What we ask of everyone in 2016: #VoteDownticket

We prefer to keep this about books, the book business, and local issues, but let's face it. This election season is toxic to business and localities everywhere, and it isn't doing much for books either.

This is not an endorsement. This is not an opinion about particular politicians, any of them. It's a request. It's because we're frustrated too, and we don't like living in Frustrated!America any more than you do, and we want change, and we believe this is a way to get it.

#VoteDownticket.

Many of you don't like the presidential choices we have. Some of you are passionate about not voting for them. Some of you are passionate about not voting.

Here's the thing though. If anything will be different one, or two, or four years from now, your fellow citizens need you to vote this November for local officials, Representatives, and Senators to enact better laws and to push for systemic change. Your local vote matters. Your neighbors are counting on you to help them replace cronyism and corruption throughout our government with vision and hard work. That is why we need you to vote anyway, even if you only vote "downticket" - for national congress members and for state and local leaders.

Here in Iowa, we have one incumbent who has been criticized for slowing the confirmation process for a Supreme Court nominee. You should look for more information about this situation, and about some other judicial appointment delays under this committee chairship. Look at the candidate's other stances and values. Weigh them. Make a decision, and vote. It will affect the courts, and it will affect many, many other things in our nation and state. A lot depends on your vote in this non-Presidential race.

A Representative from this state has gained international notoriety for some comments on issues of race, women's health issues, funding measures, and more. Check his record on voting and think about whether this person will make the changes you want to see.

Citizens who want change, citizens who have insight and information about a variety of issues, and citizens who have strong leadership skills deserve a chance to run for office against our incumbents. Supporting their desire to represent you starts when you #VoteDownticket.

It's at the state and local levels that decisions get made about adequate education funding to ensure, among many other things, that our youth to learn how to turn community concerns into a "platform" during a "caucus" or "convention" - terms that mean everything to the functionality of the system we have, tools that are our current best option to create the country we want. Choosing state and local officials means that you need to know who is running, what they believe and who backs them, and then go to the polls and #VoteDownticket.

Do not discourage civic involvement by teaching all who want to participate in civic discourse that all politicians must be crooks. Instead, repeat the wise words of former leaders. Repeat your values. Repeat what you loved about a past candidate. Repeat the importance of responsibility. Don't repeat slander and slogans. Check your facts. Check your language. Don't advertise for any candidate you don't support. Don't adopt that candidate's strategies or terminology. Don't name what is wrong for the sake of being right about it. Say what is right for the sake of making right possible.

Repeat your hopes. Repeat your demands. Repeat your truth. Tell it until it seems possible, then do it until it is done. #VoteDownticket.

It's the internet. You want clicks; you want presence. That's fine. Start necessary conversations. Skip the shock and cut straight to learning and sharing your beliefs.

Why is this campaign so ugly? Some leaders made bad decisions, yes. But we must change the tone. Don't repeat the negatives. Don't use your voice, your audience to run a negative campaign. Don't let yourself be crowdsourced to speak for what you don't believe.

Say what you do believe. Say what we can do. Research, then share, options, links, ideas, emails, petitions. Research what is right when others share options with you. If you're angry because you believe this is no longer our election for our president, meet your representatives and say what we need to change.

Repeat ideas and solutions. Repeat ethics and demands. Repeat what you hope for America. Repeat who deserves your vote Nov. 8. #VoteDownticket.

"We hold these truths...." "Shall not perish from this earth...." "We have nothing to fear...." "I have a dream...." "Ask not what your country can do...." You know every one of these phrases. Each one means something to you. Maybe they mean different things to different people, but they are the words to which we turn when we think about our nation. What is America? Our words. We must choose them wisely. We must choose hope if we can find it, joy when we have it, truth when we need it, vision so that we can share it.

Choose to speak the nation in which we deserve to live.

#VoteDownticket.

Taking a break from putting out dozens of books about Shakespeare, Milton, and the literary scene between them (temporally) to think about a word.

On the cover of a book of found-poems, a blurb says the author has 'astringent intelligence.' Poets and poetry readers, what do you make of that? It seems like it could be functionally correct, considering that it's found and edited material, but - somehow the word seems unindicative of desirable poesy. Am I wrong?

This is the back of a book. The book is a fairly obscure retelling of Robin Hood. 

The text of this sticker needs to be artistically rendered in bronze and set in an arch over the front door of this bookshop.

Unfortunately that won't the first on the list of store improvements for this winter, but someday. Someday.

Credit card use

Fact: If everyone had used cash or good checks during each of the last four months - if no one had used credit or debit cards - we could have offered someone a 15hr/week job at $7.50/hour.

Every time you use a credit card, an average of 4% of your purchase goes directly to the credit card company.

Shop green. Use cash at locally owned shops and help us keep the money in the community.

Ghostwriting No. 27: Owners' marks, underlining, and library marks

Each independently-owned used bookstore has different rules about what books to buy. We've posted our policy that we never accept former library books and are otherwise somewhat strict about not taking books with a lot of markings in them. Other stores have different policies. In general, the differences have to do with what kind of people want what kind of books, as well as what the bookstore's owner wants to select.

We have, in the past, been offered some really great books with some heavy underlining inside. We've heard from some of our customers that they would buy books with underlining, and sometimes, if we're really short on a book frequently used for classes, we'll buy underlined copies. We also make exceptions on the library rule for books that were owned by monastery libraries (they tend not to put too many stickers and stamps in) or for books over a hundred years old. On the whole, however, if we receive books containing a lot of underlining or with owners' stamps on the front cover or the edges of the book, we donate them to our ongoing Benefit Sale for Local Foods Connection or, if they are heavily damaged, we recycle them.

There are several reasons that this store has this policy. Let me enumerate a few. 1. We have a lot of books, and we buy a lot of books, so when we're buying, we have to think about what we have room to shelve. We're offered a lot of beautifully kept books, so we tend to prefer those. 2. Though some of our customers don't mind or even like prior owners' marks like underlining and inscriptions, many dislike such marks. 3. We price underlined books lower than we price clean ones, but lower still doesn't always make for customer satisfaction. As a matter of business, it's better policy to stock things that make our customers happier - and on which we can make some amount of profit.

With regard to library books, there are many more reasons not to carry them: for one thing, there are dozens of places to buy former library books in Iowa City, often for $3 or less. It wouldn't be cost-effective for us to try to 'compete in that market,' as the business types would say. For another, some have embedded security devices that cause inconvenient beeping noises in buildings with alarm systems, which also raises the problem of having to check each book for discard marks to be certain the library doesn't expect to get them back. And for a third, library books have often been subjected to a great deal more wear than single-owner books; we worry about whether the bindings are still good, whether a page might have gotten torn out, that sort of thing. It's more efficient to turn them all down than to go through each, page by page and signature by signature, to make sure that they are still in good enough condition for a new reader to enjoy.

There are some marks we don't mind as much. A prior owner's name, a date, a meaningful inscription in a very old (100+) book, a neatly affixed bookplate, all are acceptable. What we don't want are marks disfiguring the outside of the book or marks in the text itself. We are more lenient about margin marks and pencil marks than we are about heavily penciled or penned underlining, and we are more lenient about underlining than about highlighting. If you have questions about whether your books meet our guidelines, feel free to call, email, or stop in.

***

For those of you who order books online, here are the technical terms for what we do and don't accept:

- POI or Prior Owner's Inscription - this is usually just a name on the front free endpaper, also known as a 'flyleaf'. (There are two front endpapers - the fixed and the free - left and right sides of what is usually the same sheet of paper, half of which is glued inside the front cover and the other half of which protects the first printed page.) - These are fine.

- Bookplate tipped in / affixed / at the front endpaper. - (Tipped in and affixed are the most common terms for something stuck to a page in the book; we say 'laid in' if it's not attached.) If the bookplate's glue damaged the page, this might be a problem, but usually we don't mind bookplates.

- Mild staining / toning from pressed leaf/flower at pages x-y - As long as it's mild, we don't mind. (Toning is our term for when something acidic, either laid in or sometimes the book's paper itself, causes the pages to turn yellow or even brown.)

- Scattered pencil marks in the text - these are sometimes okay, depending on the book. Same goes for scattered pen marks in the margins.

- "Prior owner's stamp at edge of page block" or "black mark at edge of page block" are kind of suspicious. Sometimes what is being called a "prior owner's stamp" is actually a publisher's "not for sale" or "not for resale" stamp, which means that selling it isn't strictly legal. It might also be a library stamp, including a really big, ugly "DISCARD" stamp. "Black marks" or "publisher's remainder marks" can sometimes be a warning that the book was printed for one of those giant print runs on cheap paper, which means the pages might have toning, which happens quickly with cheap paper. We will sometimes accept books with remainder marks, as long as they are otherwise in excellent condition, but we never pay first edition or collectible prices for remainder marked books, nor should you when you are buying books.

We do not accept:

- "Ex lib. with usual / expected marks / stamps" - I've seen this description all over the internet. It seems to mean library book with any or all of: spine sticker, call numbers written on the outside or inside, library stamps on the first, last, and sometimes middle pages, card pockets, handling spots or stains inside or outside, or worse. My general rule of thumb is: if the seller doesn't take the time to explain to you what 'usual' or 'expected' marks are, the marks are probably really ugly or the seller might just be careless.

- "May have underlining / highlighting / marks in text" - see above.

- "Extensive underlining / highlighting / margin marks" - another description we'd never use, ourselves. What is extensive? Is it extensive enough to keep the book from being useful? Not very clear.

- "Heavy foxing" - Foxing is what we call the little brown freckle-like marks that sometimes appear at the top edges of undusted books or at the first few pages or illustration pages of old books. We don't mind a few specks, but if they even come close to obscuring the printed words or the illustrations, we won't take the book.

- "Bleed-through" or "red/green/blue/etc. stain at edges / on pages x to y" - This is almost always an indication that the book got wet enough for the cover to bleed ink into the pages, which means the cover and pages may be warped, moldy, stuck together, etc. A faint coffee spot may be all right on the outside edge of an academic book, but a coffee spot that stained the margins or text or made the page edges ripple is not.

As always, if you have questions, feel free to ask. We're happy to help you figure out which internet-listed book is right for you or how to describe the condition of your book.

Ghostwriting No. 26: Store Policy on Children

We have always enjoyed the company of young people, from curious-eyed newborns to those just starting to read "grownup" books and beyond. Unfortunately, however, the time has come to state a policy with respect to our youthful company.

Poorly behaved parents will be asked to leave.

DO NOT leave your under-12 children here while you go elsewhere.

DO NOT leave your children alone at the front of the store while you look elsewhere until you have made certain that they have selected an appropriate activity and can engage in it respectfully.

DO NOT permit your children to disrupt the browsing of other patrons.

DO NOT leave the bookstore before making sure that your children have picked up any toys or books they have pulled from the shelves. If you don't know where something goes, please return it to the front counter and suggest to your children that keeping track of where they got something so that they can put it away properly is mannerly and appreciated.

We strongly encourage parents who want to share the experience of visiting a bookstore with children and are happy to do all we can to make the experience fun and interesting. We cannot, however, tolerate situations in which children, particularly disruptive ones, are effectively left in our care without our consent. Please teach your child to enjoy our premises respectfully.

Ghostwriting No. 25: Store Policy on Mold and Mildew

For health and safety reasons, we must ask that you

NEVER bring moldy or mildewed books into the shop.

This policy is not flexible. Patrons who bring in anything containing mold or mildew will be asked to remove it immediately.

Some of our patrons have allergies. We can't allow mold or mildew to infect our inventory. And staff and cats deserve to have a clean environment free from spores that might make us feel ill or develop infections or breathing problems.

Dispose of moldy or mildewed books responsibly. Put them in the garbage.

Ghostwriting No. 24: 50% More Legitimate Endorsements!

Gold foil stickers. They're everywhere, and they'll say anything.

It's the time of year when I rifle through the fiction section, checking to make sure I am acquainted with each book (and to see what's missing), and this time around I'm noticing how many books have circular gold stickers announcing everything from the obviously useful information that the author won the Nobel or that the book won the Man Booker or Pulitzer to announcing awards I had to look up for lack of familiarity (I had no idea how many writing associations hand out awards in this country), or sharing last-minute, high-powered blurbs (often one-word superlatives by household-name authors), or promising - no, I wish I were kidding - extra material. Reading group guides, added introductions, author interviews, that sort of thing.

Does that actually work on book buyers? The 25% MORE FREE advertising program? I'm dubious. But anyway.

Awards: They are useful insofar as they bring recognition to authors and works of outstanding quality. Have you noticed how many people have lost faith in them, though? Well, maybe not lost, since I'm not sure when who had what faith, but especially since the Nobel committee laureated J. M. G. Le Clezio, I've heard rather the opposite of "Ooo, a Nobel winner, this must be good!" Pulitzer-winning novels, word around the counter informs me, are all very depressing (though the folks who tell me this usually allow that The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay did not follow the pattern they claim). Man Booker prizes, my sources tell me, seem to go to very weird authors (and I don't disagree that Margaret Atwood is weird - I'm not sure she would either - but Peter Carey and Kiran Desai, weird? Unless being articulate and picking topics that don't appear to be grovelling for feature filmhood is weird).

On another point, though, one can suffer from award saturation. The dozens of widely recognized prizes aside, Writer's Digest (the publisher) awards gold foil stickers to the author of a winning self-published novel. This probably isn't quite the branding the Nobel Laureate sticker-bearers were hoping to tap.

Meanwhile, the blurbs. I don't think there's really a way to win at the game of recommending books, since people naturally disagree on what's good and why, but I do think there are a few clear ways to lose. One is to call a book "a glowing triumph of profoundly moving imagination," which uses five out of the seven most overused words in literary-fiction blurbiage (the other two are "exuberant" and "compelling"); one is to have a single adjective, excerpted from what was hopefully a full and intelligent discussion of the book's merit, slapped on a dust jacket with an exclamation point after it, as if to demonstrate the expedience with which the lonely adjective was cleaved from its context; and one is to compare a book to two other books that bear little, if any, resemblance to each other or the book at hand. For example - and I am not making this up, as much as I wish I were - calling The Raw Shark Texts a convergence of "Moby Dick and The Wizard of Oz" (Kirkus Reviews, what were you thinking?) just makes me wonder how many people are literate enough to know that Moby Dick was, not a shark, but a whale.

I'm all for visual cues to help market books. Don't get me wrong - I know how hard the publishing industry has worked to give customers ways to sort through the incredible numbers of titles for kinds they like - I do see that gold foil circles have their uses. But 1. Wolf. Do not cry it. and 2. "Excellent" - New York Times Book Review... really? Couldn't you at least have thrown in a noun so that I know whether it's "Excellent Noir" or "Excellent Recipes"?

Ghostwriting No. 23: The Ghostlist

A few words as we approach the Halloween season.

1. One of the things I hate about this time of year is having to tell people that no, we do not have cold spots or blood dripping down the walls. They get so disappointed. Alas, it is fact. We also don't hear voices or footsteps, and I'm sorry, we do not give haunting tours.

2. That said, we do have a small section especially for books about ghosts. While ghosts have not lately been hypersexualized, deprived of historic symbolism, or given supporting roles in blockbuster movies about teenaged girls getting whatever they want, they are nonetheless rich with character possibility. Let me recommend a few favorites:

- Anything by M. R. James. I'm not just saying this because there are so many beautifully described books and libraries in these stories. They are also sterling examples of the short suspense craft. Also they have gorgeous books in. Did I mention the leather bindings?

- Anything by Sheridan le Fanu. Using the frame of the reflections of a doctor with special interest in psychology, this author successfully spooks the reader with a little reverse psychology: what the doctor doesn't tell you will keep you up at night.

- The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Brief, evocative, and full of the sense that even scarier than things that go bump in the night is the astonishing capacity of the human mind to anticipate and dread disaster.

More recent books:

- The Mercy of Thin Air by Ronlyn Domingue. Narrated by a ghost, this novel is really about strong women in two different lucrative decades facing unacceptable gender norms, but the ghost is also a genuinely likeable prankster with some keen observations about women, life, power, and the hindsight that gets more twisted the more one tries to fight upstream.

- A Fine and Private Place by Peter Beagle. The protagonist, a homeless man shacked up in a crypt with an unlocked door, watches the dead struggling with disembodiment. It takes observing a particularly complicated posthumous love affair, dodging the verbal assaults of a particularly insightful crow, and uncertainly accepting kindness from a very lively widow to bring this man back from the proverbial grave(side).

Ghostwriting No. 22: A Plea for Sanity

Ladies and gentlemen, may I remind you that other people writing books containing a famous author's characters are, by definition, fanfiction authors. Few, if any, write anything of compelling quality, and let me remind you that most take the story in directions the author would not have approved. Remember Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley? Not only did Rhett and Scarlett supposedly get back together, but Scarlett became the head of a clan - yes, clan - in Ireland. Margaret Mitchell would never have written anything resembling that. The author basically wrote a numbered-series romance novel and used Mitchell's characters' names.

So please, please, if you really want to read something like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from something like Mr. Darcy's point of view, read Henry James' Daisy Miller, all right? E. M. Forster's A Room with a View will also do.

Thank you.

Ghostwriting No. 21: On Collectors' Items again

As a side note before I begin - this was a really spectacular week, and not just because four different people brought us cookies. It was a great week for conversations, a week of discussing the ideas of the liberal arts, the important trends in recent writing, the book industry from several angles. Thank you very much to all those who participated in these conversations. These are the experiences that motivate us and help us to learn more to share with our other patrons.

All right. Let's return to the topic of collectors' books.

First, you should know - whether you are a serious collector or whether you have stumbled upon a collection you'd like to sell - that the collectors' market is very, very bearish right now. That means that if you're in the market to buy, now is a good time, and if you're in the market to sell, now is not a good time. If you do buy, you need to be informed about what you're buying and for whom - the best investment right now is something that you will enjoy having, because the future of the market is very much up in the air, or something you plan to give as a nice present to another person - or you need to be prepared to wait. And wait. And wait.

Urban folklore has been telling people that items from the childhoods of the baby boom generation are valuable. This is as true as most urban folklore, which is to say, only sometimes sort of. For about a year, I had a strong turnaround in yellow-spined Nancy Drews and blue-spined Hardy Boys from the 1950's-70's. That market has been saturated temporarily, which means I can't offer as much money as I was offering for such books. Which in turn means I've got some very frustrated people who are unhappy that their Nancy Drews and Hardy Boys aren't worth a bundle of quick cash now.

Folks, this is a market. Values go up and down depending on supply and demand. I purchase and sell at the most reasonable prices I can, but if I have eight copies of The Red Barn Mystery and haven't sold one in six months, I'm just not going to pay much for a ninth copy. If I were a monster corporation with vast warehouses and even vaster cash flow, I could maybe stock up on Red Barn Mysteries, if I thought they made a good long-term risk. But I'm not and I can't and I don't.

There are some collectors' books in which I am still and always interested, and some in which I will never be interested again. Here are some to note:

1. Beautifully illustrated children's books. If they are more than sixty years old and in near-perfect condition, they may have collectors' value. If they are less than sixty years old, or if they are worn in the way that children's books usually are, they are not collectors' items, they're just books.

2. Old mass-market paperbacks. For a while, there was a strong collectors' market in mystery and science fiction paperbacks from about 1940-1970. This market is currently in bearsville. It is remotely possible that it might go bullish again, but here's the thing about old paperbacks: they were printed on highly acidic paper and bound with cheap glue, which means that if you actually opened them after 1970, they are no longer collectibles. They are old paperbacks with brown, brittle pages and cracks in the binding glue. Unless they happen to be the only printing of a certain short story or novel by a later-famous author or are perennial favorites with kitschily lurid cover art, they don't have value at all, let alone as collectors' items.

3. Collectors' Editions. There's a sad joke in this industry that is sad because it is about 97% true: If it has the words "collector's edition" printed anywhere on it, it will never be collectible. It might be nice because it has good illustrations or was printed on better-quality paper, but that just means that it might survive in competition with younger copies of the same book. On incredibly rare occasions, a collector's printing actually does have value; one example would be the Heritage Press editions of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, which were illustrated by Norman Rockwell, which makes these two books double-whammy Americana. The Heritage Press editions of almost everything else are just nice copies of books.

4. Signed firsts. There's a trick to signed first editions. The trick is this: the first edition has to have been a small print run; the author has to have signed the book before the author became a household name (at least among literati households); and the author does now have to be a household name. A signed copy of a motivational book is just another copy of a soon-to-be-outdated book. A signed first of a famous author's ninth novel is, given the industry's current insistence that authors run round the country signing books, common and therefore not collectible (though if you're the last one with a copy in nice shape a hundred years from now and the author is still popular, you might get collector's money for it). A signed first of James Oliver Curwood's first novel is, unless you can find the one person in America who might consider writing a cultural studies paper on a very outdated bunch of novels by a nearly forgotten author, a paperweight.

5. On the time frames of collectibility: A first edition of Harry Potter and the (First Three Books) - and mind that the British editions came before the American ones, so purists will want the British ones - simply aren't going to go up in value as collectors' items for a generation or more, if they ever do at all, given the enormous print runs involved. In fact, it is safe for the amateur collector to assume that if a book was first published during the lifetime of the average book dealer, the first edition probably isn't collectible yet. There is one exception to this rule, which is that if the first edition was printed during the early childhoods of a really, really nostalgic generation (and it's true that the Boomers are often nostalgic), it might - might - be collectible now. But only now. Once the Boomers begin retiring and trying to live off whatever retirement savings they've got after the market crash and the Social Security freeze, many will try to sell their old books, the market will be flooded, and there won't be enough demand to keep the prices high because so many of the childhood books of the Boomers aren't popular with subsequent generations. It's brutally sad, but it's true.

This all sounds very gloomy and doomy. Of course some collections still have value. For example, a really good collection of well-chosen, authoritative, scholarly medieval history books is and will remain valuable as long as people still think about history. A collection of first books by subsequently important authors will turn valuable if kept well for a generation or two (out of sunlight, temperature fluctuations, humidity, and smoke). Books over a century old that are still important now do have value if they are still in readable and attractive condition. I'm just suggesting that you probably shouldn't expect to get double your money back on a complete set of Goosebumps books, that things made to be collectible generally don't end up being worth a lot of money, and that selecting what you want based on your taste for your enjoyment is just a better way to think about book ownership anyway.

Collectors' markets are markets. They fluctuate. A good book, however, is still good as long as you keep rereading it, and that holds a value - not necessarily a financial one, but still a real one - for the rest of your life. If you're going to play the markets, do research, understand the trends, keep an eye on sales prices, make sure what you've got is in excellent condition, and choose your reselling methods based on how much time you want to put in and how much money you want to get back. If you're going to build a personal library, decide what you like, change your mind when you feel like it, and enjoy what you've got while you've got it.

Yes, I'm biased. There are a lot of reasons to collect, and in the end, though I routinely circulate my collection to other people, I am essentially a collector too, and what I collect is stuff I think my patrons will appreciate. I don't get a lot of calls for pristine Little Golden Books. I doubt very much that anyone does in this general economic slump we're in. I do get a lot of requests for cheap paperback copies of The Catcher in the Rye, which is why I actually pay as much for nice copies of Catcher as I do for blue-spine Hardy Boys. And to be entirely honest, I like the Catcher readers better than the collection sellers, because there is one thing you can count on about me as a market for books: I think of money as what has to keep moving so that I can do what matters to me, which is to spend time with book lovers.

And as anyone who sells anything will tell you, it's a good idea to know your market. So. Now you know.

Ghostwriting No. 20: A True Ghost Story

I am following a trail of
those wire-and-paper twists,
dropped every few yards
and bright against the asphalt.
No long, square plastic bags,
but still, I think of bread.
Who could eat so quickly?
Or make sandwiches while walking?
Was it all flung to the birds?

I wish I were a bird.
Not for the squabbling
that must have followed each slice.
To have been fed.

Then I see them, not many,
but all on the wire, heads bobbing,
and I think: they are full.
I could eat them. One bite, another.
Good breeding stops me.
City birds are covered in lice
and probably diseased.
Vegetarians live longer!

There are no unlocked cars
with bags of chip crumbs
hidden in wheel wells,
no dumpsters with
telltale clouds of fruit flies.

The birds. They would be too hard
to catch, too small to satisfy.

One darts abruptly, dives,
snatches a red wire tie.
I look along the path, the scattered
green and blue and white scraps,
becoming invisible just yards away
because of the heat boiling
over patches of engine fluids.

The birds dropped the ties here.

No, worse.

A little old man, born in the Depression,
collected them for decades
but now knows, his pension gone and
medical bills looming, that wire twists
have no currency anymore,
and he is plucking them from
a coffee tin - its logo from the forties -
and wrapping a happy thought in each one,
then dropping each,
and when he gets to the doors
of the distant wholesale warehouse,
he will sit and hold the can
and hope no one spits in it
because he can't afford to let it rust.

All my dreams are like this now.
I don't go to a doctor; I read enough
to know what I'd be told;
clonazepam and maybe a vacation.
I'll tough it out.

But when I pull the brown bag
out of my briefcase
and reach for the loaf of bread
and a knife to spread some butter
and I'm ready,
the white twist-tie stops me.
What would he have put
in this one? His daughter's first step,
a flawless tomato,
a wet cloth on his forehead,
the squeak of new shoes?

It's 8:43 already.
I've done the math: going 45
in a 35 doesn't actually make time.
I buckle in at the stoplight.
Coffee comes in bags now,
and even if it didn't,
what would I think to save?

Ghostwriting No. 19: Bubbleheads

Old people like me (I'm 32) often remark about the fact that kids these days will say anything while talking on a cellphone - even very private things - even in very public places. I do understand that privacy has been in decline basically since urbanization, which goes back thousands of years, not just a generation or two, but it still bothers me to hear a young person rating another's sexual prowess while browsing in my poetry section. On the other hand, along with the rest of the urban world, I am learning how not to listen to all the background noise, despite its exponentially growing quantity.

What really bothers me, though, is not that kids these days don't think twice about discussing their hidden bits in earshot of total strangers. It's that they really, really don't understand people without cellphones. That's what makes them bubbleheads: not a lack of intelligence, not the personal bubble they appear to imagine around themselves when they are plugged into the audio device of their choosing, but their apparent inability to comprehend that I do not have and do not want a cellphone of my own.

I do not want people to be able to reach me during the few hours I'm not at work. I do not want people to call me and to be forced to pay for the air time at both ends of the call, especially since it is apparently now acceptable for telemarketers to call cell phones. I do not want to pay more monthly bills or to purchase an expensive device that does more stuff. If I were a truck driver or a consultant and had children, I'd want them to be able to reach me, so I suppose I'd get a simple one. But I'm not and I don't.

This rapidly becomes symbolic of the insured-techno-debt-bubble outside which I live. Telemarketers earnestly pitch their plan to help me refinance my debt into one monthly payment. I tell them I only have one monthly payment already - a mortgage, low-interest; no car payments, no credit card debt. (It's one of the few perquisites of being a childless recluse.) More than a few have actually replied, "You're kidding. You've got to have a [big-box retailer] card or something."

Bubbleheads also don't understand why I have a problem with federally enforced purchase of health insurance. I'd rather put my money in a savings account so that I can afford to pay the doctor up front without making him or her do extra paperwork if I do get sick. This concept is apparently even more foreign than being debt-free. They argue that if I willingly buy state-mandated car insurance, I shouldn't have a problem with federally-mandated health insurance. The bubbleheads are completely bewildered by my answer, which is "I can sell my car." But seriously, does this entire generation take for granted that giving money to a corporation will somehow protect them against debt? Don't they hear about the people whose claims get denied? Don't they do the math and figure out how much of each monthly payment goes to administrative costs rather than health care? What kind of bubble are they living in?

A big one, evidently. I keep hearing things that make no sense to me, even from people old enough to know better. That they didn't know that credit cards cost merchants money to process. That they don't know who is running for the House of Representatives in their district. That they can't imagine how I've gone years at a time without buying a single thing at a 24-hour superstore. That they don't understand that collectibles (and cars, and houses, and stock shares) are only worth what someone else will pay for them, as opposed to what they paid or what a guide book says these items are worth. That they're miserable and overworked and afraid of their own debt, all of which I do understand; the economic weather is awful out there; but that they still can't imagine not being able to drive an SUV to an all-night store, call back to the house to check the shopping list and discuss what's on TV, and then pay for a gallon of milk with a credit card.

People talk about the growing gap between rich and poor. I don't know the numbers, so I won't comment. I do, however, see a growing gap between people who pay for the latest in the new standard of living and people who don't have those things/policies/investments, by choice or by necessity. It's a scary gap. Bigger than the generational rift between boomers and their parents. Bigger than the division in computer skills between people born before the internet and people born after. People still talked to each other on either side of those gaps, however hostilely or uncomprehendingly. But how can I even say 'hey, I'm sorry you're unhappy, I'd help if I could,' when everybody's always on the phone?

Ghostwriting No. 17: The Rictus d'Accord

In the immortal words of Howard Beale:

"I'm a human being.... My life has value.... I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

On the whole, I'm not an angry person, and I certainly don't think that anger helps in situations involving short, impersonal interactions. Sometimes I employ the facial expression we like to call "the rictus d'accord" [read: smiling and nodding] when someone says something off the mark (e.g. "I know you have a bathroom, and you better let me use it or I'm going to report you to the Better Business Bureau". It's not worth anger and not even worth arguing; our notoriously non-classy staff facility stall is not public, is labeled not public, and can be locked if people feel the need to do things we haven't granted them permission to do).

Over the last few days, however, certain persons have decided to make certain discussions personal. And that's the point at which I'm not going to take it anymore.

This is a place of business. It's not a public place; we rent this space for our independent, privately owned bricks and mortar bookshop to operate. That means we have the right to ask people to leave when they are behaving inappropriately. We don't exercise that right if it's not necessary to do so. But we do have that right.

Behaving inappropriately includes, but is not limited to: willfully causing harm to our premises, fixtures, and/or merchandise; willfully causing discomfort to a patron; distributing or posting printed matter without the consent of the business' owner or manager; causing harm to employees of the bookshop and/or our cats. If you do one of these things, we will (politely) ask you to leave.

I would think that people would have been raised well enough not to need to be told not to do those things. But I can't think that, because I've seen far too much evidence to the contrary.

Don't drop lollipop sticks on my floor. Don't yell. Don't pound senselessly on the piano. Don't leave your child alone here while you go somewhere else. Don't expect me to haul ten, or twenty, or two hundred pounds' worth of your refused books to the dump myself after I have specifically refused to purchase or accept them. And don't yell at my employees because they aren't trained to provide one of the extra services this bookstore offers. Yell at me if you want; I'm in charge of training, and so far I'm the only person here whom I have authorized to offer all of our extra services.

But don't expect me to offer you one of our free, non-required services or to offer you money for your books if you start behaving rudely. I am obligated to be of assistance to and polite to my customers. And so are you. If you've brought books to sell at this shop, you are the seller and I am the customer. I can make you an offer, which you can accept or refuse, or you can quote me a price, which I can accept or refuse, or I can refuse to buy the books altogether and expect you to remove them from my premises promptly. Nothing in those options qualifies you to hurl abuse. Nothing obligates me to take it. I'm the private citizen whose money you want. Act like it.

This post does not apply to 99.9% of the people who walk through our doors: the interesting, thoughtful, smart, funny, kind, and/or good-natured people who treat this place with a reasonable level of respect and the staff with a reasonable - often exceptional - level of courtesy. We strive to return their respect and courtesy and to offer fair prices both in buying and selling books. We strive to make this place a clean, fun, low-stress, high-value environment and to offer as many helps and services as we reasonably can. If we fail to meet your expectations, of course we want to know. You have every right to exactly the kind of respect and freedom to refuse a transaction that we do, and we value your constructive feedback.

No, except for the immediately preceding paragraph, this post applies to the few people who behave as though this bookshop were a public, state-funded toilet into which they feel entitled to dump their "business."

Knock it off. I'm not smiling and nodding here. I'm mad as hell. Don't hurt my place, my stuff, or the morale of my people. I'm not going to take it anymore.


P.S. Publically funded toilets deserve better than that, too.

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?

Ghostwriting No. 15: Six Ways of Being Green

Anybody who has really tried to live greener knows it involves commitment and sometimes a little extra work. We honor those who make the choices to be more green, and we strive to be ever more green, too.

The Haunted Bookshop is, by its very nature, a green business. We help people reuse books. We buy books from people in the Iowa City area, organize them, and help people to find the ones they're most likely to enjoy. But we are also actively committed to many other ways of being green.

1. We don't just reuse books. We reuse bookcases, bookmarks, bookends, tables, comfy chairs, good ideas, plastic crates, computer parts, and anything else we can obtain used and reuse until we have to recycle them. Nearly every piece of furniture in the Haunted Bookshop we bought at a garage sale or consignment shop, received as a gift from someone moving away who didn't want to throw their furniture in the dump, or salvaged. We even take other stores' bookmarks out of books we've bought and use them when we recommend those stores to our customers. The blank scrap of paper you left at page 103 becomes our notepaper.

2. We recycle. Anything that we can recycle in a way that is safe and useful, we do. We even save up recycling by the carload so that we use less gasoline getting the recycling to the recycling center. If we can't donate leftover or unwanted books in a way that benefits somebody, we even recycle those books.

3. We reduce. I have made it my personal goal to see that this shop produces no more than one kitchen-sized garbage bag of trash per week - at most. And we're succeeding. Actually, if anyone knows where we can send #6 plastics, that would cut our waste even more; meanwhile, I make a point of not buying #6 or otherwise unrecyclable plastic if I can avoid it.

4. If we have to use chemicals for cleaning purposes, we buy only the ones made in ways and from materials that don't damage the environment. The three chemicals we use most are plain rubbing alcohol, another organically based sticky-stuff-removing solvent, and an environmentally safe wood cleaning soap. We also refuse to purchase products made in harmful ways or that contain or emit harmful substances, such as pressboard. When we have the option to buy products that are better for the environment, such as more efficient light bulbs or printer paper with higher post-consumer content, we do it. A few cents extra? It's our deposit in the savings account of world safety.

5. Our charity dollars go to support a green organization, Local Foods Connection, which connects CSA shares of organically farmed, local produce with the families who need help filling their plates. The organization benefits organic farmers, the local economy, and the people who can have nutritious food grown in safe ways.

6. We educate. Many people don't know there is a place to recycle books; we give them directions. Others haven't heard about all the ways to buy green in Iowa City, from the Farmer's Market to businesses who have made commitments to going green to restaurants that use safely, locally grown foods to make tasty meals (Red Avocado! Motley Cow! and more); we make recommendations. We demonstrate how to use simpler, friendlier products to clean books and other things. And we take every good suggestion we get (we get lots, thanks to this very conscious place in which we live) and share it with anyone who can use it.

None of these things are really that hard. Most can be accomplished simply by being a patron of the many fine resale shops around town, choosing good places to purchase organic and safe products, and being supportive of good ideas like Local Foods and the book bin at the recycling center. We're not shooting for special credit here; many citizens and businesses in town have made at least this much of a commitment to the environment; we're just saying - we're green, we're proud, and we're happy to help you if we can in this big, cooperative effort, too.

Ghostwriting No. 14: Full Marks for Awesome - ACE Experiment

I'm perpetually amazed by the awesomeness of people who come to the Haunted Bookshop. They're interesting, they're funny, and they have great taste. Even the casual remarks they exchange at the register and the books they decide not to keep are awesome. I feel privileged to be in this town.

One of the best things here is a group called ACE Experiment. We've had the pleasure of hosting a few events of theirs so far, and by pleasure, I mean oh wow, that was awesome layer cake with awesome frosting and a glass of fine, vintage awesome on the side.

ACE Experiment invites people to a wide range of activities all over town, simultaneously making fun available, making a stand for really good causes, and supporting the places that host their events. Here, we've hosted read-throughs of Shakespeare plays - so far, Twelfth Night and Merry Wives of Windsor. These read-throughs are free and open to the public. Anyone can come and watch, or better yet, come and participate. Participation involves reading along in the script, taking the lines assigned to you (you get to play lots of different characters in different scenes), and adding your unique humor, style, and interest to the 'performance.'

I haven't just laughed until my guts hurt and loved the wide and wild range of readers and readings - I've learned more about the plays. For example, last Twelfth Night, I abruptly realized that reading Antonio and Sebastian's scenes with homoerotic tension actually works as an interpretation while it also causes people to crack up in a delighted, completely nonhomophobic way. Okay, that's not news to a lot of people who have read or seen the play before, but now I get it, too. I wonder what other people have learned from the readings? Some had little to no experience of theater, so it might have been the first time they got to try turning lines on a page into living action. That experience changes the way people read anything, for better and forever.

They were certainly having fun. The guy who read some of Olivia's lines as though he were Humphrey Bogart had everyone in stitches. The night we all chimed in to say "By gar!" throughout Merry Wives brought together an incredibly diverse group of people, from trained actors to ACE regulars to folks who just happened to see the event listed in the program for the Book Festival (these were overlapping groups). I've also noticed how people really pay attention to how a line sounds when it comes out in different ways, from funny to insightful, and both give attendees pleasure. Everybody leaves grinning, even a little giddy.

In a time when everyone is overworked and undersatisfied, when making time for evening events seems like a big gamble few people feel able to take, when classic theater seems like work to enjoy or even inaccessible, ACE read-throughs are panacea. It's free. It's just people - there are no entrance requirements. The plays become accessible (don't get a line? interrupt and ask! someone will explain in a friendly, fun way); the folks around you are great company; nobody says a discouraging word; and everybody has a good time. It's just what we needed.

So here's my toast to ACE Experiment. Watch their blog and/or Facebook page for notifications of upcoming events, and we'll let you know whenever we get the chance to host an ACE gathering. We're in the business of circulating Iowa City's awesome, and we're sure you'll get your awesome's worth out of a night with ACE.

Ghostwriting No. 13: You Know You're A Bookseller When

Do you ever have one of those days on which you are cranky about the idea of moving Schleiermacher from Christian Contemporary Theology to Christian Classic Theology?

How about bad dreams in which people have shoved books in the wrong places on shelves, bending covers as well as getting things out of order?

A deep, nearly phobic revulsion at the thought of silverfish? ...Mildew?

Strong opinions on which editions of Dracula go in horror and which in literature? ...No patience for people who would shelve Gabriel Garcia Marquez under M? ...At least one more-than-one-shelf section in your personal library that definitely does not exist in any chain bookstore, e.g., Children's Judaica, Irish History 1900-1916, or Books on the Non-Book-Related Passions of Favorite Authors?

A publisher you like best because of its excellent selections and/or consistently classy cover art? ...More than one such publisher? Are there publishers you don't like because of their bad binding or ugly cover designs? Do you get mad when your favorite author gets a not-appropriate-for-genre cover, like the silly graphic novel covers on some recent copies of literary novels?

Have you ever ended up with more than one copy of a book because a later-purchased version had some special quality, like cooler cover art or better typesetting or illustrations or, best of all, having been purchased in the author's hometown or during some significant time of your life or - well yeah, being signed by the author counts too, but more so if it has a really weird personal inscription (I have one in which the author proposed that my blood should be bottled)?

I do. Also I cheer whenever I'm reading a book in which the bookseller turns out to be the hero, spy, culprit, or Essential Guide (you know, like the traveler on the road who gives the hero a magic item in Russian fairy tales). And I absolutely despise the movie "You've Got Mail," hate any film scene in which a book is damaged (like in "The Mummy" when all the bookcases fall down), and wish someone would make movies out of Peter Ackroyd's novels so that there would be more gorgeous antiquarian bookshops on film.

I stayed up until about four in the morning last night cataloging the books in one of the rooms of my house. Voluntarily. It probably shows. And now I'm going to go hang out with my Shakespeare-spouting friends from ACE Experiment, and next week I promise I will write a coherent entry about them and why they are the hottest thing happening on the IC evening entertainment scene.

Ghostwriting No. 12: The Buck Stops (being so variable) Here

You, and hundreds of other people, go to Big Company for their 20% off sale on a sales tax holiday weekend. Wow! You saved $12.56 on stuff you really needed. But let's stop and think for a moment. Where is the hypothetical $12.56?

Since the state didn't collect the sales tax, it has to slash the budget (threatening your job if you're employed by the university) or raise fees or taxes in some other area, possibly out of your wages through income taxes. No, of course your $4.13 isn't going to make the difference all by itself, but remember how many people were at the sale?

Besides that, Big Company didn't get full price for its goods, so it has to cut an expense or raise its prices, possibly hitting your wallet again. And you paid with a credit card, so Big Company lost another 2-5% of its income on your purchases, meaning Big Company has to up its prices another 5%.

But wait, you say. A lot of companies are slashing prices right now. On some of their goods, yes. All of them? Well, if they're really reducing prices everywhere, then where are they saving the money they aren't raising? Are they closing open stores and cutting employee hours? That's a quick way for an employer to save a lot of money. Or maybe they're cutting their services. They don't fix your toaster anymore; they just expect you to buy a new one. How much money are you going to end up spending on a new toaster? Not $50, but still, more than getting it repaired would have cost if Big Company still offered repair services.

Every time you save money, those savings have to come from somewhere. Out of someone's pocket. Including yours, in the long run. Sure, maybe you're one of the people who is really good at 'beating the game,' but the cost of your savings still comes back around to you somehow, at the very least by making it harder for someone to hire you, for you to take home all the money you earned, and for you to spend money in your local economy to keep a sustainable cycle going.

And isn't sustainability something we all want?

Here at the Haunted Bookshop, we're still charging about half of the original price of goods. We're still paying for books in proportion to purchase price and quality. We're putting the money right back into the community by spending as many dollars as we can locally, especially the money we give to local non-profit organizations. And because you've supported us over the years, we're able to continue playing this role on the local economy.

You can help us in two very important ways: Use cash, which we don't have to pay a 4% premium to get deposited in our bank account, and don't expect us to put on big sales. That way we don't have to raise our prices or cut our budget, which means you can buy a book when you want it - even if you want it on a day that isn't during a Giant Clearance Sale - at a reasonable price, from a well-staffed, full-service store.

Wouldn't you rather stop gambling, waiting, worrying about whether you forgot your coupons or are paying too much or have fallen for an alluring ad campaign? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to count on quality goods and services at stable, reasonable prices all the time? We think so.

The money we don't overcharge you to pay for the money you don't really save just cancels out, while the money we make stays in your community, and you don't even have to try to remember which weekend you get how much percent off if you have a logo tote back and a valid loyalty card thinger from the company that sold your name to a spam sender, and we don't have to put gooey stickers on books and pay you confusingly large or small amounts of money for your books based on varying upcoming deals or on how close we are to another confusing sale season.

Just simple value all the time. Like telling the truth, it's so much easier. That's what we believe, anyway.

Ghostwriting No. 11: The Cats

So we have two cats. Lots of other bookshops have cats, too, and have their own reasons for keeping them, and there are arguments against keeping cats (allergic or phobic customers being the most important one). Why do we have them?

A refugee cat stayed at the shop just after the tornado of 2006. Phey's house was among those destroyed in the storm, and she lived at the Haunted until her owner got settled in a new place. It was a little crazy at first; I'd never lived with a cat before. Then I realized that people were coming to the shop to check on Phey, that Phey liked the place, and that I was enjoying the company of a generally quiet, observant, sometimes silly companion. By the time she left, I was ready to give another cat a permanent home at the bookshop.

In July, I adopted a shelter cat and one of her kittens. Nierme was a little standoffish at first, but she'd just been through an awful experience: barely old enough to be a mother, she was abandoned with a litter of five in a cardboard box that had been taped shut. Only the fact that she was smart enough to chew air holes into the sides of the box saved them, and she still had that tense survivor's edge. But Elijah, the kitten, was naturally calm, so he relaxed much more quickly into bookshop life. He played with small children who came to visit the shop and spent the rest of his time purring on my lap or washing his mother's face. Everybody loved him.

He died on Thanskgiving that same year of a heart defect. For about a week I could barely work. I'd never lost a furry companion before, and I kept tearing up every time someone asked where Elijah was - and everybody asked, because everybody had been watching him grow and enjoying his warm, gentle personality. Nierme was inconsolable. I took her home and watched movies with her and 'talked' to her, but she still crawled around under the chairs at the shop, crying and sniffing for Elijah's scent.

In the end, I went to the animal shelter to find her another baby. I wasn't really ready. I'd adopted Elijah and Nierme because Elijah had just captured me somehow, had seemed like someone I wanted to know. I didn't want to know any other kittens yet. But one kitten had other ideas.

A flying, soda-can-sized ball of scruffy gray fur landed on me as I was headed to the door. It yelled, "Me!" Then it lost its balance and scrambled wildly to stay on my shoulder, accidentally leaving three parallel scratch marks. Maybe this doesn't sound like a good first impression, but his unreserved and instant trust made me decide to adopt him.

My friend D and I went to pick him up the next day. No sooner had we opened the cat carrier back at the bookshop than he systematically explored the entire place. Nierme bristled - a stranger who smells like flea rinse is generally a bad thing - and in the end we had to keep the new kitten in the office for a few days while she got used to his scent. But the tension stayed high even after we got the new kitten neutered. He had the attitude that went with the messy mane and the three parallel scratch marks. (We even named him Logan after The Wolverine.)

Then Logan got sick. He couldn't stand up and couldn't eat. Heartsick, I drove him to the vet's office and waited for the bad news. A couple of days later, our amazing vet, Dr. Brian Hayes of the Cat Clinic of Iowa City, called to tell me that Logan would have to eat special food for a while, but he would otherwise be fine.

In all the tension, I hadn't noticed how worried everybody else felt. All the people who had missed Elijah were as frightened for Logan as I was, and when he returned home safely, everyone fussed over him, much to his delight. Including Nierme, who greeted him by slamming him to the floor and washing his ears vehemently, as if to say "Don't ever scare me like that again!" I agreed.

Logan and Nierme had become family, and so had the regular patrons who had come to care for them. When I invited people over to celebrate Logan's first birthday, a crowd turned up and brought simple toys - crumpled paper and cardboard tubes - as well as fancy catnip mice and little knitted balls. I got to know other people because I liked the way they treated the cats and ended up chatting with the people myself. Children came specifically to visit the cats, allowing me a chance to enjoy the kids' company, too. And Logan, and gradually Nierme as well, thrived on the constant adoration.

They also work here. No, I'm not kidding. They kill any insects or spiders that sneak into the building, saving me the time and worry. They entertain kids so the kids' parents can browse. Nierme inspects arriving books; if she makes a certain face, I know she smells book mold, so I don't buy them. The cats keep readers company and have, more than a few times, consoled the unhappy or served as stand-ins for cats left back home. I watch Logan for cues about new people at the store; he has very sound intuitions, steering clear of people feeling rushed or anxious, gravitating to those who arrive relaxed or curious. Nierme makes sure I know about problems in the shop, and not just empty water dishes; she comes to get me if a book falls from a shelf. Later, after hours, when I'm listing books for sale on the internet or catching up on trade journals, they curl up in my office chair with me and keep me company. Sometimes they barf or knock something over, but doesn't everybody?

Both have large vocabularies; Logan makes a certain range of sounds when hunting, another range when playing with children, another when demanding dinner. Nierme mimics human tonalities; she can complain, question, call for help, or drop an offhand 'what's up.' I've learned the difference between the vocalizations and body language that mean 'clean my litterbox now' and those that mean 'go away, I'm busy being beautiful.' The first thing I hear in the morning is Nierme's funny little chirp greeting, and the last thing I hear before leaving at night is Logan's 'don't leave' cry. These sounds are part of life now, like leaves changing in the fall and the ubiquitous coming and going of Vonnegut novels.

Does this answer the question of why the Haunted has cats? For some reason, some people are reassured that the cats are important when I tell them about the bug-hunting. Others see the way that Nierme and Logan act like part of the team with Ali, Anna, Jon, Luke, and me, and they get it. Little kids are usually too delighted to question the fact. For everyone else:

Logan's on my lap right now, trying to use my right arm as a pillow, which makes typing complicated, but he's purring. I have a stack of medieval history books to price and some African-American Studies to sort. Ali's laughing with Luke up at the front counter, and someone just walked past the office door, saying "I'll be in the Nature section" to someone else who is, by the sound of her footsteps, already up on the stage. We've been saying goodbye to a lot of old friends during this traditional Iowa City moving-away season, but we'll be here when those friends come back to visit. Things change; sections get bigger or smaller, the cat on my lap now weighs eleven pounds instead of three, and some of our friends are only here once every few years instead of every few days; but some things stay the same: the sense of community, even family; the ongoing conversations; the shiver-inducing feeling of being surrounded by ideas and stories in tall and alphabetical ranks; the playtime with puppets and the recommendation of books; and the occasional demands for chicken-flavored crunchy treats. As with most lives, the life of the Haunted Bookshop includes ambition and direction, while some parts of the life just sort of happen. And, as with most lives, some of those parts somehow become necessary when we aren't noticing. Including the parts that go meow.