My Library

It is with great trepidation that I call your attention to the link for "My Library" in the right-hand column under "More from Joan Call." If you go there, it takes you to a great site hosted by librarything.com, where any deranged bibliophile such as myself can post her personal library with reviews and 5 star ratings.

Because I’m down in Florida until April without access to all of my books, "My Library" is just a partial listing. I’ve rated my books using the 5 star system. If you want to see book reviews, you can click around the site and find them. But I don’t do book reviews, and let me tell you why.

I hate to recommend books to people, unless I know them and their reading habits well. Even at that, it’s tricky. Hence, my trepidation. One of my best friends, with whom I had much in common, hated Owen Meany. Another good friend did not enjoy The Ha Ha, by Dave King. For my money, novels don’t get much better than those. I threw up my hands, and learned to feel presumptuous when I assumed I knew what another reader would enjoy.

During my three-year stint as a bookseller, I was forced to recommend books on a daily basis. If I determined that the buyer wasn’t a big reader -no problem. The customer in a hurry, for example: "Do you have that book on the stock market? I don’t know the name of it! It’s purple, and it was on Oprah!" Or, "I’m looking for a book for my coffee table. It should be kind of a lemony-yellow, (there would sometimes be a paint chip)about 11 X 14?" Or the frantic husbands, five minutes before closing on Christmas Eve: "I need a book for my wife! She likes to cook!"

Then there were the customers who had read one book that they really liked in their entire lives: "I just finished Fried Green Tomatoes! I’d like another book like that!" Wouldn’t we all. Really great stories that are both wise and funny are rare.

For me, a really good day at the bookstore was when I could find the perfect book for a troubled customer. They might have a spouse with cancer, a child coping with the death of a grandparent, or a "friend" with an eating disorder. I would sit them down with a cup of tea in my rocking chair and bring them a stack of books. I usually said something like, "I think this is the one you’re looking for, but you might consider these as well."

It was always hard for me to take money from those people when they checked out. Sometimes they’d be crying. Sometimes I’d be crying. Books can do that. It’s a beautiful thing when a book becomes the only key that can get a person through a door they need to go through. Most times, you need to find those keys on your own. Keep looking.