My Life in Bookstores

What came first — my love of books or my love of bookstores? The two are inseparable in my mind. All I know is that bookstores are as much part of my life as any relationship with friends. And like the best of friendships, it continues to deepen and evolve with age.

My most recent experiences with bookstores have been novel ones (no pun intended). I’m on a book tour for the first time, and I’ve been travelling around the Northeast visiting countless Barnes & Nobles and independent bookstores, meeting the booksellers and devoted readers in town after town. From the tip of Cape Cod to the suburbs of Philadelphia, I’ve been amazed and heartened by the fact that bookstores continue to be a gathering place and touchstone for communities large and small.

Growing up, my father took me out every Saturday morning to get breakfast at a nearby coffee restaurant. Afterwards, we walked next door to the bookstore. I was allowed to pick out one book every weekend. My father, who didn’t love spending money, told me he would always buy me a book. This communicated a lot to me about the value of books and reading. And yes, we went to the library too. But it was the books that I got to keep, that I read over and over again and that lived with me in my bedroom, that seemed to get into my very bloodstream.

At this small bookstore (whose name escapes me — it’s sadly been gone now for decades) I discovered Paula Danziger, Norma Klein, Beverly Cleary, and Judy Blume.  This bookstore was my portal into the world outside of my suburban life with my parents and brother. It offered a preview of what life might hold for me. I started thinking about my future, and decided it would certainly have to revolve around books.

I would become an author.

Of course, becoming an author was easier dreamed about than done. But, determined to live up to my ambition of living a life of books, I moved to New York City after college. One of my first jobs was at a bookstore. But, this being the mid-1990s when everything in the book business began to change, it was not a physical bookstore. I got a job helping to launch Barnes&Noble.com.

I didn’t fully understand the notion of an online bookstore. Frankly, I thought my job wouldn’t last more than a year, when my employer figured out this was a folly. And yet, in neighborhood after neighborhood, independent bookstores were sounding the alarm bells if not closing completely. Amazon was picking up steam. Borders started their own e-commerce site.  The online bookstore was here to stay.

Along with my co-workers, all passionate booklovers most of whom still work in book publishing now twenty years later, we tried to figure out how to make the online book shopping experience satisfying. We wrote heartfelt reviews, conducted author “chats,” compiled “best of” lists and met with publishers to give our customers previews of upcoming titles. The online bookstore could never replace the physical bookstore, and it was never intended to. But times were changing, and we knew the way people bought books would change with it.

When I became a mother, I was once again back in the physical bookstore. As a city dweller, I didn’t have a house or a yard for my toddlers to spread their wings. Our go-to afternoon activity was the children’s book section at the Barnes & Noble on East 86^th Street. When children are small, the afternoons can seem endless. But that bookstore saved my sanity with its story time hour, its seemingly endless shelves of board books, and the fact that it attracted other moms for me to meet. If it does indeed “take a village,” I found mine at the bookstore. And over a decade later, when I published my novel The Forever Summer, that Barnes & Noble hosted my very first reading.

My daughters are now teenagers, and while I try to encourage them to use the library, like my own father I can never refuse buying them a book. They share my passion for holding onto the novels they read, lining their own bookshelves and hopefully dreaming of the lives that await them.

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ABOUT THE FOREVER SUMMER

Named one of Coastal Living’s 50 Best Books for the Beach, one of Fort Worth Magazine’s 10 Must-Read Beach Books, and one of 11 Summer Reads for “maximum vacation enjoyment” by Bustle.com.

When a DNA test reveals long-buried secrets, three generations of women reunite on Cape Cod for the homecoming of a lifetime.

Marin Bishop has always played by the rules, and it’s paid off: at twenty-eight she has a handsome fiancé, a prestigious Manhattan legal career, and the hard-won admiration of her father. But one moment of weakness leaves Marin unemployed and alone, all in a single day. Then a woman claiming to be Marin’s half-sister shows up, and it’s all Marin can do not to break down completely. Seeking escape, Marin agrees to a road trip to meet the grandmother she never knew she had. As the summer unfolds at her grandmother’s quaint beachside B&B, it becomes clear that the truth of her half-sister is just the beginning of revelations that will change Marin’s life forever. THE FOREVER SUMMER is a delicious page-turner and a provocative exploration of what happens when our notions of love, truth, and family are put to the ultimate test.

Full of delicious descriptions of coastal New England and richly imagined characters, THE FOREVER SUMMER is an emotional, hot-topic page-turner and a summer must-read

BUY THE FOREVER SUMMER:

BARNES AND NOBLE

AMAZON

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Jamie Brenner is the author of The Forever Summer, a novel People magazine calls, “A captivating tale of family secrets and strong women.” Jamie’s previous novel, The Wedding Sisters, was chosen by Popsugar as one of the Best Books for Women 2016. Jamie grew up in suburban Philadelphia and attended The George Washington University in Washington D.C. Today, she lives in New York City with her husband and two teenage daughters, and where every day you can find her at her desk writing her next summer novel.  Instagram: @jamiebrennerauthor  www.jamiebrenner.com

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing