McHuston Booksellers

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Tag: broken arrow bookstores (Page 106 of 114)

The women and Jessie’s Girl.

January 11, 2013 /

Wow.

It’s something when just reading a headline can make your face turn hot from embarrassment. The article was on the Tulsa World website and reads:

Rick Springfield Sets Return Tulsa Trip

It could be that you’re in that group that has never heard of Rick Springfield. After all, it was about thirty years ago that he starred on the television soap opera General Hospital. In truth, he was a seasoned musician and fairly well known in his home country before he came to the US.

His song Jessie’s Girl hit #1 in 1981 at the same time he was playing the television role, and he found himself working TV scripts and touring concert arenas at the same time. I found myself in a concert arena in Tulsa sitting next to my wife, who was an avid General Hospital viewer and fan of Jessie’s Girl.

I had no idea what I was in for.

There had to have been plenty of other males there, but I sure felt like the only one. Maybe we were all shrinking back into seat cushion invisibility. On the other hand, the women all seemed to be leaping, shouting, and generally drawing attention to themselves. At least, that’s the way I remember it.

The song still gets played on occasion, but I haven’t heard it in some time. According to Jennifer Chancellor’s account in the World, the song enjoyed a revival in popularity when it was featured on Glee. I missed that one, too, but I’m happy for any 80’s-era rocker who can still sell tickets for casino performances and entertain crowds at age 63. Springfield played the River Spirit Event Center last year, probably boosted by the Glee promotion.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think Rick Springfield’s concert was horrible, necessarily. It was a matter of being in the midst of so many vocal fans and feeling out of place. There is sort of concert karma, though.

I got out of taking my daughter to the Backstreet Boys concert when they made a Tulsa appearance. I’m pretty sure I’d have felt a lot more out of place there.

In the meantime, any of you new or veteran Rick Springfield fans might enjoy his recently published memoir – Late, Late at Night – which came out in paperback last year and is ready for some reading, late, late at night.

Filling the bill.

August 11, 2012 /

THAT’S the one I’m looking for!

Those are words that a bookseller loves to hear. Someone stopping in to look for a specific title – something written years ago – and, against the odds finding it on the shelf. There are so, so many titles.

I’ve been around books all my life, but before getting into the business of selling books, I had no idea that so many authors had written so many books. Not having been a reader of series fiction in my younger years, I naively thought that an author wrote a book or two and then rested on their laurels. (I understand that’s the part of the anatomy that grows larger from big royalty checks and sitting at the keyboard. I could be wrong.)

It turns out, there are some writers that must be writing twenty and thirty hours a day to crank out so many titles. James Patterson, for one.

To keep ALL those books in stock would take a store the size of Texas and an army of employees to keep them organized and alphabetized. Honestly – no store can stock all the books. No can do.

So, it is somewhat of a rarity when an older title is on the shelf just waiting for its new owner. We’re talking about those books that even the big-boy Barnes & Noble has to special order (and charge full cover price for…).

There are some categories that I have a pretty good shot at fulfilling a request. American and English literature, for example. I try to keep the classics in stock, even to the point of ordering them in new to have copies on the shelf. For genre fiction like suspense, mystery, and fantasy – it is just impossible. Even in the currently popular George R.R. Martin series “Game of Thrones” that has been brought to life on Showtime, there are more titles than I can stock in new copies.

This afternoon, I had several satisfying moments. In fact, the majority of the requests today were in stock, and available in nice clean used copies that saved the buyers a little money.

I like that.

Until the store grows to the size of Texas I’ll just take pride in those occasions where my selection of books has satisfied a specific need.

Maybe I’ll brush up on my fortune telling to better know what to stock.

An Irish literary treasure lost.

July 31, 2012 /

When the bookstore originally opened, my sister Linda presented me with a housewarming gift: appropriately, it was a book.

A hardback copy of the just-released Whitethorn Woods by Irish author Maeve Binchy. I’d already sold a number of her titles in my capacity as a bookstore clerk previous to opening McHuston Booksellers. I knew she was popular.

She was also a great writer, as I learned after cracking open Linda’s gift. (That’s figurative speaking there – I would never crack a book spine!) Coupled with my experience traveling Ireland with my daughter and mother just a few years before, I greatly enjoyed Binchy’s story of Irish progress versus tradition.

“We have lost a national treasure,” the Irish Prime Minister Edna Kenny said today, following word that Maeve Binchy died Monday at age 72.

The author was in a Dublin hospital with her beloved husband at her side after battling a brief illness. Many of her 16 novels were dedicated to her husband.

Her worldwide sales topped forty million books, which included her novels, four collections of short stories, a novella, and a play. Much of her work was set in her native Ireland – both Dublin and rural communities.

I thanked my sister for the book, but I’m not sure I made her understand how much I truly enjoyed it. It was not a title I would have purchased for myself, having incorrectly assumed that Binchy was strictly a romance writer. I have nothing against the genre and have read my share, and probably more – as people ask questions about authors and I feel I need to have some experience.

The rich characters in her books are as vivid as the Irish landscape in which she places them.

A few minutes ago, a copy was placed on the sales counter along with a couple of other books.

“I was sorry to hear she passed away,” I said. It happens regularly that the death of an author spurs sales of the books.

“She died?” asked my customer.

“Sorry,” I replied. “I figured that’s why you were buying the book.”

It turns out, the customer was simply a fan who had read a number of Maeve Binchy titles. It was appropriate that the one she bought this afternoon was Light a Penny Candle, the author’s first novel.

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