Noting that "the booksellers in these stores all over the world really help keep us alive," the 33 1/3 blog's "Better Know a Bookseller" series featured a q&a with staff at Papercuts J.P., Boston, Mass., including Kate Layte, owner and manager; Katie Eelman, media and events coordinator; and bookseller John Cleary. Among our favorite exchanges:
Describe your most memorable customer interaction.
John: Once, a teenager asked me to recommend a good fantasy author, and after establishing that he had read my first three or four suggestions, I handed him a China Miéville book, which he carefully considered but didn't buy. It always stings a little when I make an impassioned pitch for one of my favorite books and it ends up back on the shelf, but several weeks later he came back to purchase the book I recommended. When I see young people who are passionate about reading and enjoy books that are challenging and have depth, it gives me hope that maybe not everyone in the future will have smart devices grafted to their hands so they can consume a constant stream of tweets and posts by other people who don't read anything longer than 140 characters.
If an anonymous donor gave you $1 million to use expressly to invest in your store what would you do with it?
Kate: I would first wet my pants, then I would get my sh*t together, do lots more research, then buy one of the beautiful old Victorian houses in Jamaica Plain (well, probably just put a down payment, because real estate around here is out of control). I'd then ask the zoning committee for permission to convert it into a dreamlike bookstore with room for a bar. I would do my best to create an atmosphere, inspired by nature, that allows for neighbors, no longer strangers, to have real conversations about the things they've been learning from books or things that they are working through themselves. I'd want a space that truly allows for people to escape home and work and exist in that magical and necessary "third place" away from everything that makes us anxious. It would be a place that allows for real human bonds to form, ideas to be shared, and our worlds to expand.
Would you rather live in a world with no books or a world with no music?
Katie: I don't think it would be possible for a world to exist without music or without books (these things are created so organically). That said, if I had to choose which depraved world I'd prefer to live in, I'd choose to live without books so that I could participate in their re-birth and the help to get ancient stories on pages.
