The Tale of a Brilliant Bookseller

Hello Fe-liners, I’m very excited to welcome you to my first ever post as a Fe-line blogger. In my posts, I will be discussing various women who have inspired me to do something, taught me a lesson, or just generally made me feel that little bit more accepting of who I am as I stumble through life.

I’ve had several candidates in mind for my first Fe-line blog post but in the end I thought it would be fitting to start with a writer, blogger, and all-round social media success story. I am therefore proud to present to you my first fabulous female: Jen Campbell.

Jen Campbell is a bookseller, poet, blogger, and author of 2012 global sensation Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops, which has been translated into numerous languages and has already spawned a sequel: More Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops. 

I had the pleasure of meeting Jen last year when she came to promote Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops in Blackwell’s Bookshop where I was working at the time and she was given the neighbouring desk to write from. Witnessing a proper writer at work made me realise how much I missed writing myself. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember – stories when I was little, scenes when I was at college, blog posts when I was at Uni – but at that point I hadn’t written anything for a very long time; unless you count work emails (which I don’t).

What I really like about Jen is that she genuinely seems to be following her own path and being who she is –  I find this truly admirable as, like many people, I spent too much of my youth trying to shoehorn myself into careers I had no interest in. Jen likes writing poetry, so she writes poetry (beautiful poetry – check out her pamphlet The Hungry Ghost Festival). She is passionate about bookselling and proper bookshops, so she sells books in an antiquarian bookshop called Ripping Yarns. She observed that people say odd things in bookshops, so she started taking note of them.

In February 2009, John Cleese asked his twitter followers what their pet peeve was so Jen tweeted back “a woman came into our bookshop & said, seriously: I really love the diary of Anne Frank; did she write a sequel?”; @JohnCleese duly replied “Astonishing!”. She then started recording snippets of odd conversations from her bookshop on her blog and, in June 2011, Neil Gaiman blogged about her blog on his blog which sent the whole thing viral. An enquiry from publishers Constable & Robinson to see if she’d be interested in turning it into a book followed shortly afterwards. I for one am very glad she agreed to turn it into a book; not just because it’s hilarious, but because there’s something deliciously booky about a book on bookshops.

Jen describes bookshops as “portals and safe places” which is such a perfect description of what a good bookshop is. And don’t we all need that, a haven full of faraway (and some not-so-faraway) places where we can allow ourselves to escape. One of the advantages of a good bookshop is that they come complete with their own tour guides: booksellers. Your bookseller can direct you, via the books, to places you may not have visited before and, indeed, may not have even realised existed. The other wonderful (and, I admit, rather obvious) thing about bookshops is that they’re full of books. They aren’t a distraction mid-way through your grocery shop or a few clicks of the mouse while you gulp down a sandwich on your lunch break; they are a place in which you can really practice the gentle art of browsing while the world goes by outside.

I take my hat off to Jen (or would if I were wearing one). Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops has helped enormously to remind people of what amazing places bookshops are at a time when so many are under threat from the disparately low prices of online retailers and supermarkets. Where else would you find people asking questions such as “Do you have any books in this shade of green, to match the wrapping paper I’ve bought?”, or “Did Beatrix Potter ever write a book about dinosaurs?”, or “Do you think I could knit using my own hair?” (Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops, Jen Campbell, Constable & Robinson, 2012). Establishments that inspire such curious enquires ought to be celebrated and Jen has done so with such affection and humour.

Jen is currently in the process of writing her first novel – “it’s a dystopian novel about a group of women who’ve been locked up for doing terrible things” – and continues to have her poetry published, most recently in the latest issue of Poetry Salzburg Review. Although these days the weird things customers say in her bookshop are mostly saved for the Weird Things books, she still blogs regularly and you can read it over here.

Last but definitely not least, Jen is still a bookseller and works in a bookshop. She is passionate about bookselling and she champions bookshops proudly; I really admire the way she’s standing up for something she believes in.

As a final note, I would like to thank Jen for inspiring me to write again. It was her commitment to, and obvious enjoyment of, her writing that lead to my decision to dust off my laptop – had I not happened to be in Blackwell’s when Jen came to visit I would not be talking to you now. So, as I was a bookseller when I met Jen, I’ll leave you with a favourite moment from my own bookselling days. A small gentleman of a certain age in full biker gear walked slowly and purposefully up to my counter, removed his helmet and said, with unwavering eye contact: “I’m looking for books on MIND CONTROL.”

From my uncontrolled mind to yours,

 

 

 

 

(Find out more about Debs on the Contributors page, or read her blog: Life, Likings, Lobsters)

Photo credit: Jen Campbell