The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians
Their stories are better than the bestsellers
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Instant New York Times Bestseller!
This “celebration of the world of books” (Kirkus) is “a real page turner!” (Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan) that "feels like a love letter" (USA Today) to booksellers and librarians—as told to the greatest storyteller of our time, James Patterson.
To be a bookseller or librarian…
You have to play detective.
Be a treasure hunter. A matchmaker. An advocate. A visionary.
A person who creates “book joy” by pulling a book from a shelf, handing it to someone and saying, “You’ve got to read this. You’re going to love it.”
Step inside The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians and enter a world where you can feed your curiosities, discover new voices, find whatever you want or require. This place has the magic of rainbows and unicorns, but it's also a business. The book business.
Meet the smart and talented people who live between the pages—and who can’t wait to help you find your next favorite book.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Patterson and his frequent coauthor Eversmann follow up 2023's Walk the Blue Line with a lighthearted compendium of first-person reflections from librarians and booksellers about their work and passion for literature. Most entries consist of easygoing odes to reading, as when one Texas Barnes & Noble inventory specialist discusses how she loves to get young children interested in books by reading aloud to them during story time. Alexis Sky, owner of two Albany-area bookstores, describes the satisfaction she derives from getting to know customers' tastes, even going so far as to put aside new titles she thinks a regular might like until their next visit. A few more substantial entries tackle how a hostile political climate has made librarians' jobs more difficult. For instance, Texas library consultant Carolyn Foote recounts how she organized a social media campaign to push back against Texas legislators' attempts to remove books about racial diversity and gender from library shelves. However, such stories are the exception in a frothy volume largely focused on earnest if banal paeans to the written word ("Handing someone a book with the power to change their lives is magical because, oftentimes, it does," opines a Florida reference librarian). Pleasant if somewhat trite, this will be comfort food for bookworms.