Ghostwriting No. 16: An Ordinary Day

Except for the lack of Muppet imitations and the presence of freshly baked orange rolls - it's only 4pm, so Muppets and eating will doubtless occur before closing time - today is an average day in the Haunted Bookshop.

Someone is playing beautifully on the piano back on the stage. Avid readers drift from one 'room' to another; the chess players appear to have left, but they will probably return. Ali is working on a stack of economics books at the front desk while I work on U. S. History in the back office. Jon, while shelving, discovered that he has a talent for making the llama puppet look like it's chewing. The whole staff have gotten several laughs in, at least one caused by cat antics and at least one other caused by a clever quip. The Real Records folks have been over to visit. I've looked at a few collections of books, from which I selected books that our patrons would enjoy, and at least one person has shared graduate-level thoughts and general observations with us from his field of specialization. One person found a book she'd wanted to find for months, and another discovered a book he didn't know existed, and at least two got serious amounts of cat fur on the hems of their slacks from the amorous Logan. All in all, pretty normal.

What am I saying? Normal, at the Haunted? Six years - actually, precisely six years as of today - have passed since I purchased this bookshop, and though things like those I described above do happen on a lot of days, we can hardly look back at the last six years and call anything 'normal.'

What has changed: The shop is larger by about 1,000 square feet and 20,000 books. It's all on one level (with ramps), which is great for running children, book carts, and customers who couldn't use our old staircase. We have an actual cash register, and all of our book credit records are now digitized for easier use.

Three paid employees and five volunteers help with the cleaning, sorting, shelving, selling, and internet listing of books and with maintaining generally high levels of welcome and wit. Racks and stacks of puppets, board games, action figures, cards, wooden childrens' toys, and gifts amuse and attract our patrons, thanks to the mentorship of two beloved but now closed Iowa City businesses, Fun Zone and Vortex. The book collection itself is comprised of what I've bought over the last six years, including a paperback here, a box of art books there, some really stellar personal and academic collections, The Haunted Bookshop as it was in 2004, Northside Book Market in 2008, and The Bookery in 2009.

We have an ongoing project for an amazing local charity that has, with community help, raised thousands of dollars for local farmers and families. We get to host terrific events, like some of ACE Experiment's open read-throughs of Twelfth Night and other plays. Plans for this autumn include the introduction of weekly events for kids, some renovations to our history section, and a campaign to raise money to endow a chair at Coe College (my alma mater). We'll also be able to sponsor more social and educational events at the shop in the coming year, something I've wanted to be able to do and now can, thanks to the staff and community support.

What hasn't changed: This has never been about becoming the biggest store or the richest owner for me. It's always been about the joy of sharing books and meeting book people, the importance of education throughout life and the equal importance of recreation. The Haunted as it stands now is getting better and better at helping the community celebrate those values, which this community already held long before Nialle, the crazy Ulysses-toting, feline-noise-making, compulsively organized but erratically educated kid, turned up on the block. And we're still and always looking for more ways to help.

The books we carry are the cleanest, best-kept copies we can find of the books we value and believe you would appreciate. They're organized in sections for easy browsing and alphabetized so that we can help you get a particular title quickly. We pay well for good books and price reasonably what we obtain, and inbetween, we love talking to you about what you like, what you know, and what you do in our fine City of Literature.

And meanwhile, just as in 2004, I work in a fairly small area with a cat asleep in one corner, stacks of books about which I need to learn more or for which I need to perform minor repairs, assorted snapshots and cards from friends here and abroad, and piles of scratch paper with half-articulated ideas noted on them. I'm here to look at books for sale, to sell books, to keep track of the details involved in running a business, to wipe up spills and to feed the cats, but more importantly, I'm here to learn the best way to be a resource to the city I've come to admire and the people I've come to call friends. Also to tell ghost stories, to teach the odd fact or two, to learn about my customers' lives and knowledge (thanks for all the Vance Bourjaily anecdotes this week and for the interesting geological observations about northwestern Europe), to work beside some really neat people to whom I'm glad I can offer paying jobs, and to scurry along the floor imitating a chicken for my favorite two-year-old patron between bouts of current events updates and joking around with the brainiacs who haunt the shop.

It's a pretty good life. I'm grateful to all the people who help me to continue living it, from the kid who buys a $1.50 Kafka and the collector who spends $50 or more, to the fellow bookshop owners who recommend my store as I do theirs, to the hardworking Haunted crew and the sweet and goofy cats, to my long-suffering best friend (who puts up with my frequent rants about the less romantic aspects of retail, self-employment, and the economy at large and tolerates my still kinda ridiculous work schedule - there's a reason behind the joke that the shop is haunted because I'm pale and wander around in it at night). And I look forward to seeing what the new year will bring. To those of you who celebrate thus, Shana Tova!, and to everyone, hi!, thanks!, and what can I help you find?