I admit to being naïve. I think I’ve confessed to that in an earlier posting. You’d expect that, I imagine, from someone who opened a bookstore in this age of streaming videos, audio books, and X-boxes.
I don’t mean to say I’m gullible. I cultivate a healthy measure of skepticism. I did lose forty bucks at a traveling carnival once, and maybe that was being gullible. Or it could have been misplaced pride, thinking I was good enough at throwing a baseball that I could hit a target and win a stuffed prize. Found out later it was a rigged game, so I suppose the lost forty bucks amounted to the dues-paying of a rube.
Naïve is leaving the garage door open and driving down the street to the convenience store. Never was a problem in my small-town upbringing. In Tulsa, I lost a toolbox to a thief in less than ten minutes of away-time. Took me ten years to inventory the loss, since I only realized what was gone when I needed a particular tool and discovered I no longer owned it.
In the case of the shop, having grown up around books, I mistakenly believed that EVERYONE was a reader – and assumed books and reading to be a shared human passion.
Boy.
Was I wrong.
Naïve.
I’ve probably told you this one before, but I love repeating my favorite non-reader bookshop customer anecdote. The fellow came tumbling in the front door as though he had popped through a time portal, and suddenly came up stock-still, throwing his hands on his hips.
“Books,” he said. “Would you look at all of these! What do you do with them all?”
As he seemed pretty serious with his question, I remarked that I offered them for folks to buy and read. He nodded in understanding.
“You know,” he replied, still gazing around at the shelves of books, “I used to have a friend who knew somebody who read books.”
And I can tell he was proud enough of the fact that – I just let it go without responding, nodding in honest admiration.
Today’s naiveté eye-opener comes courtesy of the New York Times, reporting on a new Pew Research Center survey in which 27 percent of American adults said they had not read a book in the past year. I always tend to round-off numbers, so – to me – that figure represents a third of all adults. One in three.
Pretty sure that my over-consumption is doing nothing to offset that statistic.
And that, my friends, is why the sign on the store-front awning says BOOKS & BISTRO. Offering a little light fare at lunchtime hedges the bet a little: I’m figuring that if folks don’t read at all, or are taking up the electronic reading device, at some point they might want a nice cup o’ Irish Stew.
Or meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
I’ll have to check the Pew research data on that one.
Come visit!
McHuston
Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!