Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Book store
by Suzanne Strempek Shea
List Price:
Our Price: $5.68
You Save: $8.32 (59%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Suzanne Strempek SheaEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-05-15
ISBN: 0807072591
Number of pages: 232
Publisher: Beacon Press
Book Reviews of Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Book store
Book Review: "When I was a child, my town had no bookstores."
Summary: 3 Stars
I first read Shelf Life shortly after its initial publication and I remember being somewhat disappointed in it because it seemed to promise so much more than it delivered. I didn't record my feelings about the book after finishing it that first time and, because the passage of time mellowed my disappointment in it to a large degree, when I stumbled upon it again last week in a box of old books I decided to give it another try. I just knew that it would work for me this time around.
I was wrong.
Like most bibliophiles, especially those fast approaching retirement age, I've often dreamed of working in a bookstore so that, for once in my life, I could get paid for doing something I love in an environment I enjoy. Suzanne Strempek Shea's book recounting her first year's worth of experiences as a novice bookstore clerk seems like a natural choice for anyone dreaming of living the same life for themselves one day. Unfortunately, however, Shelf Life is written in such a dry, rambling, and often obtuse style, that the author eventually had me wondering if I could possibly last a whole year in the boring job she describes.
Suzanne Strempek Shea, in the midst of recovering from cancer treatments and not yet up to working on her next novel, realized that she needed to shake up her life a bit before she would be ready to resume her writing routine. She needed something to take her mind off of her recovery and lack of physical stamina and when an opportunity to work at Edwards Books (Springfield, Massachusetts) came up, she jumped at it. As things turned out, she brought many skills and ideas to the bookstore and Edwards Books was as lucky to have her as she was to have walked into the job.
I have to suspect that working in an independent bookstore, or even one of the big box bookstores, for that matter, is a lot more interesting than Shea makes it sound. She does pass on some interesting insights into the inner workings of a bookstore regarding the ordering process, how returns and markdowns work, how to best handle incomplete customer queries, how the location of a book within a store directly impacts the number of copies it will sell, etc. But her tendency to include long lists of trivial detail or to go on and on about every holiday display she built for the store in her entire first year becomes very tedious and distracting reading.
Simply put, as much as I sympathized with Shea's situation and envied her opportunity to work in a bookstore setting as she moved back into the world after her medical treatments, she never quite managed to breathe life into Edwards Books and its employees, something that still surprises me on this second reading, especially considering the fact that she is primarily known as a novelist.
More Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Book store reviews:
1
1
Authors Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Authors Books
Bloomsbury Recalledby Quentin Bell
Columbia University Press; Published: 1997-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.40
Price in other shops:
William Tyndale: A Biographyby David Daniell
Yale University Press; Published: 1994-11-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $62.92
Neither Saints Nor Sinners: Writing the Lives of Women in Spanish Americaby Kathleen Ann Myers
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Price in other shops:
Storm of Steel (Penguin Classics)by Ernst Jünger
Penguin Classics; Published: 2004-05-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops:
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Lifeby C.S. Lewis
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 1995-11-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.86
Price in other shops:
Roughing It (The Penguin American Library)by Mark Twain
Penguin Classics; Published: 1981-12-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.65
Price in other shops:
Life Is So Good: One Man's Extraordinary Journey through the 20th Century and How he Learned to Read at Age 98by George Dawson, Richard Glaubman
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2001-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.75
Price in other shops:
Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives)by Bill Bryson
Harper Perennial; Published: 2008-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
The Professor and the Madman CDby Simon Winchester
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-10-04; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops:
Alexander Hamilton: A Lifeby Willard Sterne Randall
Harper; Published: 2003-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.91
Price in other shops:
Similar books summaries and other product reviews
Quicksand and Passing (American Women Writers)by Nella Larsen
Rutgers University Press; Published: 1986-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.69
Price in other shops:
Frankenstein (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism)by Mary Shelley
Bedford/St. Martin's; Published: 2000-04-14; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.92
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Dover Publications; Published: 1997; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Bellocq's Ophelia: Poemsby Natasha Trethewey
Graywolf Press; Published: 2002-04-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.88
Price in other shops:
The Awakening (Dover Thrift Editions)by Kate Chopin
Dover Publications; Published: 1993-11-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
The Handmaid's Taleby Margaret Atwood
Anchor; Published: 1998-03-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.50
Price in other shops:
Jane Eyre (Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism)by Charlotte Bronte
Bedford/St. Martin's; Published: 1996-01-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.00
The House of Mirth (Norton Critical Editions)by Edith Wharton
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 1990-01-17; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.31
Mrs. Dalloway (Annotated)by Virginia Woolf
Mariner Books; Published: 2005-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.98
Price in other shops:
Lady Audley's Secret (Oxford World's Classics)by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2009-08-31; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.12
Price in other shops: