Dear friends,
Lately we’ve been delighted by how many people are coming to our bookmobile to sell us their books. Whenever someone comes by with a box of books to show us, our bus becomes host to an impromptu book club. Folks who have stopped to check out the bookmobile start chatting with the person selling us their books and soon it’s a small gathering of book lovers–people who’d possibly not meet any other way–sharing titles, histories, and enthusiasms, and grabbing a seat next to our card table on one of the extra chairs we bring just for visitors. They hand books back and forth to each other. “Have you read this one?” they ask. “Not yet,” someone answers. “But it’s on my list.” The fact of that list sets book lovers apart from the people who just don’t get it, the magic of the book and the thrill of finding someone who loves them as much as you do.
Still, no enthusiasm could top the excitement exhibited by seven kids at the OEV event we recently attended. These children of London’s musicians and artists took it upon themselves to christen our bookmobile an “ice cream truck” and, for a good hour, they became captains and crew of this imaginary vessel. One of them figured out how to open and close the door, and suddenly no adults were allowed in unless they purchased the advertised dessert. A little girl found Vanessa’s blue tooth headphones and was using them as the “credit card machine.” The flavours were equally as imaginary as the point of sale. One was bird poo. That flavour was popular. You’d walk up to the driver’s side window, give your invisible credit card to the girl, she’d ring it through, and your bird poo ice cream would be handed to you. The bookmobile was also, for a while, home base in an epic game of tag, which somehow also included all their parents’ merchant booths at the festival. All of — booksellers, tee shirt printers, beeswax candle crafters, zine designers, vintage clothing connoisseurs — became ports in a storm of juvenile squeals.
The height of the evening came when, after the sun went down, and we were on the bus cleaning up after all this madness, the seven of them were piling into the driver’s seat and the youngest girl exclaimed, “THE MOON!”
And there it was, rising poetically above Aeolian Hall, yellow and round and beautiful. Everyone on the bus stopped and looked where this little girl pointed with her tiny, dirty finger that instructed, let’s marvel at the moon for a moment. We all did.
The next morning, we had three people sell us books at our regular Saturday morning stop at Variety Cafe. These were fantastic books too. 50 or so of them are included in the links below in this week’s New Arrivals Section. Half of our job is to find these wonderful things. We visit houses. We visit libraries. We chat with people who sit down at our card table and rummage through their boxes with us. It’s a gas each week, going through them and deciding which ones to include in our New Arrivals email. Basically anything that we think we might like ourselves, or anything we think a customer might like makes the list, although it also needs a sort of “glint” if you will, a bookyness or extra quality — sort of a stand-out quality — to be featured. While the other titles might just hide on their respective shelves in our bookmobile, these beg to be the life of the party, quiet and reposed as that party might be. Customers of ours have told us that they get a special kick out of seeing their books selected for our weekly New Arrivals section. We will take the compliment.
Nothing, though, no box of books or scholar’s library, tops what we were offered that Friday night by a three year old girl selling invisible ice cream to our customers.
We were offered the moon. The simple, autumnal, yellow moon.
Much love,
Jason and Vanessa
P.S. St. Thomas folks you can find us tomorrow at the Scoop and Shop Fall Market at Shaw’s Ice Cream where we will be bringing our best books and eating ACTUAL REAL LIFE ice cream, most likely too much of it. But, as they say, when in St. Thomas…
