because of this need, instead of telling us - I don't know where I got the idea - he'd tell those gathered in the Presidio on that Sunday morning how his new book, Telegraph Avenue, started. 

And so the Legend begins.

Mr. Chabon told us about one of his favorite used record stores in the East Bay, Berigan's on Piedmont Avenue - that iteration of the store long gone, but then a going concern.  He described it as being like a bar that didn't serve drinks - with people who'd belly up to the counter and talk music.

Then he told us about the day the verdict for OJ came down, and how he didn't understand the celebrations that the Not Guilty was met with in some communities.  And not that he just didn't understand it - how he couldn't even fathom the thinking behind anyone delighting in an outcome that left so many incredulous.

He said that made him think of growing up in Columbia, Maryland - a planned community that was socially, racially, and economically diverse.  So much so that he remembers thinking during Black History Month that the people being celebrated were his heroes already.  He didn't need to be reminded of the contributions made by - and here I have to admit that I didn't recognize the names he rattled off.  One of the names may have been Dr. Charles Drew, but honestly - I was waiting for Sojourner Truth.  For Harriet Tubman or Jackie Robinson.

My embarrassment in admitting that I recognized none of the luminaries he mentioned dovetails with Mr. Chabon's wonderment, the wonderment he experienced when he realized he couldn't penetrate the point of view of an individual who cheered when OJ Simpson was declared not guilty.

What would his twelve-year-old self think of the thirty-two-year-old Michael Chabon who counted virtually no African Americans among his friends?  He was pretty sure - twenty years on - that the twelve-year-old would be unsparing in his condemnation.  Maybe those friends could have shed light where all - for him - was dark.

And that takes us back to the record store.  A store that usually had a black guy and a white guy behind the counter.  A store that attracted a diverse clientele who were drawn by the music - mainly jazz.  Berigan's customers knew they could go there and talk to whomever came through the door about some obscure track, some treasured piece of vinyl.  And it was this, what, fellowship?  Camaraderie?  Whatever it was, Mr. Chabon thought, would be a great background for - well, something.

And so then that takes us to the TV pilot he penned for TNT.  But before it could even be looked at, TNT had a bomb with one of their first ventures in original programming.  Maybe Crusade?  A Babylon 5 spin off?  Of course a television show about the denizens of Telegraph Avenue wouldn't get a chance to succeed if a show about the Drakh - an alien race intent on killing everyone on earth with some kind of disease that'll conveniently give earthlings five years to figure out how to cure it - bombed.

I mean, right?  I wouldn't green-light a literate show by a celebrated author after that either.  Makes perfect sense.

But if you're still with me - and Lord knows, I've given you ample opportunity to jump from the Excalibur (that would be the ship you see right up there - you know, Humankind's last chance to survive the evil Drakh!) you'll see that this just all goes to the creation of the Legend - the Legend of Telegraph Avenue.

The Legend entails the ghost of that pilot for TNT haunting Mr. Chabon.  The Legend describes giving that ghost new life as a novel - but taking years to do it.

The Legend therefore requires a lot of walking.  Walking through Berkeley and Oakland neighborhoods - walking along Telegraph Avenue.  Those walks will be with the lovely writer Ayelet Waldman - who just happens to be married to Mr. Chabon.  During those Plot Walks, Mr. Chabon will express discouragement, will profess that Telegraph Avenue is dead, maybe felled by the nanovirus set loose by the Drakh.  When Mr. Chabon would awaken from the beat-down administered lovingly by his wife, he'd be at his desk and so would continue doing the only thing he could do - keep working on the Avenue.

And I've completely left out the midwives.  How could I have not mentioned midwifery?  And the knowledge that Ms. Waldman gleaned when she and her husband began their parenting journey?  And since she learned everything about midwives, it would make sense that her education would nourish him, too.  And that he would find a connection between the midwives - her passion - and the record store - his.

And that - most importantly - this all made perfect sense when Mr. Chabon described the Legend to us.  Because, see - that's what storytellers do.  Take disparate threads and weave them into a coherent whole.  If this hasn't been that - coherent - don't hold it against Mr. Chabon.  Remember, I'm not Billy Joel - more's the pity. 

You'll do me a favor, yes?  You'll call your local independent bookstore when the leaves are changing, when Summer fades into Fall?  And you'll ask to be put on the list for the release of Telegraph Avenue?  Because if you'd been lucky enough to hear the Legend, you'd want to learn more.  You'd need to find out what happens on the street where you live.  Because that's what his Avenue is, really.  It's where you live.

So, Telegraph Avenue.  By Michael Chabon.  This September.

Trust me.

The San Francisco Chronicle's Top Shelf - March 18, 2012

I'm unsure when I became a curmudgeon - I only hope I can maintain that status for a while before developing into a crank.  No one loves a crank. 


It's the crank inside me, though, that wants to carp - Listen here, you little whippersnapper.  When I was a boy, the New York Times Book Review boasted more than 80 pages on any given Sunday.  Now what is it?  Twenty-five?  Thirty?  The injustice, I tell you, the injustice!


Still, we in the Bay Area should find solace in the fact that while Book Reviews across the nation have vanished, the San Francisco Chronicle has managed to hold onto its (undeniably thin!) version.  But it exists, and for that we should rejoice.

And - within its Book Review every week, the Chronicle includes a column called Top Shelf.  Top Shelf lists books of note selected by one of the many Bay Area bookstores that still exist.  And that's something else we should delight in - the subsistence of bookstores in this, the Age of the Death of the Book.


This week, the choices in Top Shelf were selected by Books Inc. in Alameda.  Does that mean I selected the books?


In fact - it does.  That's the job of a crank, isn't it?


So really, go there, have I said that yet?  And with any luck, you'll find a book that keeps your inner-crank at bay.

American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar

When booksellers want to get a particular book into the hands of readers, they rely on a few things.  The easiest?  They tell those readers when they walk through the door that they have to read that specific book, or they tell their coworkers they have to read that book - or those coworkers have to at least help a fellow bookseller out and so they tell readers that, yes, they have to read that book.

If the bookseller feels particularly passionate, he can blog and tweet about it.  He can make 8 1/2 x 11 posters with pictures and arrows directing readers to buy the book.

Or - he can create a diorama on his bookshelves so that, even when he is not in the store, people may be forced to take notice.  To ask themselves, why is the Qur'an on the same bookshelf as The Tropic of Cancer?  Why does a pink scarf link those two books - and the third one, the one in the middle?

With any luck, there will be a fascinated few who read the card under the middle book - the card that tells them if they want to know the connection between the books and the scarf, they have to read American Dervish by Ayad Akhtar.

Maybe you'll be intrigued.  Are you, reader?  Do you want to be entertained and enlightened?  If so, I think you know what to do.


 

When I began Drinks With Nick, I envisioned a Julie Powell kind of thing for boys.  Instead of reading and eating with Mastering-the-Art-of-French-Cooking as an escort, we - you and I - would together drink ourselves through Jerry Thomas' Bar-Tender's Guide.

What I said then was:

You, me, and Jerry's delightful little book. What if we simply drank our way through it? Page by slaking page? How hard would it be to follow through on that endeavor? Not very, is what I'm thinking. So if you're with me - ah, come, you're with me, right? If you're with me, then let's go.


So that was the plan.  But then - life.  With my father so ill, and life happening all around, that's what I started writing about - life, our curious enterprise.

Do I still write about drinks?  Sure - because I enjoy them so much.  Alcohol is a big part of my heritage, a big part of the memories I have of my family - my grandparents, uncles and aunts, cousins.  And my friends?  Oh, yeah - just a little bit.

I love the traditions - cultural and social - associated with drinks and drinking.  So I'll always have Drinks With Nick.

But - another big part of my life is centered around books.  I'm a bookseller - and will be until someone turns out the lights on that curious little enterprise for good.  Hopefully - for all of us - that won't be too soon.

And yes, I do believe the reports of the death of the book are greatly exaggerated.

Books abide.  If you find one in your grandmother's attic, all you have to do is open it and read.  But will the next generation's generation be able to turn on an iPad a hundred years from now?  No.  Because for all its elegance and beauty, that technology requires power and programming and care.  Throw a book into a corner, forget about it - even for decades - and it will always be waiting for you to do one thing.  Open it.  Did I say that already?  That with a book all you have to do is open it?  No power cord or Cloud needed.  How effortless would it be for you to read that floppy disc in your junk drawer?  Or the 8-track you saw at that garage sale?

I was reminded - not that I need a reminder - about how much books mean to me when I started reading A Bear Called Paddington to my girls.  He was my first love, the first book I remember really thinking - Hey, this is great!  Just me and a bear, sitting together in a Woodrow School library aisle.  My next door neighbor, Anne Young, was the librarian, and she let me spend as much time there as I wanted.

My oldest daughter?  She's right about the age I was when I first discovered that bear from Darkest Peru.

One of the things I love best about Paddington bear is that no one ever questions the fact that he talks.  Like Gregor Samsa's bug, it's just a given, and if you accept the premise, you're going to enjoy the ride.

Introducing my girls to the bear, and his adopted family...it's just one of the great gifts made possible by books.  When I read the words on the label tied around the little bear's neck, when I read the words just as Mrs. Brown was reading them in Paddington station, when I read to my daughters the words - PLEASE LOOK AFTER THIS BEAR.  THANK YOU - that's exactly what I was asking my daughters to do.  To look after this bear the same way I had.

Will they love Paddington as much as I did?  I have no idea.  I do know that we, as a family, are all enjoying his adventures.  That the four of us, on Saturday night, were quietly sitting and reading on our couch when suddenly - Paddington started bailing water from the tub with his most unusual bush hat, and that when he did that, the girls laughed.  Long and hard.  The laughter of a four-year-old and a seven-year-old?  You could stop wars with that sound if they'd let you.

Here?  At Books With Nick?  I'll be writing about the good ones because I don't have time to waste on the bad.  So when the good ones come my way, I'll pass them along to you when I'm done - and you don't have to bother about returning them.  Just pass them along yourself when you're finished.

Happy reading.