“Hand selling is one of the things that independent bookstores do best… That’s when you put the book in someone’s hand and say, ‘I love this and I think you’ll love it.’ It’s not about pushing ‘the right literature,’ it’s about having that conversation.” -The Revenge of Analog
Paper Moon by David Joe Brown sat amidst a hundred perfectly lined up volumes on “the grown up’s” book case when I was a child, the collection so intimidating, feeling that those hardcovers were out of my league. The only books I felt brave enough to remove were from a stack of Garfield comics that my brother had left behind when he went to college. Yet every time I snuck a copy Jim Davis’ work, I’d gaze longingly, thinking, “Maybe someday I’ll be big enough to read one of those.”
The day came when I was about 13 years old. It was summer, I grabbed Paper Moon, partly because the font on the spine was less intimidating -not so tiny and gold leafed- and partly because I have an uncle named David so the author was relatable. I took that book, meandered the pine-speckled hillsides behind my childhood home, and found a tree to sit under. I remember it having moss at its base, a better reading nook than its needly counterparts, and I read.
I couldn’t put it down. Every day I snuck off to find out what adventure awaited the young heroine of this novel. It takes place during the depression, where honest work is hard to find, and a little orphan girl is taken under the wing of a conman, and they travel the country, one hustle at a time.
Thirty years later, I of course had to add this title to the Story Lorry’s shelves. It sat, brand new, on my historical fiction shelf, for almost two years. Then it tragically became one of my discounted water-damaged books, barely touched, but still no longer pristine. Now it sits on my $5 Books shelf. I almost like it better there, because now price isn’t as much of an obstacle.
There it resides, waiting, for that perfect person, for me to say, “I love this and I think you’ll love it.”
How Novel Books and Art 