And the Beat Goes On…

So much has happened since I last updated you on our bookshop I hardly know where to begin.  We have hosted several author events including such charming ladies as Mrs. Genevieve Trimble sharing Tea with us as we chatted about her beautiful book on Afton Villa Gardens.  We had a wonderful evening conversation with Gwen Roland as she delighted us with her warm spirit and told tales of swamp life while signing copies of her books Atchafalya Houseboat and Postmark Bayou Chene.  We spent a rainy Saturday during a day when a Garden Stroll was scheduled in town visiting with Chere Dastugue Coen talking about the gardening mecca that is Forest Hills Louisiana.  We then spent another Saturday, that started out rather rainy, with Shellie Rushing Tomlinson author of Suck Your Stomach in and Put Some Color On!  The rain cleared out just in time and we had a grand time laughing about things Southern Momma’s tell their daughters, and these are just a few of the events we have held!   Most notably we were honored to be the headquarters, registration venue, rain hideaway and general hangout spot for The Third Annual Walker Percy Weekend which was held in our little town of St Francsiville in June.  What a rush!  This event draws readers, writers, fans of Walker Percy, and fans of southern good times from all over the country.   A friend called the weekend “The World’s Greatest Literary Cocktail Party” and with the fabulous presenters and panel discussions, great Cocktail & Crawfish parties, literary conversations and of course The Progressive Front Porch Tour & Bourbon Tasting Stroll the event is known for, I must say I find the description rather apt.  I can’t list all the fun that happened that weekend, with parties, panels and book signings, but I can assure you you do not want to miss it next year.  Stay informed at www.walkerpercyweeknd.org. 

So with such a busy couple of months what is up next?  Well, currently we are planning our first big midnight book release party!  At midnight on July 31, 2016 the eighth story in the Harry Potter series will be released and we plan to be handing out books to lucky customers who pre-order just as soon as the clock tolls!  This should be interesting since (a) I have never run a midnight book release before (b) I can just imagine the excitement of Harry Potter fans who have been waiting so long to find out what happens next and (c) I am generally an “early to bed, early to rise” kinda girl so I am not quite sure how I will deal with midnight – it’s been a while!   Be sure and visit www.conundrumbooks.com/shop to pre-order your copy so we don’t sell out before you reserve one for yourself.  You will want to read it before our first “All-Ages Bookclub “ meeting in mid-August where we can all chat about what our favorite magical beings have been up to and decide if we like where they are headed!

And then we have end of year events to plan.  St. Francisville plays hosts to events all throughout the year but a couple of my favorites are Polo’s and Pearls on August 20, 2016 where last year we held our very first book signing months before opening when our friend CC Lockwood joined us to sign his book Louisiana Wild and Christmas in the Country – the weekend we officially opened last year- which is held the first weekend of December.  Can you believe our little shop will be a year old!  (Ok, so not for another 5 months, but still , it’s time to plan now) . 

And then we have been invited back to take part in the 2017 Readers and Writers Symposium in February 2017 and to be the 2017 registration venue, headquarters and hangout for the Fourth Annual Walker Percy Weekend.  We must be doing something right to have repeat performance, right? 

What a whirlwind this first 7 months have been, but I have a feeling we better buckle up because this ride is just gaining speed!

And of course, a favorite Quote to wrap it all together: “Without ambition one starts nothing.  Without work one finished nothing.  The prize will not be sent to you.  You have to win it.“  Ralph Waldo Emerson

One thing leads to another....

One thing leads to another…

Isn’t it funny how a mind works?  As mentioned previously when we opened the bookstore we decided to forego the usual “Opening Store Inventory” service where they basically ask how many square feet of bookshelf space you have and then ship you what is essentially a bookstore in a box.  Such a thing seemed easy and probably just perfect for Genericville, USA but just not right for St. Francisville’s new bookstore.  We opted instead to “curate” every book on our shelves.  To personally select each and every book based on feedback from our customers and of course my own terrific taste in books!  And so far I think it has gone pretty well, but every once in a while something comes across my radar either in the course of a conversation, while watching PBS or reading the newest best seller.  Isn’t it funny how life - and books – are so interconnected?   For today’s blog I decided to share a few stories of some of the latest books added to our inventory and how they came to be part of our lovely little store. 

It all started when a couple from Sweden came into the store one day.  (Bet you didn’t know we had such international clientele).  The girl was purchasing a copy of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (we have a lovely cloth bound edition that also includes Through the Looking Glass).  As they are standing at the counter I hear the guy say “I wonder if this book was originally written for children or for adults”.  Now since they were standing at the counter I did not feel it was eavesdropping to join the conversation, so I said “Actually, I can answer that question”.  You see I am a lover of lexicography and of words in general and several years ago my husband gave me a copy of what was then a new book called “The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary” by Simon Winchester.  In this book the true story of the writing of the dictionary is told and not to give away too much but it was written by committee and one of the committee members was Lewis Carroll.  The meetings were held at the home of another Committee Member who had a young daughter.  Lewis Carroll starting writing stories for the young daughter to keep her occupied while they compiled the dictionary, the stories eventually grew into Alice in Wonderland so definitively written for a child.  But while telling them about the book I realized that it was not a book we had on our shelves, well we fixed that!

Next up I am having a conversation about rain, rivers rising and flooding (I wonder how that came up) and realized we did not have Rising Tide by John M. Barry.  What? I used to work for The National Flood Insurance Program for goodness sake, well we fixed that too. 

I am currently reading the best selling novel The Swans of New York by Melanie Benjamin.  It is a novel re-imagining the relationships between author Truman Capote and the New York society women with whom he surrounded himself and is set at and around the time Breakfast at Tiffany’s was released.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME!  We had other books of Truman Capote’s stories but we did not have Breakfast at Tiffany’s on our shelves!  Now you may not know this but I adore this movie, and Tiffany’s jewelry of course, ooh and those little blue boxes …but I digress.  This was an oversight that simply has to be remedied immediately!  And now a delightful “Tiffany Blue” hardcover copy of Breakfast at Tiffany’s graces our shelves as well.

Then the other night I was watching Mr. Selfridge on PBS when whom should one of Selfridge’s daughter’s invite for a reading at the famed department store?  None other than A.A.Milne and his son Christopher (Robin) of Winnie the Pooh fame !  Now what you probably don’t know is that I have given many, many babies in my world (nieces, god children etc) a copy of The Complete Winnie the Pooh as the first book I give them as gifts, usually at birth…. And we did not have this wonderful book on our shelves either!  Well we must fix that , and so as soon as the order, which has been placed, is processed and delivered it will be fixed.  That USUALLY only takes a couple of days….unless the delivery service delivers your package to some unknown loading dock in some far away land and the books are never to be found again…but that is a story for a different day.

Quote of the Day...

"Don't let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was",,,Richard L. Evans

Where do you Read? When do you Read? And the discoveries and devices that make it possible.

I often hear people say they simply don’t have time to read.  How is that possible?  Isn’t all time actually reading time?  That said I do have my favorite times and places to read which isn’t always physically easy but thanks to a little ingenuity, a pinch of creativity and a bit of luck you can actually read A REAL BOOK just about anywhere. 

We all have favorite places and times to read.  For me one of those is when eating alone.  It is a habit gained when I used to travel daily as part of my sales career.  Eating every meal in your car or in a hotel room gets old really fast and is anything but relaxing .  Yet sitting at a restaurant table staring out into space or heaven forbid accidentally making eye contact with another lone diner makes you look either rather conspicuous , desperate or a combination of the two.  So how do you handle this conundrum ? Why you carry a trusty friend in the form of a book everywhere you go and you will never eat alone!  But of course losing yourself in a book while eating is difficult if the book won’t stay open on its own at the table, particularly if you have ordered something like a steak requiring the use of both a fork and a knife and therefore the use of both hands.   Enter discovery number 1, the Easy BookClip.  What you may ask is an Easy BookClip? Well it looks like piece of metal coat hanger coated in latex and bent into something resembling a headless stick man doing toe touches.  My Easy BookClip was a gift with purchase when I subscribed to The Book of The Month Club several decades ago.  Basically you slide it into your book with the “arms” on the page you are reading and the “legs” tucked into pages on either side and it holds your book open.  Over the intervening 20 or so years I have lost it, searched for it , found it and sworn to never lose it again and then the other night I found the company that distributes them to retailers (thank you to my iPad and insomnia for that little find) so now I will never be without an Easy BookClip when I need one again – and soon you won’t have to be either , I know a bookstore that is about to start carrying them!

One of my other favorite times and places to read is while soaking in a hot bath.  We all know a 20 minute soak in epsom salts , perhaps with a bit of eucalyptus or lavender essential oil added,  is good for you but just soaking for 20 minutes with nothing to read sounds to me like the epitome of boring !  Add a good book to that picture and now in the words of a commercial from a bath product of yore “Take me Away”.  But how do you keep your book dry while you soak?  My favorite discovery for this task is the plexiglass fronted cookbook stand.  Available at any kitchen store and originally designed to keep your cookbook protected from cooking splatter it is also good at keeping your book dry and perched at the perfect viewing angle while bathing.  

I also like to read while waiting for appointments, getting my hair cut and of course while sitting on the porch to name just a few more options.  One of my favorite discoveries happened last night when I was reading while washing the dishes.  You see as I was opening my book to put it in my handy dandy cookbook stand I dropped my bookmark into a sink full of hot water.  I was not terribly upset, it was one of the new bookmarks I have ordered to give away at my bookshop so of course I literally have thousands of them but the surprising thing was that after about a full 20 or 30 seconds I pulled the bookmark from the sink and wiped it on a dishtowel and left it on the counter.  When I finished washing the dishes I picked it up to throw it away but it was not ruined, it was perfectly dry! It seems as though I ordered some kind of at least semi water resistant finish on our bookmarks.  I simply cannot tell you how happy this made me – it’s the little things you know.  So happy I just had to make this the topic of today’s blog, hope it made you at least a little happy too.  Oh, and come on by The Conundrum and get yourself a seemingly water-resistant bookmark… free with any purchase of course!

Quotes of the Day:

“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance”.   – Confucious

(or said differently) : “The more you read, the more things you will know.  The more that you learn the more places you’ll go.” – Dr. Seuss

 

I Do Not Like Them in a Box, I Do Not Like Them with a Fox

It is true, we opened the shop in early December with just a few hundred books on the shelves.  When I first began talking with publishers and book warehouses there were plenty of options.  I thought there were a lot ofAcronyms and Creative Titles for things in my previous careers in Pharmaceutical Sales and Insurance.

Well it appears the book business has it’s own share and I am struggling (with the help of a giant binder on “How to Open A Bookstore”, thank you Paz & Associates) to figure out what they all mean.   When you start a new contract with a Publisher or Book Distributor and inform them that you are opening a new bookstore they immediately ask if you would like to complete a ROSI (Recommended Opening Store Inventory to those of you out there not in the book biz) , or would you like to use “Above the Tree Line”  (sounds prettier but basically the same thing).   At first it sounds like a good idea, after all they probably know more than I do, I am new to this game.  So I requested the forms and started filling them out.  They ask questions like how many square feet of shelf space does your store have? What percentage of fiction, vs non-fiction would you like?  What percentage of spiritual books , self-help books, business planning books, classical literature, etc would you like to carry.  

Honestly, not being so much of a numbers gal my head was spinning, and no where did they ask me if I wanted to carry books with really beautiful bindings , or what percentage of shelf space I thought should be dedicated to The Princess Bride.  

So I went out on a limb.  

While the idea of some computer somewhere making all of the decisions for my opening inventory seemed a heck of a lot easier (once you got past the math on the request form) , it did not feel like MY store and it just did not feel right.    Basically theywere offering to deliver “A Bookstore in A Box” that would be turnkey and ready to open fully stocked on day one.

We instead opted to curate our entire inventory ourselves with input from our community.  It is certainly a slower way to go and at first the shelves looked a bit empty but now just a few months later the shelves are filling up nicely and I can honestly say as I look around that I am surrounded by books that all MEAN something to me and/or to our community members and those that shop in our bookstore.  We ask everyone that comes in to recommend their favorite books and guess what…then we order them.   

We are not Everywhereville, USA we are St.Francisville.  We are a unique and beautiful community and I want to build a unique and beautiful selection of books for our bookshop.  So I invite you to submit your favorites to me in the comments section of this blog and to help us build the best selection of any small bookshop anywhere.

Quote of the Day :  (could not decide which of these expresses my feelings  about today’s blog best so I submit two thoughts for you today – ENJOY! ) 

 “Patience, persistence and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success”.  – Napoleon Hill

“The best way to succeed is to discover what you love and find a way to offer it to others”.  – Oprah Winfrey

To Blog or Not to Blog , That is the question.

Have you ever had one of those conversations while on vacation with your spouse about how you guys are someday going to retire and open a book shop?   You know the conversation,  the two of you are wandering in a quaint independent book store in some picturesque vacation town and one of you mentions how idyllic  life would be if the two of you were to while away your retirement years curating and manning your own shop in a town with a comfortable and laid back way of life.    And so it began. 

That conversation for us happened last February,  then one day last summer my husband Rob  came home from a trip into downtown St. Francisville, the small historic town along the Mississippi River where his family had lived when he was  a boy and where we have a second home, and he announced that he had “Signed a Lease”.  Signed a Lease on what I asked.  On the bookstore he answered.  To which I responded, I thought that was our retirement project and I did not know we had retired!

Now you may ask yourself:  why open a bookstore when so many bookstores are closing their doors? Or you may ask yourself:  why open your bookstore in a small country town with a VERY limited population base?   Or perhaps you might ask: why open our new bookstore in a small town that you do not actually live in full time?  All of these are good questions, but I do not have a really good answer.    One of the definitions of the word “Conundrum” is “A question or problem having only a conjectural answer”.  Now you know why our bookstore in a small town we do not live in full time , in an industry some say is going the way of the dinosaurs, that was opened BEFORE we had actually retired from our long time careers is called The Conundrum. 

As you might imagine as word got out that we had opened a book shop and that we had named it The Conundrum the questions started flying from all directions.   The other day over lunch with a dear friend as I related the above story my friend asked “Are you writing this stuff down somewhere”?  She then suggested blogging on our new website.  She seems to think people may actually be interested reading about the trials, the tribulations, the successes and the sheer joy that we are experiencing as we embark on this journey to open and hopefully to succeed in the bookstore business.  If you are reading this perhaps she was correct.  If you want to read more check back soon. Till then I will share with you a favorite quote that sum up the beauty of Rob acting before I was quite ready  , the fact is I may have never felt truly ready and so I needed a little push to get started and I must say I am glad for the push! 

Quote of the Day:  “A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action.  If there’s no action you haven’t truly decided”.    by Tony Robbins