Even in the Inner Richmond. If I were smart, I'd have called in sick today. I'd be sipping PBRs on that great hipster lawn known as Dolores Park, book in my hand and tiny dog in my lap. But I'm here in the cool calm confines of Green Apple Books, buying and selling books. It ain't so bad at work after all. It's far worse out there:
Families are weird. Andrea Seigel gets that. She writes these pitch perfect imperfect characters navigating a sort of it-only-makes-sense-if-you're-related-to-us family dynamic. I found her book,The Kid Table, becauseMeg Rosoffrecommended it and, well, she hasn't steered me wrong yet.
RQD: What are you working on now?
Andrea Seigel: Right now I'm working on screenplays more than books, so I'm writing a script about a new suburban community that starts up out in the desert and the teenagers that attend its very, very small high school. The main character is romantic to a fault even though she's never really had a serious love in her life- extreme romanticism has always interested me because of the divide between the way romance plays out on TV and movies and even in your head, and then the forms it might actually take in your real life. I'm also interested in the idea of a group of people who take a lot of meaning from the initial smallness of their group, which makes it special, and then following to see what happens when more and more people start to come in and dilute that club.
RQD: What about other influences?
AS: The album "Late For The Sky" by Jackson Browne wrecks me, but it also puts a really clear universe into my head, and if I could translate the feel of some of those songs into writing, I'd be amazed with myself. Thomas Kinkade is a big one for me. No, just kidding. There's a photograph byMatthew Spiegelmancalled "Reconstruction Florida" that I've loved and wanted for years, but can't afford. Oh, and Ralph Lauren's furniture. When I look at ads with rooms staged with his stuff, I get this feeling like I could get a ton of work done if I could just be inside them.
RQD: What book, story or poem do you return to over and over?
AS: I'm not really big on returning to things because I don't have the patience for it, but the two books I can say that I've uncharacteristically read through more than once are Catcher In The RyeandJohn Irving's Hotel New Hampshire. Catcher because I'll pull it out to soothe myself with the existence of a really popular book that's loose on plot, and Hotel because Irving is so intensely great at plotting (I'm not) that I like to go back and marvel at how that book is put together.
RQD: What are you reading now?
AS: I just got Meg Rosoff's new book There Is No Dogin the mail, so I'm starting on that today.
RQD: What did you read as a kid? What is its impact on your work now?
AS: As a littler kid I read a ton of Babysitter's Club,Sweet Valley High,Nancy Drew. I'm sure they had something to do with my favoring getting to know a character over everything else because I kept returning to series- I was more interested in tracking friendships and relationships than I was in whatever dilemma was contained within whichever individual book. And I'm sure that led right into my adult attraction toward soap operas, serial shows, andUs Weekly. I like the intricacies of personalities and smaller interactions more than I care about big external events.
Each year, we anticipate that our calendar sales will decline a bit. Doesn't everyone use Google's calendar or some other electronic version? But you, beloved Green Apple customers, keep buying them. Thanks for proving us wrong year after year.
Well, we bought plenty again this year, about 900 different calendars in all. There are:
page-a-days (to learn a language, have a daily laugh, or inspire you);
weekly and monthly and daily planners, from pocket versions to big, handsome editions;
and wall calendars, from tiny to huge.
The themes and images of these calendars reflect, of course, the diverse interest of our customers, from nature to eastern religion, San Francisciana to humor, sports to children's images.
As always, the selection is best now, as we don't re-order calendars, so come on in and get ready for 2012.
These books speak for themselves, but the curated amalgamation speaks for the store, as expansive as the human condition. Big and fat and dense. This place is the best.
Sadly, deep within the core of my crappy body rests old Trundle, the verb, capital T. Move right along like mankind. Okay? Four winters ago I was supposed to hitchhike my way to Philadelphia, but when a job opportunity at my then and still favorite independent bookstore in San Francisco arose I was waylaid. That was fine though. It was worth every minute. Green Apple Books has been far more than a paycheck for an overpriced apartment, but at once an anthropology course, cocktail party, and archaeological excursion. There are few places like Green Apple left in the whole world, a labyrinthine catacomb of information and entertainment, and from what I read in the papers maybe fewer every day. There are a million reasons to stay but, though I will miss it, I still quit.
This song can play me to the door. Let's call it graduation. Bye.
One of my least favorite tasks at the store is sorting piles of books to be returned, a chore that more than any other feels equal to some of the cruel, eternal punishments dished out by those inventively sadistic Greek gods. Shelving is likewise never-ending, but is at least alleviated by constant novelty. Shuffling books around the display tables in an effort to keep things fresh and interesting appeals to the Tetris-lover in me. But sorting returns is a downer.
It's not merely that I have a soft spot for those underselling books that, having been given a fair chance on our shelves, are now to be banished to the dusty gloom of publishers' warehouses. I'll occasionally feel a twinge of remorse--I should've tried harder to convince people of your worth, poor, abandoned Marcel Schwob!--but you can get pretty callous in this business.
The hardness of my heart notwithstanding, what I intend to write about today are publisher's colophons, which are the first and quickest means I have of whittling down these ever-growing piles of books labelled with that kiss of death: TO BE RETURNED. When I find our returns sorting table creaking under the weight of hundreds of books that have failed to catch enough readers' eyes to stave off damnation for at least another few months, my quickest recourse is to roll up my sleeves and begin the sad process by plucking books from the piles by sight. To do this, I scan the spines for distinctive colophons.
It's a lamentable fact, maybe, that this is if not the only, then at least the most common time I pay attention to colophons. Because there is an art to the colophon that I appreciate as a bibliophile. (I remember as a younger reader scanning the shelves at my local, now defunct, Borders for the first image below, assuming that anything New Directions published was worth my attention.) But as a seasoned bookseller, I'll admit to using these identifiers more practically.
But! Wait! Please don't assume I provide the following logos simply because they are instantly identifiable and save me a few minutes when I'm playing book undertaker. A colophon is not necessarily a black spot signaling doom. Those below are a few that I find charming, distinctive, or seminal.
And, to offset the risk that I've inadvertently created a subconscious association in your mind between a book's doom and the colophons pictured above, I'm including a completely gratuitous video of a cat stalking a few green apples. Enjoy!
"Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not last."
"The man Sterne is worth 1000 Pedants and commonplace-place fellows like Dr. J[ohnson]."
"Tristram Shandy is the most typical novel of world literature."
Tristram Shandy is the "undoubted progenitor of all avant-garde novels of our century."
"[I]t is my best text."
page-a-days (to learn a language, have a daily laugh, or inspire you);
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