Book #56: The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap by Wendy Welch

I saw this book on a book blog that someone mentioned and it immediately sounded like it was right up my alley--and, since the book even exists at all, probably up a lot of book-lovers' alleys. I've always told Tommy that if I had to pick any random job that I could be dropped into and would love, it would be running or owning a little bookstore. And this book gives you a good look into the nitty-gritty of opening and running a used bookstore. Welch and her husband decided to move to western Virginia (not West Virginia) and open their own bookstore in a tiny little town in the Appalachians, and she talks about how they started and what the process was like. She goes into a lot of detail about how they acquired their books (mostly from garage sales, at first), how they learned how to price books and items, and how they interact with customers and help them to find books they might like. It was really interesting how she and her husband, and their store, became these members of a very small, very insular community and how they worked really hard to create a space that people would want to visit and come back to.

This was a fun memoir for someone who's a reader and a book-lover, and I liked learning about the process they went through to build their store into this community center. Welch says many times throughout the book how naive she and her husband were when they made their decision to open a bookstore, and how little idea they had about how much work it would take to own such a business. I know exactly what she means--when I think about owning a bookstore, I imagine the pleasure of organizing and selling books and helping people find things that they like, but not the difficulty of getting books to the shop and pricing tons of romance novels that you already have a billion of. So like any business, there are good things and bad things that come along with it--but for Welch and her husband, they have made a good life in a little town and have improved the community with the things they offer. And that sounds really good.