To Be in the Business of Bookselling
To be in the business of bookselling is a privileged thing. You get to meet people completely uninterested about what you do and people absolutely in love with what you do. You become doubtful and defensive in a second and totally validated and supported in another.
There was a curious thing we discovered selling second hand books over the pandemic, and that is that readers are the kindest people. They write great prose in their thank you notes too. We venture that part of it must be borne by how reading has been a companion to them in many forms all their lives – to enthuse when they were bored, to teach at their most accepting, though unbeknownst to them. How exactly they’re made kinder people, we don’t know. There’s just an exceptionally large lot of them who have encouraged us along the way.
What is your ‘love of reading’ story? Please share with us at info.blithebooks.com. We’ll pick one to post in Reader’s Room at the end of the year.