The Keeper of Secrets

I don't blog. It's been a year since my last post. I leave the blogging to the people who are much better at it than I am like The Book Lady's Blog.

But once in awhile, like in my last post, I feel a need to talk about what it means to be a bookseller...and what it means to create a place, a bookstore family, where people feel at home. Maybe they feel more at home with us than they do with their own families.

For probably the tenth time in my bookselling life, a customer came up to me with a question she couldn't even share with a family member: Where are your books on abusive relationships? I gently said "We don't have a bunch, but what kind of abuse are we talking about? Physical? Verbal?"

"Everything", she said. She was shaking.

I gave her a list of books I recommend. I gave her a list of hotline numbers to call. I gave her directions to the library nearby and the women's shelter. I touched her shoulder.

People will go look for a book sometimes before they call the cops, seek a shrink or talk to a friend. It's a first step. And a reminder that all of us as booksellers are doing an important job every day.

If it's placing the trashy vampire book in the hands of a stressed-out corporate executive, selling a book on pregnancy to a single mom, slipping some silly sci-fi to the supreme court judge...it's all safe here brothers and sisters.

Your secret is safe with me. And all my staff.

Want to know what Sir Anthony Hopkins reads? I ain't tellin' ya. Wonderful customer for a couple of years when he was filming here, but his reading choices are his business.

Besides...if I told you...he might eat my liver.

All kidding aside...

Want to keep your reading privacy safe? Indie bookstores and libraries are the only places with a record of caring about that. Consider a donation to ABFFE, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. They protect your privacy in the age of the Patriot Act...which has a lot of good things in it, but a not good thing is access to your book purchases and library loans. Reading a book is not a crime. No matter what that book is about.

And with regard to my customer from Friday...I hope she got a start to some answers. I hope I made a difference. I'm glad she felt that she had walked into a place where there was someone she could trust. And that moment makes every minute of the last 22 years worth it and important.

1-800-799-SAFE (National Domestic Abuse Violence Hotline)