Jas Faulkner

Affirmations For Booksellers Who Do Too Much

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by Jas Faulkner

A little over a year ago, I sat down and created a list of guidelines for dealing with misconceptions the public has about what writers do. It was directed at the newer members of the writing pool at another website.  Last week I accidentally emailed it as a file to Sam and Tab, my bookseller buds down in Mississippi.  They made me aware of my mistake and told me that with some small variations, the list could actually apply to booksellers as well as writers.  Tab told me she read the list aloud and both of them more often than not shouted “YES!” or “AMEN” after each entry.

So, my Third Day of Christmas gift to the booksellers who read here, is your own list.  I did this to let all of you know how much I appreciate that I can still go somewhere and find a store full of books to browse and buy.

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Words That Don’t Fail

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by Jas Faulkner

The night that Susan Smith confessed to killing her two sons, I had drawn the short straw and was working the front desk and crisis line instead of my usual eight to sixteen hours behind the double layered locking steel doors that kept the rest of the world separated from my adolescent psychiatric clients and vice versa.  I watched the bright red sunset over West Nashville fade into the comforting  night that seemed to becalm the small hospital that had been rocking and rolling with code after code all day.

And then the first call came in.  It was a man and he was sobbing.

“I just want to know why,” he managed to choke out his question.

“Why what?”  I shifted into de-escalation mode without even thinking about it. “Talk to me and we’ll see what we can do to make this better.”

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Revisiting Old Friends

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by Jas Faulkner 

Every book feels like an unopened door. Every page turned is another step that could lead to high adventure or bittersweet romance or tutelage in a Platonic cave of our own making.  This is why it is so important to keep reading and also why there are books that we may, for whatever reason, decide to revisit.

All kinds of circumstances can precipitate picking up a book that may no longer serve the function it once did, but still serves as a memorial touchstone. Where were you when you read Old Yeller?  What music was playing when you were in the book shop when you first picked up a copy of  The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test or The Colour of Magic?  Sometimes you can remember and sometimes it’s a trick of the mind.

You might have picked up the book because you wanted to be seen picking up the book, only too conscious of the music and whoever else happened to be wandering around and might see you with evidence of your intellectual acumen conveniently in hand.  Other times, the music fell away, the odd sweet stink of the incense from the

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Laughing All The Way To The Remainder Table

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Look on the lighter side? Tardar Sauce would rather not, thank you.

William Zinsser once described the humour section of any given bookshop as the most depressing place in the world to contemplate the state of arts and letters.  When Zinsser wrote that essay in 1966, much of the humour section consisted of anthologies of comic strips, bound editions of comic book story arcs, and ‘ slight parodies based on trends that were long on booger jokes and bathroom humour  and short on actually literary merit.

With the advent of National Lampoon as an outlet for humour writers who had outgrown their incubation space at Harvard and other college-based humour magazines, trade paperbacks featuring cartoons and parodies began to scoot Charlie Brown and Pogo Possum to the edges of the shelves.

The 1970s’ was a time when the elevation as the comic and humourist from a gadfly observing from the edges to an icon and spokesperson made a significant impact on pop culture.  Situation comedies centered around comedians (rather than entertainers who do comedy) began to dominate the network schedules, especially in a culture that had wearied of titillation and violence as prime time mainstays.   The close of the decade saw NBC’s Saturday Night Live , with its Second City alumni-heavy cast peppered with contributions from the BBC’s Monty Python crew  dominate and reshape the genre in television, cinema, and print.

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The Hannah Interview

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by Jas Faulkner 

Sam was laughing when I answered the phone.

“Open your email,” she said. “it’s not one of those screamie video things, I promise.”

Suffering for your art? Hannah knows better. She has  already figured out having written is better than writing.

It was a picture of a hand printed sign that taped to the front door of the store with a My Little Pony sticker.  It read: “Book sighing at the back of the store.  Free cookies with book.”

Tab’s niece, Hannah, was staying with her favourite aunts and it looked like she was back in business.  Whenever Hannah’s parents work took them out of town, Hannah packed her suitcase, filled an old knitting bag with her latest sketchbook, lozenge paints, brushes and her latest journal and supplies for her guinea pig, Darla Hood, Darla’s cage and carrier and head over to her aunts.  She found her parents’ penchant for digging up stuff to be tedious and preferred the glamourous world of books.

However, she was having none of this retail or struggling author stuff.  Her goals were twofold: she wanted to reopen Meg Ryan’s bookstore from “You’ve Got Mail” and she wanted to be a rich and famous writer of books with purple covers.  For those of you playing at home, Hannah is precocious eight-year-old.

“We had a signing last Friday.”

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Gifts of the Earth: Vegan and Vegetarian Cookbooks

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by Jas Faulkner

A quick note here, since I have received some questions about this: It’s no accident that many of the books on these lists are older. My purpose is twofold.  I want to point readers to books they might have missed and booksellers, especially resellers, to books that might move off the display table .  The genres I’ve chosen are those I read, enjoy and refer to fairly frequently. 

Before we take a look at this week’s list, let’s consider the supposed audience for vegan and vegetarian cookbooks.  People who choose to live exclusively on plant-based nutrition have gotten a bad rap over the last half-century.  They are the target of ridicule by celebrity chefs like Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsey and in day to day life they have to dodge and weave around the stereotypes.

The stereotypes.  Do we even want to go there?  Alas, they do exist, those mental images of underfed, pasty, testy, self-righteous types who glare the plates containing a cut of something that once mooed, baahed, oinked, or clucked.  Those Birkenstock and hemp sock wearing culinary pharisees are enough to scare anyone away from the vegetarian shelves in the cookbook section.  This is a pity, especially when so many otherwise good general cookbooks tend to go light on the sides and veggie main courses unless they’re heavy on the starch, fat, and salt.

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Sticks and Bones: Some of the Best Anthropology Books for Non-Anthropologists

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by Jas Faulkner 

I was voted most likely to be eaten by my subjects at WKU anth school.

Many brick and mortar stores ceased to have anthropology sections some time in the mid to late 90s’ .   One of the best anth sections in Nashville outside of the book store at Vanderbilt was at Davis-Kidd.  D-K was an indie that stubbornly provided good books for graduates of  programs at Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee State, Vanderbilt and UTK years after the anth sections at the remaining big box stores were relegated to “social science’ shelves or co-opted by the rather academically anemic travel sections.

This is a pity, because most  people either took a single course as an undergraduate elective or had some form of anthropology class on their wish lists and never managed to find the time or an open section.  Those of us who majored in the subject often hear similar responses of regret about missed opportunities during university, especially when it came to working archaeological digs.  I’ll cut to the chase about most teaching digs:  Lying on the ground with a dental pick or a tooth brush while every bit of your body heat leeches into the soil or your backside bakes is not as glamorous as it sounds.  Is it exciting to find you’ve been sitting on top of a habitation site or the rock you’ve been patiently digging around is actually a diagnostic projectile point? Oh, yes it is! I’m

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