Thursday, June 7, 2012

Review: The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee


The Yellow-Lighted BookshopThe Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was as effortlessly attracted to this book by its description as a moth to the yellow light of the bookshop. Written by someone who seems to love books immensely enough to make a career as a bookseller, this book is an ode to books. The opening few paragraphs ring very true with anyone who finds hours of wandering in a bookstore liberating and as exciting as walking through the wardrobe into the land of Narnia. Every sentence made me think how I had done and felt the exact same thing every time I was at the local bookstore. I think the very essence of a bookshop is its coziness. The smell of crisp paper intermingled with the almost over-powering odor of brewing coffee, college kids sprawled between book shelves poring over a tome or the latest YA paperback, and kids being introduced to their very first book by an obvious book lover of a parent.
The author describes a classic case of an atheist turned believer, as he discovered Steinbeck and began respecting books, a far cry from someone who shoplifted a book from a local book store a year earlier. He writes about his first few years at the bookstore called 'The Upstart Crow', the eventual move to a larger one called 'Printers Inc.' and his subsequent transformation into a book salesman with great nostalgia and hits upon a problem that I face in real life myself. The problem with libraries, where in two weeks, he'd have to load up the bike and return the books he had borrowed with a heavy heart. This is why I prefer bookstores over libraries anyday, never mind the hole in my pocket!
Buzbee intersperses his memoirs with a history of books, book-selling, and libraries where, despite adding in a number of interesting anecdotes, he seems to be glossing over a really broad topic very halfheartedly. The numbers thrown around for statistics are ones that are perpetually changing with times and I found it hard to believe that those were actual figures. I'd have even preferred if he had just stuck to his memoirs and written an entirely different book on the history (with perhaps more in-depth research).
I loved the titular chapter of the book where he talks about going to the bookstore with his daughter,buying books for everyone in the family and leaving the store just in time to be able to read in bed. Doesn't that make you want to curl up in bed with your favorite book right now?
I think Buzbee does a good job of describing his love for bookstores and the feel and beauty of paper based books, but a poor one at predictions. Way back in 2006 when this book was published, he prophesied that e-books were not going to be big in publishing. So imagine my confusion when I got to this point, and thought to myself, "But, I am reading this book on my e-reader!" It was then that I saw my copy had an afterword by the author where he extolled the beauty of an e-reader and eventually retracted his words. The resistance towards e-books is waning slowly, because that which does not evolve, might eventually die of obsolescence . And like the author says, who knows someone might soon come up with an e-reader that can be scrolled up like a piece of parchment! After all why should you care about the format if it is ultimately the words that are important to you?  I did, however vacillate a bit when the author asked " How do you press a wildflower into the pages of an e-book?" And then I remembered, I don't really care about such things! I try to keep my books in pristine condition, in an almost virginal sort of way and e-books ensure that.
One of my favorite quotes-"What I have learned about a good many things of the world, both trivial and profound, often started with the back of a book, a sentence read there that led to another book that led to even more books"! This book led me to another, "Ex Libris-Confessions of a common reader" by Anne Fadiman and I am loving every word of it! It is definitely looking like a five-star read! Stay tuned.

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