June 20, 2026
I’ve noticed similarities among Saturdays at Printed Page.
-There are periods of quiet, punctuated by bursts of frenzy.
-Two o’clock is the witching hour. It is as if at that time, all the bibliophiles are set free, and they descend upon the store.
-And three o’clock is when a group of motorcyclists doing wheelies roar down Broadway racing toward their next traumatic brain injury.
I worry when it gets busy that I can’t give customers the attention they deserve, but sometimes, that’s unnecessary. Today was one of those times. There was a chemistry among today’s visitors that resulted in them meeting fellow readers and striking up conversations — talking about what they’d read, and what they’d recommend. I was just a bystander.
I did get to engage with some visitors. I asked one woman what she liked to read. “Romantacy,” she said, which seems to be a hot new trend in publishing, and is, of course, a mash-up of romance and fantasy, like a woman finding true love with a dragon in Atlantis.
A visitor from Tennessee told me he had run a small press publishing business until it failed, so he decided to spend what money he had left buying books so he could start a used bookstore, thus demonstrating the lack of business acumen that is characteristic to most booksellers.
And another visitor asked me if we had any books by Herman Wouk. “We no longer carry woke books,” I answered, and he laughed, thus demonstrating that he had the requisite sense of humor to be a bookseller.I went home satisfied, and curled up with a mysterography. It’s about a detective who helps people find things on maps.