After decades in the book business

I left it. Sort of. I don't know if one ever really does. Example: While interviewing to get into the last bookstore I worked for I noted that I'd been reading the trade papers, though out of the business for about 4 years at that point. "You need to get a life," said the interviewer... Luckily, I was hired into another area of the company entirely.

So I worked there for five years, which is the longest I have ever worked anywhere, what with being a constant mover, and then last July I left and here I am living in the hinterlands now. It was, though, until the last six months, the best bookstore I'd ever worked in.

The reasons are many, but really it boils down to this: Management at the store hired us as and treated us like adults - adults who knew and loved books - which we are. In the time that I was there I was in charge of a variety of sections, business, politics, humor, self-help, outdoors (me, who'da thunk it?), for a minute health and sex, and I helped in romance (which provoked a lot of eye rolling on my part, so I had to leave after a while. It was mostly due to costuming anachronisms on the covers.).

Now... I miss books a lot, and do still alphabetize "for" other bookstores when I visit. ("No, no, you'll see, it's better this way...")

I also still read the trade papers, because I have a life, and it's books.