Notes from the Bookstore

Hello. I write you from a big little bookstore in Austin, named after some folks in a Ray Bradbury novel. The idea is to give you a glimpse of life from inside the realm of independent book-slinging. I thought I’d start this column with the most recent milestone in my retail life: inventory.

Sunday night, I was told to show up for work at 6 p.m. Little to no detail followed. Not sure what to expect, I had been told that you either a) go in ready for the most miserable night of the year, or, b) make the best of watching other people crack under the late-night pressure. I chose option b, mostly just curious about the process and what an all-nighter does to book people.

I was given a Home Depot apron, a glorified remote-control called ScanPal II, and a section. Shakespeare through Poetry. What followed is difficult to account for or explain clearly. I heard the mechanized beep of the ScanPal registering each book I scanned, and was aware, obliquely, of many other people and beeping machines moving at my periphery. I remember a vague, irritated feeling at the flimsiness of the poetry volumes. They can’t stand up on their own, which might be significant in nonphysical ways.

More than the details of the task, the other sections I scanned, the announced breaks every so often, what was striking about inventory night was its soothing mindlessness. Time—lots of time—passed without my actually realizing it at all. I was overcome by a sort of dazed feeling; the books in my hands were no longer books, my hands no longer hands. I had been warned not to scan sections of books I care about because of what it means to have them turn into mere consumer products. But none of that even mattered. I kind of forgot where I was. Who I was.

Some part of my brain—the mechanized part, maybe, the part I don’t use enough—must have been working overtime, because I came home in the middle of the night and could not sleep at all. The dazed feeling lasted. I thought about the discrepancy team who were called out of their beds at 2 a.m. to come in after me and figure out what books were missing, and I secretly wished I was one of them. But I had to be back in the store at 10 a.m.

When I came in, all the shelves were tagged with yellow strips that meant they’d been counted. I can’t even describe the feeling of order, satisfaction, clarity in the morning. A profound peacefulness had settled over my usually messy, haphazard workplace. The yellow tags signify someone’s been there, in each corner and forgotten section. Every book—even the flimsy, self-published poetry—had been touched and noted.

I started wondering, in my bleary, sleepless state, what if we inventoried other things? Our homes? Do people do this? Count every last thing, list them out, mark their places. Or our lives, every person we know or care about. Maybe that’s what family reunions are really for. Or the Census, I guess. I have to imagine if we took some sort of private stock like this, just once a year, the lucidity would be immense.

It’s been raining here in Austin, a strange relief from the Texas summer heat—and ideal bookshop weather, obviously. My store has become a halfway house for crickets. They freaked me out for a while, with their twitchy, brown enormity, but lately I’ve found them good company. It’s reassuring, sort of, the way they chirp from all the corners.