Oliveletter to Booksellers

the deejays of the book world

I have so much to share with you all, so, a teaser of things to come: a refreshing drink recipe for summer, maybe an ice cream too… and a quick trip to Chicago full of recs for where to eat. But, first, I’m still stuck head-first in a book and maybe you are too. Thus, I want to dedicate an entire newsletter to the stalwarts on the front lines of our what to read next queries: booksellers.

Last weekend’s melancholy brought me to A Great Good Place for Books in Montclair and the chance occasion of being the only person in the store that moment. It allowed me to politely monopolize the owner, Kathleen’s time. She asked me, “Do you need a book?” Yes. Always. “Do you want a recommendation? What was the last good book you read?” Here, we started gabbing about recent finds and reads, me with the ardent passion of a person in love because when a book gets under my skin, I have to tell everyone about it. She picked a handful of books for my consideration and I narrowed it down. I crushed two of the books early in the week and began the third one yesterday. I knew I wanted to write a love letter to booksellers who sometimes can prescribe us the books we need, even if we don’t know it. She knew I needed a romcom and a book about being in the sandwich generation—both books I would have not picked out on my own or typically read. Right now, I’m nose deep in a novel set in the publishing industry and it's feeling very prescient. She didn’t know these were the books I needed to read this week, but somehow she knew! And I’m grateful.

Book-buying is such a personal thing. The beauty of independent booksellers is that they are readers too and a wealth of information for suggestions, but also someone with whom you can exult in talking about shared beloved characters or storylines or places.

A job of mine in high school, albeit a very short career of one, had me pulling books out of cardboard boxes from the back room and into the shelves out front of BookStop (RIP) in the Lovers Lane / Northwest Highway shopping center, right next to the Inwood Movie Theater in Dallas. I relished being around so many books! Maybe especially as we closed up the store and turned off the lights. You won’t be surprised to learn that I too would have run away as a child and hidden in the library. I found such joy in seeing the titles of favorite books in the fiction section, like friends, waiting nearby while I worked. My favorite section to work on was the geography and religion set—maybe because it seemed such an unlikely pairing? This was the year of Tuesdays with Morrie and shoppers bought it in droves! I learned so much about how one copy can easily become four copies bought. I purchased my own to better understand what these droves of readers were getting themselves into… and so I could more fluently talk about it when I also helped behind the counter that holiday season, kind of like tasting every dish on the menu when I worked at Outback Steakhouse in graduate school, or even now, working with the bakery to have richer descriptions and better suggestions for readers (and eaters).

Years later, after getting married, we lived a block and change from two incredible bookstores in San Francisco. There, I met Leigh-Grey, owner of the indomitable little bookstore Thidwick Books (RIP). Little known fact: I loved this bookstore and bookseller so much that I pulled all the fish recipes from an early draft of my cookbook, Steeped: Recipes Infused with Tea because she only carried vegetarian and vegan cookbooks and I couldn’t imagine my book not being in her store. Tall bookshelves lined the store and led like a diagonal arrow to the back counter where she perched and could see anyone who walked in the door. The bell chirped upon entry after passing the red plastic bowl, refreshed with water, just outside the door for dogs. She brought so much of herself and her preferences to the bookstore. I would go in to gander, to gab about beloved books we both had read and that had imprinted in our minds, to add to my TBR pile. I had secret visions of me, one day, in Leigh-Grey’s perch, being a bookseller and making book recommendations, much like a deejay selects songs for dedications late at night.

Last year, a friend who’s been my editor at magazines, invited me to a bookstore / wine shop opening in Berkeley, and I could have fainted in a space so beautifully appointed with lush and colorful velvet topped benches and midcentury modern chairs on parquet floors and rich dark wooden bookshelves that stretched to the ceiling. Book Society is a place you just want to linger in and meet up with a friend… to read over glasses of bubbly. That evening, as my friend mingled, I met the bookstore owner, Laura, and her husband proudly showed me his shelf of books he curated for the shop, and I loved that detail of personalization. Laura’s cookbook section caught my eye and saved me in a pinch late one night when I needed a copy of a book for a work project. I keep going back for non-alcoholic sipping and new books to devour ever since. Laura and I are cooking up something fun this fall… more on that soon!

A joy of publishing a book and then traveling around to talk about it and sign copies means authors come face-to-face with people who will buy their book and are as excited about the topic as the authors are. Here’s the thing though, I remember the booksellers with equal fondness. They gave my cookbook a chance on their shelves or on an endcap or as a staff favorite with a handwritten card telling would be shoppers of the future what delighted them about my book.

I will never forget the owner and his dog that I met in New Orleans at Octavia Books, or the kind staffers at the Avid Reader in Davis. I will always remember the warm welcome from Porter Square Books. Sharpie in hand, I scrawled my name on the wall at Blue Willow in Houston and have an all-love relationship with Copperfield’s in Healdsburg (though I miss their two previous resident bookstore cats). I’ve loved the author events put on at Gilman Brewing by East Bay Booksellers and will always rave about my pub day party at Green Apple in San Francisco. Then, there’s the cookbook stores that I can never quit: Celia and her cookbook events at Omnivore Books in San Francisco, and the welcome reception I received from Book Larder in Seattle. I could spend a day (and have spent the better half of one) at Powell’s in Portland and my first time in the Strand in New York. Am I leaving one out? Probably. There’s nothing like meeting a new bookstore and bookseller for me to add to my list of places to frequent.

On this last Prime Day, I want to extol the independent booksellers who keep showing up and doing the beautiful work of setting up storefront windows in themed displays or deciding which books get their covers pointed outward.

Your turn: what is your favorite bookstore where you live? Is it the bookseller, their selection of cookbooks or literary fiction? Is it the layout of the store or a cozy place to finish chapter 1? I’d love to hear more about bookstores you love in the comments.