In bookselling, as in all retail ventures, it becomes periodically necessary to do an inventory of goods. We here at Books, Etc. always do ours in January because inventory involves closing for an entire day and ripping the store basically to pieces, and this is the slowest time of year. We begin prepping as soon as the holiday rush is over, doing all sorts of organizing and running all sorts of fun reports. Inventory is always on a Monday at the Portland store and the following Tuesday in Falmouth so that we can sequentially share the laser machines(!) that we rent to scan the books.
The day before inventory we go around and work down every display, endcap, window, tabletop bookstand, etc., and then in the morning we shove everything around on the shelves to make it as easy as possible to scan everything quickly. The end result is something like this:
Understandably, and especially in this economic climate, we spend a good proportion of both Sunday and Tuesday explaining what's going on and that no, we're not closing, remodeling, or moving. We did have one woman this year who walked in on Sunday evening, took one look around, smiled, and cheerily commented "Wow, you must be doing inventory!"
I kind of wanted to hug her.
Of course, the best part about inventory (other than the computers being updated so that they're actually accurate!) is that Allan (the Big Cheese) always buys us coffee in the morning and lunch at lunch. The past few years it's been Asian fusion from
Fuji, across the street, but this year we tried out a new pizza place,
Joe's New York, that opened up around the corner in the old Granny's Burritos space. It was pretty darn tasty, and they even brought it to us in the middle of the snowstorm that inevitably seems to accompany inventory.
There's definitely something to be said for sitting around with your coworkers and your boss, eating and shooting the breeze. Downright relaxing it is, and very unlike our usual customer-service buzz!
Elizabeth Tibbetts lives in Maine and works as a nurse. She has received a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship and Good Idea Grant, and a Martin Dibner Fellowship. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Scholar, The Beloit Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and North American Review.
With wit, humility, and penetrating insight, science journalist Hannah Holmes casts the inquisitive eye of a trained researcher and reporter on . . . herself. And not just herself, but on our whole species-what Shakespeare called "the paragon of animals." In this surprising, humorous, and edifying book, Holmes explores how the human animal-the eponymous well-dressed ape-fits into the natural world, even as we humans change that world in both constructive and destructive ways.
Since Lincoln, no president has written his own words and addressed his audience with equal and enduring effectiveness. Acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan focuses on the elements that shaped Lincoln's mental and imaginative world; how his writings molded his identity, relationships, and career; and how they simultaneously generated both the distinctive political figure he became and the public discourse of the nation. This unique account of Lincoln's life and career highlights the shortcomings of the modern presidency, reminding us, through Lincoln's legacy and appreciation for language, that the careful and honest use of words is a necessity for successful democracy.
