Friday Eric and I hauled the new bookcases over and immediately unloaded one of the original ones along the back wall. We wrestled it out (well, Eric wrestled and I played navigator) and guided in the new one only to realize that the new ones aren’t as wide as the old and wouldn’t completely fill the back wall -- which meant of course that we had to exchange bookcases once again and reshelve all the books. From there it was easier except for the fact that Eric had to keep stopping to talk to all the store customers who came by. I am amazed at how many times we’ve been there and he’s run into one of our store regulars. Though a nice diversion, it kept us at our job most of the morning. We rearranged the furniture, took away two small temporary bookcases, reoranized the books,which meant moving lots of them, added a ton of new stuff and cleaned the whole thing with Pledge and the vacuum cleaner. Eric even touched up a couple nicks on the new shelves with a dark stain.
The sight of that booth all spiffed up with ROWS of new books made me dizzy with joy as if I'd spun in circles and fell down flat. In fact, I was so excited I forgot to take a picture and didn’t remember until we were having a late lunch at Panera (do try that new Thai salad if you like spicy food. Heaven in a bowl!) By then Eric had had it with the mall, so we went home, fired up the gas-log fireplace and sat down in the middle of the day and read our books – he something by Harry Turtledove and I the very weird, very quirky new novel Her Fearful Symmetry which lured me in despite my protests that it wasn’t my thing. Anyway, forgetting to take the picture is my excuse for tardiness here. I’ve had so many excuses of late that the next time I’ll have to borrow Paula Danzinger's title The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, even though I lack both a physical cat and (thanks heavens!) a gymsuit. I actually met Paula Danziger once in a Westin hotel in L.A. when a telegram addressed to her was delivered to me. But that's another story.
In today's story we stopped back at the mall yesterday and got the photo above, but what should have taken a couple minutes dragged into a half hour because I could never find the booth empty of people. Yeah, how cool is THAT? I’m not complaining and I’m not gloating (well, maybe a teeny-tiny bit I’m gloating), but I do think the book gods will close one eye seeing as how I admitted that I’m not yet where I should be for the new month and none of the people bought anything while I was there. The little table in the front of the photo is the French one I got at the auction. I only wish I’d taken a separate picture of it because it’s the height of elegance. But it may well be that its prominent location trumps its Gallic charm. We took it over last Sunday and I immediate adorned it with a miniature antiquarian set of Ruskin and sold the set the very same day after it had sat unloved on the other side of the booth for six weeks! What I really need though is a small, but sturdy chair (hear that, Cheryl?). I think it’s hard for people to see the bottom shelves which could explain why very little sells off them. But it easier to find a gold nugget under the lilac bush than it is to get a chair because, of course, the chair needs to be an antique.
Which brings me to something else. After we snapped the picture yesterday afternoon we decided to take a mini road trip to check out another large antiques mall that’s quite a distance away. We have friends who have a booth there and there’s also a volume book dealer who's been there for years. Of course now that we sell in a mall ourselves we regard other malls with new and knowing eyes. The first thing I noticed when we walked in was how much nicer our mall is – most likely because of the nothing-later than-1974 rule. As you may recall, I didn’t care for that restriction initially, but I have to admit that this purity is what makes the place sing. The second thing I noticed is that while the volume dealer does have some nice stuff, he or she may be struggling just as hard as we are to get a quantity of high end stock. We did, however, find two underpriced children’s books and bought both – one for the mall and one for online.
As I write this, a strange new thought I’ve had more than once keeps clamoring to be heard. I hesitate to even say it out loud, but here goes -- I think maybe I’m falling out of love with online selling.
