I work in a bookshop now. (They call that a bookseller.) I told you before but there’s no telling where you’ve joined this blog or how often you read it. I freaking love my job. Not only do I get to touch and smell and hug books while on the job, but it happens to be a chill job where no one is going to put me on a leaderboard (Instacart) or yell at me (car dealership). And I know what I’m doing. I can recommend a book to a customer hard core. I can figure out which cookbooks are hot right now. I can straighten a messy pile like that!

We don’t actually do events at the bookstore, not since the Pandemic and since giving up half the space (the downstairs) to an IT business. (The bookshop has been there almost 50 years.) But sometimes we sell books at events elsewhere. Almost immediately after being hired, I asked to go to one of these events so that I could learn how to work them. Also, it was Billy Collins and I like Billy Collins (poet laureate and accessible poet). While working outside of the shop is more uncomfortable for me, for sure, I also like the idea of doing something different and something challenging (which are two ADHD motivators. And in fact, at the store, that’s another thing I like about it. I don’t do the same thing all the time).

I may not have gotten to hear Billy Collins read or speak because he was in the next room and I was manning the book table. I got his autograph afterward (for both me and my aunt, who is a fan). I got to know two of my co-workers much better and also how to set up and run the Square, etc. I am happy in almost any corner of the book world, and a book table in a library at an author event is securely in the book world. (I have since also worked an event at a Black horticulture conference, which was perhaps less bookish, but let me tell you the people that were there were gaga for the particular gardening books we brought and some walked away with armloads of books).

That’s all. Just a job update and a this is us. We are the people who man the book table at your event. We love books. We want you to love them, too.