I'm in love! And there's a book about it.

Kasey Cox

I love books, writers, wannabe-writers, young moms and dads, nerdy kids, teachers, librarians, first graders clutching Junie B. Jones, retired couples, vacationers, loyal locals, book clubbers, new grandparents, the tween boys who come for their latest manga installment, railroad aficionados, folks doing jail ministry, college students, expectant parents, bird watchers, hikers, sci-fi conventioneers, crazy collectors, local historians, poets, seekers, philosophers, bored teenagers, conservative Christians, insistent liberals, doubting Thomases, cynical humorists, wounded souls, self-helpers, New Agers, literary snobs, cowboys, nature buffs, romance junkies …. I love them all, and feel at home with them. Despite all their differences, they are all BOOK PEOPLE. How fantastic that they are united in a bookstore, and how lucky I am to be among them.

Certainly, for any subject under the sun, there’s at least one book about it. But Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore is for me. With her sixth book, Author Suzanne Strempek Shea has gifted me, and book people like me, this slice-of-life memoir from her first year of working at Edwards Books in Springfield, Massachusetts. This warm, funny story is a love song, an ode to independent bookstores and the people who frequent them. Which ultimately gives the reader, I am happy to tell you, a wry, sweet, forgiving look at the quirks of the contemporary American.

The front cover of my copy of Shelf Life features a detail from Van Gogh’s painting, “The Parisian Novels”, otherwise known as “The Yellow Books.” I’m a Van Gogh fan, but I’ve never seen nor heard of this piece. This cover alone has touched me: I want to run right out and buy a huge copy of this painting for my wall.

Just inside the perfect front cover, then, are the words I wish I’d written. Suzanne lists all the requests she fields. When people come to a bookstore, they are often in search of entertainment, relaxation, an escape into the stories. More often, though, they are in search of new knowledge, or more information about a subject that is already of interest to them. Sometimes they are searching for answers, for help, for validation, for absolution, hoping to find it in the words of a book. The mix of these requests paints an amazingly accurate and near-bewildering collage of the most intimate details of the American life as well as the melting pot of culture we are. Even in Wellsboro, our custom order clipboard and daily customer requests reflect this amalgam, too.

At another point in Shelf Life, Suzanne admits to the envy she feels as an author working in a bookstore, wishing at times for that author’s sales, or this author’s cover art, or another author’s idea. Accordingly, I’m comfortable that she wouldn’t mind a little paraphrase of her opening pages: what do people ask for? Lasagna gardening. Leadership skills. Escape from codependency, from debt, from a*%holes at work, from holiday weight gain, from neck pain. They want murder, intrigue, romance, passion, a new kid by Friday, new hiking trails, more energy-efficient houses, Mennonite recipes. They enjoy hedgehogs, boy wizards, survivors, football players, forensic scientists, sharks, vampires, women who own quilt shops and play amateur sleuth. The list goes on. And so do we!