A couple of years ago, Claire thought up a few questions to ask authors about their bookstore experiences. In honor of the publication last week of her first YA novel, Epic Fail, I decided to turn the tables a bit and ask them of her.
1. Did you have a special bookstore in your life that helped foster your love of reading?
Absolutely. The New England Mobile Book Fair, which we always just called Strymish’s because the Strymishes owned it, was where I discovered and bought most of the authors who made me want to become a writer, like Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence (I was a much more sophisticated reader as a teenager than I am now). It was a very unusual place to browse because the books were organized by publisher, not genre. If there was something specific you were looking for, you had to look it up in a book at the front of the store and then find the aisle with that publisher and look for your author there. Publishing houses were smaller back then and had more personality, so if you liked an author, there was a good chance you might like another published by the same house.
In a really amazing coincidence, I discovered a few months ago that a good friend of mine is related to the Strymishes, who owned the store for decades (they were trying to sell it last year–not sure what happened). The world is a very small place.
2. Do you have a hometown bookstore now that you are likeliest to visit?
I did, but sadly it closed just this summer. The owner said it had just gotten too tough–so many people had gotten e-readers recently that she just wasn’t selling enough books. And people would literally walk into the store, browse, and say to their friends, “Oh, I want to get this–I’m going to go home and order it from Amazon/on my e-reader.” That kind of thinking is destroying our wonderful little Indies.
There is a lovely little bookstore not far from me–Diesel Books, in Brentwood, and we do go there fairly often.
3. Do you have a favorite place for signings/readings?
Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena made me feel so welcome when I read there that I’m doing another reading there this fall, when Families and Other Nonreturnable Gifts comes out (on October 4 at 7 pm, for you LA people–please come). It’s a great bookstore–the kind of place where you can waste hours happily browsing. Unfortunately it’s not all that close, especially with traffic.
4. Do you know any unusual bookstores that are doing something different from all others?
Well, Vroman’s, which I mentioned above, has wisely broadened to selling a lot more than just books. It really is a one-stop gift destination. If you were doing your holiday shopping, you could just go there and, yes, get lots of books but you could also find toys, clothing, and the like. They happen to have the space to do that–many stores don’t–and I think it’s really smart.
5. If a bookstore were to group your book with three others, which would you hand-pick?
Since Epic Fail is Young Adult fiction, I would choose my three favorite YA novels–which would be all three books in the Suzanne Collins Hunger Games trilogy. Just my book and those three (bestselling, mindblowingly good) books. Yeah. That’s a display I’d like to see.
Thanks Claire!
Claire
Kim
