Water Street Bookstore: Independent since 1991

I'm a bookseller at a local, independent bookshop in Exeter, NH, with a particular love for science-fiction, fantasy, and detective novels, as well as for children's books. This page is a space for me to post the internets that tickle my love of reading and books, as well as reviews, and exciting stuff from the bookstore. I put internets I like here Also, for less meme-y information on the bookshop, go to: http://waterstreetbooks.com/

[waterstreet125]

Wakanda forever!

[linguist-breakaribecca]

[bvkspine]

a bunch of tattooed, thinly sliced trees

[waterstreet125]

Once, I was in Maynooth, trying to haul my suitcase (at that point, roughly 85% books) over a set of stairs at a railway station. And, a friendly Australian came by and helped me and I made a comment to the effect of “who knew books could be so heavy?” And he said (and I’ve—obviously—never forgotten this), “well, when you come down to it, books are just trees, thinly sliced.” 

[bookavore]

Quite possibly my favorite book display of all time

[warwicksbooks]

Is that Patricia C Wrede we spy under that cover? If so - agree 100%!

[waterstreet125]

Reblogging for Dealing with Dragons. 

[strandbooks]

Sometimes the Strand book flags wind up in…fun places.

Bookseller humor is the best. Or possibly the worst, depending on your point of view. 

[academicssay]

[englishmajorhumor]

[alfiusdebux]

[alfiusdebux]

Zoroaster Clavis Artis, Ms-2-27, Biblioteca Civica Hortis, Trieste, 1738. Vol. 2, pag. 182

[oraclecrank]

They’re almost kissing. It’s like Nicholas Sparks cover

[beepboop-its-a-robot]

STORY TIME:

I work in a decent sized, local, indie bookstore. It’s a great job 99% of the time and a lot of our customers are pretty neat people. Any who, middle of the day this little old lady comes up. She’s lovably kooky. She effuses how much she loves the store and how she wishes she could spend more time in it but her husband is waiting in the car (OH! I BETTER BUY HIM SOME CHOCOLATE!), she piles a bunch of art supplies on the counter and then stops and tells me how my bangs are beautiful and remind her of the ocean (“Wooooosh” she says, making a wave gesture with her hand)

Ok. I think to myself. Awesomely happy, weird little old ladies are my favorite kind of customer. They’re thrilled about everything and they’re comfortably bananas. I can have a good time with this one. So we chat and it’s nice.

Then this kid, who’s been up my counter a few times to gather his school textbooks, comes up in line behind her (we’re connected to a major university in the city so we have a lot of harried students pass through). She turns around to him and, out of nowhere, demands that he put his textbooks on the counter. He’s confused but she explains that she’s going to buy his textbooks.

He goes sheetrock white. He refuses and adamantly insists that she can’t do that. It’s like, $400 worth of textbooks. She, this tiny old woman, bodily takes them out of her hands, throws them on the counter and turns to me with a intense stare and tells me to put them on her bill. The kid at this point is practically in tears. He’s confused and shocked and grateful. Then she turns to him and says “you need chocolate.” She starts grabbing handfuls of chocolates and putting them in her pile.

He keeps asking her “why are you doing this?” She responds “Do you like Harry Potter?“ and throws a copy of the new Cursed Child on the pile too.

Finally she’s done and I ring her up for a crazy amount of money. She pays and asks me to please give the kid a few bags for his stuff. While I’m bagging up her merchandise the kid hugs her. We’re both telling her how amazing she is and what an awesome thing she’s done. She turns to both of us and says probably one of the most profound, unscripted things I’ve ever had someone say:

“It’s important to be kind. You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways. It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be. There’s nothing you can do about that. But you can choose to be kind. Be kind.”

The kid thanks her again and leaves. I tell her again how awesome she is. She’s staring out the door after him and says to me: “My son is a homeless meth addict. I don’t know what I did. I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.”

I’ve bagged up all her stuff and at this point am super awkward and feel like I should say something but I don’t know what. Then she turns to me and says: I wish I could have bangs like that but my darn hair is just too curly.“ And leaves.

And that is the story of the best customer I’ve ever had. Be kind to somebody today.

[shrewreadings]

 I didn’t reblog earlier. 

So I am now. 

[cluegrrl]

Be kind. It’s worth the effort.

[maneth985]

Wow amazing!

[waterstreet125]

I’m madly in love with our UFO festival display. 

[alriviera]

Pride and Prejudice Go

An app that shows you where there’s a young man in possession of a good fortune who must be in want of a wife

[sidhebeingbrand]

On the radar: 

Gentleman with 5,000 pounds a year Handsome tragic veteran Dashing officer of good breeding Gentleman with 10,000 pounds a year Liberal-minded heir to a large estate

Your phone buzzes: 

Mr. Collins

[sithtantrums]

Your mother runs into the room “the lure I placed on netherfield park has worked at last. There is a young man in possession of good fortune, one of the girls must surely catch him”

[waterstreet125]

Jill just sent me these fabulous photos from our midnight release Harry Potter party. It looks like it was amazing! (And the costumes that people came up with are really impressive.)

[waterstreet125]

Dan is really proud of the Harry Potter display he set up—and we’re all *really* excited for the midnight release party! 

[uwmspeccoll]

Staff Pick of the Week

My pick for this week is A View of the State of Ireland, Dublin, 1633, by Edmund Spenser (that’s right, Edmund Spenser of The Faerie Queene). This book, which appears to have been rebound in the 20th century, was previously featured in a St. Patrick’s Day post from last year (read more about it there). The work is bound with Edmund Campion’s, Meredith Hanmer’s, and Henry Marlborough’s respective Histories of Ireland (Dublin, 1633).  As I stated in my previous post, “One of the many reasons I acquired this work for the collection was because of its ownership marginalia, which in a way serve as 17th- or 18th-century hotlinks to this 16th-century text.” Also in that post, I presented my favorite marginal note, “Drinking Blood.” 

Today, in another nod to @booktraces, I present more curious marginalia, and even full-page, manuscript facsimiles (fullpagialia?), from this ever-fascinating tome. There are “Jesters,” who are actually “loose fellowes,” “notable rogues,” and “partakers … of many stealthes … but also privy to many traitrous practices, and common carryers of newes”; “Robin Hood,” or Irish “Robbers and Out-lawes” who “troubled the whole state” in “every corner”; and “Women,” who are, of course, “Strumpets” and “whoores.”

It appears that the owner of this volume had an incomplete copy. It also appears that this problem was solved by seeking out someone else’s complete copy, and then very carefully hand-copying the missing pages with fully-justified lines, a facsimile of the typographic header, and even the signature marks and catch words. Some of these manuscript transcriptions go on for several pages. At the beginning of Henry Marlborough’s chronicle, the owner has even created a manuscript facsimile of the illustrative headpiece, the typographic title, and the elaborated initial, and then proceeded to annotate the facsimile pages with additional marginal notations. 

For me, this book never fails to fascinate.

– MAX

[booktraces]

Thanks for the mention! This find is marginalia gold! 

[waterstreet125]

This is so cool! I spent two chapters of my dissertation talking about Ware’s collection & I would *love* to see this copy. I’ve been creating my own TEI-annotated version of the Ware edition in my non-bookseller life and it would be amazing to see if we’re using any of the same tags. 

[waterstreet125]

Look what just came in our giant pile of Penguin Random House receiving! This will be published TOMORROW, so you can get a copy then! We open at 9am :) 

Sorcerer to the Crown is basically the book of the year for the Time of Wonder gang, so if you haven’t read it yet, you absolutely should. 

[waterstreet125]

We sold out of Miss Lonelyhearts again. It’s very weird to me that this is the most successful staff pick I’ve ever written. 

[waterstreet125]

Do you think it has *any* dinosaur facts you don’t already know?

parent to child in an EXTREMELY skeptical voice