If I were to make a New Year’s resolution for 2013, it would be to read William Manchester’s Churchill biography, the last volume of which was completed by Paul Reid in 2012, nearly eight years after Manchester’s death. Of course, I don’t make resolutions since there are more than enough failures to tolerate in life without me adding to the list. But Reid’s story is almost as interesting as Churchill’s. Reid was a college dropout who went back to school in his 40s, and at 46 became an intern at the Palm Beach Post. It was through his newspaper work that he met Manchester, who was ill and dying and unable to finish the last volume. Manchester unexpectedly chose Reid to finish the third volume, even though Reid had never written a book before, let alone a biography. He wasn’t even a historian. Yet Manchester saw something appealing in Reid’s background and approach, something a more conventional thinker would have missed. For me, the subject of middle-aged career metamorphosis has a new relevance; I am often asked why, as old as I am, would I want to recreate myself as a bookseller. The answer, which is hard to explain, is that I just didn’t see it as a big deal. I never thought of changing careers as being that strange. And neither did Reid. He seems to have moved from one thing that interested him to the next, taking opportunities that presented themselves and not spending too much time doubting himself. So, that’s one book I hope to read this year.
On the subject of doubts, one that I felt gently tugging at my sleeve as I prepared to invest myself into this new business was my awareness of the steady migration of book buyers from paper reading to digital reading. It was hard not to take seriously the threat to hard-copy booksellers implicit in headlines like this from the New York Times from January 22, 2012: “Tablet and E-Reader Sales Soar.” The article reported that the number of adults in the United States who own tablets and e-readers nearly doubled from mid-December to early January last year.
I just found a used bookstore for sale via the internet. In the listing, the current owner writes, “Looking for a new owner who knows people read something other than the Kindle.”
