My Bus Driver Told me to Read The Dead

To be fair, he’s more educated than the average bus driver. Daniel is seemingly a bottomless pit of smart-ness, often surprising his passengers (UCSB students, mostly) with his literary/movie/political/religion knowledge and tidbits.

So when we had a casual discussion (and how did THAT happen?!?) about books, he said, “You’ve read James Joyce’s The Dead, right?”

Well, no…I haven’t.

“How about Dubliners?”

No, sorry.

“Well, you’ve read A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, then?”

Still no.

“And you call yourself a book person?!?” he blurted in frustration.

Actually, yes – yes, I do. In fact, I proudly, to this day, still call myself a book person. A bookseller, for years, a book reader, a “Book Woman,” as a favorite t-shirt declares, but most importantly, a book person.

But not because I’ve read every important, famous, well-known book under the sun – far from it. I’ve mostly found myself falling into thrillers, leaping into fiction and first novels by people you haven’t heard of and early stuff by writers I’ve LOVED, but not so much their latest works.

But a book person, nonetheless. Because although I may not have READ everything – I know (and knew, when working as a bookseller) what YOU should be reading. Or what you wanted to read, even if you didn’t know it. Or what your wife-sister-husband-brother-dad-mom-whomever should be reading.

People used to be surprised that I never read the Harry Potter books. Well, truth be told, I read about half of the first one. And that was all I needed – I got it. All those years ago at Borders, during a holiday prep meeting, I stood in front of my staff and told them, “I know people have been driving you nuts requesting this hard-to-stock Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, but I gotta say, I’d rather sell that title than any of the Goosebumps titles!” And then my staff got it, too. This Harry Potter book was going to be something special.

A couple of years  later, on our own, we had an amazing party for the third Harry Potter book in my Borders store on State Street – before we did that kind of thing corporately. I’ll say it again: it was my all-time favorite day as a bookseller. And as a book person. No, I did not read the books – but I knew what kids (and their parents, as it turned out) liked and read and wanted more of. Because I’m a book person.

I was interviewed once, on a local radio show here in Santa Barbara. It was a moment I’d waited for since we opened this amazing and eventually beloved store: the interviewer asked me about independent stores vs. chain stores.

“That doesn’t matter,” I said firmly. “What matters is the people in the stores. And I’d put my book knowledge up against anyone in this city.”

So although I have yet to read The Dead, as a bookseller I could put my hand on it, yank it from the Literature shelf and place it in your hand, probably while balancing a stack of hardcover books in my other hand, without blinking an eye.

When I was a bookseller/person, I could grab Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus off the shelf simply by seeing its white spine on the Self Help shelf. I could (and did) walk backwards toward Poetry, listening to you describe the book you heard about on NPR and snag The Liar’s Club off the shelf without a glance, handing it to you and asking, “What else?”

Want to know what I’ve read/like/recommend? I’d load your arms with The Shipping News, Catch-22, A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Thousand Acres, and tell you to come back and see me in a month or so – I’d have another armload ready to go for you.

So when someone like Daniel is cheerfully outraged at what he thinks is my appalling lack of good reads, I just smile and nod and promise to add it to my list.

And that’s why The Dead is now on, umm, loaded on my Kobo eReader. Hey – I get it, I’ll read it!

Thanks for reading - K8.