The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee

Genre: Non-Fiction
Publication Date: 2006
Pages: 216
Challenges: A-Z Reading #40 (Y Title)

I decided to read this book after reading Eva’s review at A Striped Armchair. It’s a small quick read that I found interesting and enjoyable. It’s about books and bookstores. Buzbee tells of his own personal history of becoming a reader and loving bookshops to the extent that he spent many years working in them and later becoming a sales rep. He also includes some interesting history about books and publishing going as far back as the great library at Alexandria.

Most readers will find moments in this book where they’re nodding their head and thinking – yes, I do that too. I also found stories that sounded familiar because they’re some of the same things my friend who works in a bookshop in Alabama says.

No matter how roundabout the path, it’s always satisfying to put the right book in the right hands, but the real thrill in bookselling is to put the right book into unsuspecting hands.

I could relate to many of the things Buzbee had to say.

The habit of book-snooping is, I admit, an annoying one, peering over the shoulder of the person on the bus, or at a café trying to decipher the cover of an open book someone’s busy reading. There’s no judgment in the titles I uncover, it’s mere curiosity, for the most part, with a bit of selfishness to it. I might find what I’m looking for in the arms of a passing pedestrian.

Oh that’s me. I’m always trying to figure out what the other commuters on the train with me are reading. There’s one woman who often rides the train with me and although I’ve never spoken to her I know we have very similar reading tastes.

The books of our childhood offer a vivid door to our own pasts, and not necessarily for the stories we read there, but for the memories of where we were and who we were when we were reading them; to remember a book is to remember the child who read that book.

The German word for bookstore is buchhandlung, a place where books are handled. I vote we change the English word for bookstore to book-handlery because it’s so fitting. The common book is made to be handled, as if the ultimate purpose for our opposable thumbs.

I enjoyed this little book. It’s a quick read and a nice reinforcement of why I love books along with some interesting historical information.