Books Have Their Own Stories to Tell

A friend owned a small bookstore and, in the course of a conversation with her about the books that came to and left from her store, this idea came to mind. I cannot remember, now, if this story was my idea that I pitched to her, or if it was something she experienced. Perhaps it was a little bit of both. That said, this story in no way represents her, her words, or opinions. 

I actually had the idea of a whole series of stories told from the perspective of a book and wrote one such piece (it follows this one). Maybe, someday, another book will speak to me and I will tell its tale, too. JFM

Books Have Their Own Stories to Tell

Once upon a time, there was a woman who owned a bookstore. When the local paper did a story on small businesses in the community, the store was described as “quaint.” At first, she was disappointed by the moniker. Quaint described the Red Hat Society. Tea parties with cucumber sandwiches and Gingerbread houses with swaybacked roofs are quaint. But when customers started coming, saying they wanted to see the "quaint bookstore they read about in the paper," she acquiesced, grudgingly at first, but then growing to appreciate being quaint. Her store wasn’t Fox Books, of Tom Hanks fame. Hers was more like Meg Ryan’s: special and unique. It was, well, quaint.

She sold used books, mostly, with customers trading, selling and swapping to get a new-to-them book. Occasionally, a regular customer would ask if she could order a new copy of a book because they just couldn’t wait for it to be traded in by someone else, or the wait list was just too long. She would smile and make a comment about “having to check her warehouse” while logging into her Amazon account, and then quote the price, plus just a little bit for her trouble. It wasn’t about the money, it was the service, knowing they would be back in a few weeks, perhaps with that exact book, trading it in for something else. She didn’t think of the people as mere customers, they were her friends. 

Most of the time, books came and books went without much attention given. There were simply too many books on the shelves and on the floor, in boxes and in stacks, to pay that much attention to each and every book. Trade paperbacks with little birds at the bottom of the spine, harlequin romances with bare chested men and suggestively posed women, and hardback books with dust-cover artwork of goblets filled with sorcerer’s brew crossed and re-crossed the counter. Like the Children of Israel leaving the constraints of Egypt to head to the Promised Land, books left her store for local customers’ homes, classrooms, and Little Free Libraries all across the world, thanks to her website.

Now and then, a special book would catch her attention. Sometimes it was a spine’s unique printing that made her eyes stop and look twice, or maybe it was the intricate artwork across the cover, or the soft, embossed leather, or even the price tag – “TG&Y - $1.95” – that made her hold the book, wondering what it’s story was. Where had it been, whose hands held it, who originally had purchased it, how many times was it read (if at all), how did it get from the Boston Public Library (stamped “DISCARD”) to South Texas? Had it been a father’s gift to his young daughter as a peace-making gift after her parents divorced? Perhaps a teacher had it in her classroom, let a student borrow it, and it never got returned. Maybe a soldier had packed it in her duffle before going to Afghanistan, or a bored husband picked it up at the mall while waiting on his wife to finish shoe shopping, or maybe an elderly woman left it behind In the hospital room after her husband had passed, suddenly lacking the strength to carry those few ounces home.

But what was sure to set her mind wandering like Tootle the Train in a field of daisies was a book’s smell. There was something about a smell that could transport her to different places, times, and scenes in her mind’s eye. Books have smells, scents and aromas, and those powerful olfactory triggers would set off memories, or feelings, or pictures in the Viewmaster of her mind. One customer worked at the local Just-A-Burger and her trade-ins always made her hungry because they smelled of burgers and onion rings. Another customer was a custodian. He brought a book one day, saying it had been in his storage closet for “probably a year” and since he hadn’t read it, thought he would swap for something else. As soon as he left, she set it outside on the “FREE” table, because the pungent antiseptic smell of the custodial closet stirred a memory from her own life that she didn’t want to deal with. A copy of Edna St. Vincent Millay had hints of tobacco and Chanel #5 – a strangely romantic combination that set her mind a-wandering for most of the day. A well-used but serviceable copy of Norm Abram’s woodworking book – which included “measured drawerings” as Norm would say in his thick New England accent – had a few wood shavings trapped between its pages, the smell reminding her of her dad’s woodshop where, as a little girl, she would watch him make birdhouses for the school auction.

And, sometimes both the sight and smell were so intriguing, so mysterious, that she couldn’t help but stop. Her curiosity, piqued, would be fueled by her imagination. After all, she reasoned, books have their own stories to tell.