The Joy of Reading Books About Books

Books about books, or bookstores, or people who work in bookstores, or in publishing, or in libraries, or anything book-adjacent, are not in short supply, perhaps for the obvious reason that writers are by definition people who are drawn to, and often write about, books. Display tables full of books about books are a staple at many a bookstore; in fact as I began to work on this essay, I learned that the bookstore where I work was in the process of putting together a September display table featuring books about working in bookstores, which you can access here.

Another funny thing happened on my way to writing this roundup, which was otherwise going to consist largely of entertainments, as rom coms and thrillers seem to dominate the genre (although let’s be honest, those might simply be what I chose to read). I picked up a copy of Service, by John Tottenham, which is one of the newer entries in the bookstore book canon, and it so richly captured the ethos—and, more importantly, pathos—of bookseller life that I decided to give it top billing in this story.

John Tottenham, Service

This gritty, bleak, nihilistic, yet darkly funny, novel contains more insight into bookseller life than the many dozens of other contemporary novels on the subject—and I say that as a person who actually loves working at an independent bookstore. Lest this wind up on any of the aforementioned display tables of books about bookstores, it perhaps ought to have a trigger warning slapped on the cover, explaining that it might shatter the reader’s illusions about the charms of bookstore life.

Set in the rapidly gentrifying Echo Park neighborhood in Los Angeles, protagonist Sean Hangland is on the cusp of turning 50, working as a bookseller, and, at least on these pages, in a perpetually foul mood. He is not just broke but has creditors at his door. He should have, could have, would have been a musician, but instead he is working on a novel and eking out a living hawking other people’s books. Or not, as it happens. Don’t call the store to ask him to find a title, because he’ll likely set the phone down, work on a crossword puzzle, and then, if you are still holding, tell you it’s not in stock.

He isn’t just cantankerous in the standard way of fictional (and in some cases, real life) booksellers. He is on the verge of going full ballistic berserk-o, and in fact in one scene he uses books as projectiles, hurling titles off the philosophy shelf.

When Sean is called out by the manager for the frequent, and cumulative bad Yelp reviews commenting on his approach to customer service, he retorts: “There have been some very difficult customers in here recently. We should start our own Yelp page to complain about them.”

Service is also a realistic story about a frustrated middle-aged former journalist and aspiring novelist idling in an ultra-low-paying job. Sean might be bookish, but he has come to loath most books—in no small part because he is jealous of their success. He complains about the laborious prose of other writers, for example, while slipping words such sesquipedalian and pleniloquence into his rants.

There’s not much of a plot here, but Tottenham had me turning the pages just to see if things could get much worse. Service is perhaps the smartest, albeit grimmest book about working in a bookstore that I’ve ever read.

Jenna Blum, Murder Your Darlings

This fun, twisty thriller about two successful writers who fall in love—or at least what passes for love in the case of one of the protagonists—is not about bookstores, per se, and yet indies feature prominently throughout as we follow these authors on tour. And among the three alternating points of view is one possibly unhinged bookseller.

Beneath the surface of this glossy novel is a heartfelt depiction of the obstacles aspirant writers face in trying to both produce and publish. Also, a lot is said about their all-too-easy-to-exploit vulnerabilities.

Blum—a successful novelist and co-founder of the popular Mighty Blaze podcast, knows of what she writes. In its observations about the pressures of publishing and its inverse—the heartbreak of not publishing—the novel is at times so close to the bone that it makes one wonder why anyone would want to engage in the business of books at any level. But don’t let that dissuade you—this book is not only good fun, but it ends with a homage to the business: “We writers, all of us, need booksellers. And readers! What would we do without you? You save our lives.”

Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

This sweet novel is emblematic of the bookstore book genre, and while it has little else in common with Service, it does feature a grumpy bookseller.

A.J. Fikry is the owner of a small bookstore on Alice Island—a fictitious locale accessible only by ferry that is somewhere Cape Cod-adjacent. Fikry is recently widowed, and bookstore sales are in a slump. Enter Amelia, the book rep from fictitious publisher, Knightly Press and…well I probably don’t need to tell you the rest of the story, except that it is endearing, and the book is better than the movie, and it might wind up being exactly what you need.

Emily Henry, Book Lovers

It’s clear at the outset that this is a very bookish book—and I’m not even talking about the cover, which features two people reading books, passing a book between them, and sitting on stacks of books. The protagonist, Nora Stephens, is a New York literary agent, and the antagonist, if that’s the correct word for the character who is clearly going to become the love interest, is an uptight book editor. Book Lovers was my first Emily Henry novel, and she had me at the first sentence: “When books are your life—or in my case, your job—you get pretty good at guessing where a story is going.” Henry manages to subvert her own wisdom. I didn’t see where this story was going, or at least that it was going to wind up involving a cozy North Carolina independent bookstore.

Shauna Robs, The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks

This has been on my TBR list since I had the good fortune to appear with Shauna at a book festival a couple of years ago. An Indie Next pick, one of Shondaland’s Best Books for November 2022, this novel features another small-town independent bookstore. In this case, the bookshop is bound by outdated rules about what it is allowed to sell—only books from the previous century. While not overtly political from what I can tell, there are likely implications about what happens when the authorities attempt to tell people what they can and cannot read.

R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

I’m going to give this one an honorable mention. While not a bookstore book per se—it’s a thriller as well as satire of the writing life and cultural appropriation—it’s a great read. And it happens to feature a scene in a bookstore that happens to be the one where I work.

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