Lagraziana's Kalliopeion

However much we love reading, we seldom think about the book trade in general or about bookshops in particular. We take both for granted until something unexpected happens: the one-man bookshop around the corner that has been there ever since you can think closes because sales have constantly gone down and costs up; a small local publishing house files bankruptcy because it can no longer compete with transnational media companies swamping the market with cheap books; the middle-aged writer whose career you’ve been following with interest and something bordering on awe for many years sells hot dogs in the street because literary magazines don’t pay for short stories and revenues from her books are low thanks to pirated copies multiplying like rabbits on the internet. But none of this is new. The book trade has always been tough for everybody involved as shows The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee.

In his book first published in 2006, the author from California alternates at relatively quick pace reminiscences of his own experiences as a passionate reader, as a bookseller, as a publisher’s sales representative, and eventually as a writer with musings about the pleasures of reading and with a general history of the book trade from its beginnings in Ancient Egypt and China to twenty-first-century USA and Europe. Spanning a period of no less than several thousands of years, it’s inevitable that The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop only gives a brief survey of the history of books highlighting its most important milestones. Thus it turns out that the first bookseller and publisher of the western world happened to be an Egyptian… undertaker! He provided everything needed for a funeral following the religious rules including The Book of the Dead to secure the deceased’s smooth passage into eternal life in the other world. Of course, then a book was a papyrus scroll. That for nearly a thousand years the world’s largest library was in Alexandria in Egypt is common knowledge although not everybody will remember its shameful end. The rival library in Pergamum in Asia Minor, on the other hand, paved the way for bound books as we know them today because Egyptians forbade the export of papyrus and the book trade was forced to find a material to replace it – parchment. In China they already knew paper and block printing. Much later paper made its way from China to Europe, Gutenberg invented movable type and literacy rose to unprecedented heights. Every rise in literacy increased the demand for books, just as (for a long time) easier availability of books meant more literacy. The book trade split up into different professions: bookseller, publisher, writer. And here we are today in the author’s own life story that has been told along the way.

All things considered, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee is a skilful as well as entertaining blend of personal memoir and historical essay. As a passionate reader, I could relate with much that the author said about his obsession for books and how it began. Most of all, however, I liked his very personal and charming way of relating the history of books and of bookshops. It’s a delightful read that I warmly recommend.

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History - Lewis Buzbee