They Nibbled My Tidbits

10-11

I got on a hotel elevator in Chicago this morning with a man who could not remember what floor he was staying on. He started to press three or four different buttons before finally finding the right one. He had been staying at too many hotels, he admitted.

I’m beginning to forget things, too. First, I lost the keys to the rental car and spent some panicky moments before I found them. Then, last night, I got into a cab without my speech notes, and we had to turn around and go back.

I’ve fallen behind in my story. In the last episode, I was talking to a room full of chairs in St. Louis. The next day, I flew to Minneapolis to participate in the Midwest Booksellers Association show and to speak at Magers and Quinn Booksellers.

David Unowsky, the veteran bookseller who is the buyer for Magers and Quinn, was kind enough to invite me to the bookstore when he heard I would be in town. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy to find an audience on a Saturday night, and we were right. People came and went throughout my talk. I felt a little like the person whose job it is to stand in the aisle of the supermarket offering free samples. They stayed to nibble my cocktail weenies and then they were off.

The ABFFE session at MBA on Sunday was well attended. About half of the booksellers raised their hands when I asked who was participating in Banned Books Week. Then we watched the ABFFE video, Scenes from a Bookstore. The video is intended to help train staff on how to deal with challenges to controversial titles. The booksellers shared some of their own experiences with censorship, including one woman who discovered that a customer had used a razor blade to cut the Song of Solomon out of every Bible in her extensive selection!