RIP, Waldenbooks

On Tuesday, our local branch of the Waldenbooks franchise closed down for good. Undoubtedly, there will be a number of customers that will be coming to the mall in the next six to twelve months asking whoever rents out that spot where the bookstore went, but there you have it.

Borders, which owns Waldenbooks, decided late last year that they were going to close down 200 of the smaller mall locations around the country. Two in Vermont - Berlin (My store) and Rutland, were both on the cutting block, although the Borders express in South Burlington will remain open. I'm guessing that this is a bit of a complicated position for Borders - the recent financial crisis added to the already piling issues that brick and mortar face: declining sales in light of competition from online retailers, not to mention absolutely inefficient business practices on the part of how Borders runs their stores, something I've ranted about before.

Still, with all my issues about Borders aside, I will miss working there, and the store itself. I began work in the fall of 2006, where I worked at the Kiosk, and continued to work through the winter and next fall as a regular employee, before leaving to work at Norwich University. I returned late last year after a friend left, because I was hit with a bit of nostalgia for the store and working there. While that didn't last long, it was nice while it lasted. I've long been a customer at this particular branch, even before I went to work there. The selection for what I was looking for, mainly science fiction, was always top-notch, and when I began to work there, I met a number of people who I likely wouldn't have met normally, and like camp, I've managed to hold onto a good group of close friends.

Looking back at my time there, I've often told myself that if I'm ever going to be in a position to make a television show, I'll write something about here. There was endless problems with customers, other employees (there was always drama of some sort) and from all that, quite a lot of humor and laughter. Romance books were something that could easily be thrown across the store at an annoying co-worker, but also the slow times, after all of our duties were done, chatting with people for a couple hours in-between customers. There are a lot of good memories there, which I'll remember over the bad times that I've had there (and there were several). Hell, I'll even miss some of our crazy regular customers who were really out there.

Plus, the bookstore was a source of a lot of books for me. We made sure (when we could) that the comics and Science Fiction and Fantasy section was well stocked, special ordering books that we knew would move out the door, kept it well stocked and neat, and offered a good selection of other books as well. There's a bunch of stores in the area, such as Bear Pond Books, Rivendell Books and the Northfield Bookstore, but they just don't have the same selection. I'll stop in when I can, but I just won't make a point to stop by and browse, because my friends won't be there either, as I'd often do over the past couple of years.

So, farewell, bookstore. I'll miss giving you money in exchange for feeding my habit of books, and while my wallet and bookshelves won't thank you, I'll miss the fun times that never will be, and the friends that I made there.

What's the Point of a Genre?

Working at the bookstore, I come across a constant annoyance: trying to put a book into its proper place, using BITS, the internal store inventory system. The program is antiquated, clunky and a pain to use, and whomever is hired to enter the information into the system in the first place should be duct-taped off the ground and had rotten fruit thrown at them. It would be a good incentive to get the information entered in correctly and consistantly. Still, while annoyed about this the other night at the store, a thought came to me that's been further pushed along by a post from John Scalzi on his blog, Whatever.

This recent post highlights something that I've noticed within the SF genre, and fandom: a general cry to be recognized by the literary establishment as a whole. Science Fiction, in general, has been trivialized by a number of establishments and authors of other genres - Margaret Atwood's comments come to mind at just how against being labeled in the genre some peopel can be: "Science fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really happen", and "Oryx and Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians." (From the Guardian and Book of the Month Club).

To some extent, there's good reason for this - early science fiction, while fun, is loaded with rubbish, pulp and childish stories that were primarily geared towards selling as many copies as possible to the lowest common denominator demographic. Atwood's characterization of the genre is highly flawed - science fiction is far more than intergalactic travel and aliens, and while that's a common element, I see little difference between the superficial elements such as those, and the elements that contain a so-called speculative fiction. In the end, it's the story that really matters, and provided that an author can put together a compelling plot and array of characters, I've often found that those more unbelievable elements, such as 'monsters' and intergalactic travel works out just fine.

Scalzi's argument brings up a further version of this point - if the surrounding plot elements don't matter all that much - and I've noticed an increasing number of books with horror, science fiction, paranormal, fantasy, urban fantasy and other themes - where does the overall label matter when it comes to books? Indeed, with the aforementioned types, they're all lumped into the same small section in the larger bookstores, usually towards the back so the bookstore owners can hide the nerds and geeks from the rest of the cliental. (You know, kind of how the pretty people in gyms are always working out next to the windows?) I personally love the science fiction genre for its ability to tell stories, in addition to the settings and out there concepts that generally crop up. However, my enjoyment of one particular genre doesn't necessarily cloud my feelings towards books of another, nor does the label on the back of the book affect how I feel about another genre.

To some extent, I think that the argument is largely fueled by egos and excess time of overeducated people, and out of marketing necessity. Since much of bookselling comes out of browsing, it makes sense to group books accordingly, by genre, which is in turn placed on a pedestal, as something that is so profound, it can't possibly be associated with other books that have the reputation as science fiction / fantasy has.

This is where I have problems with the people who insist that any one particular genre is worthy of attention more so than the others. The same issue appears in Military History - I had a reading about this very same issue, as Military History is percieved by the larger academic community as an unimportant, somewhat annoying little cousin that wants to join in on the fun. Unfortunately, with the more established genres pushing out the newer ones, they miss out on a number of really good stories and insights into their fields. Cormac McCarthy's book The Road is arguably one of the better books of the past decade, and it won the Pulitzer Prize, despite the post-apocolptic storyline that appeals to the many followers of the 'geek' genre. Still, it wasn't marketed as such.

Marketing aside, I think the best alternative to all of this would be to get rid of the genre labels, sort out everything between fiction and non-fiction sections and shelve everything by the author's last name. Non-fiction can be sorted by subject, while people can just figure out what they like ahead of time and just go by author. Scalzi's hit on a huge point - this is an intellectual argument that really doesn't matter in the long run. Honestly, if Science Fiction starts scoring more people, longtime fans will just find something else to complain about - the new fans who don't have quite the same appreciation for the genre as they do.

Return to Waldens

Last night, after a two year absence, I've returned to work at Walden Books, where I worked for about a year while in college. I didn't leave on the best of terms in my mind. Two of my best friends who worked with me had just been fired. I'd just graduated college, lived at home and wasn't making much money, and I was often paired with a dull woman whom I couldn't stand. The Norwich University job was a welcome change, one that I've never regretted taking. I still stopped by the bookstore regularly - I still had a couple of friends who worked at the branch, and because Borders was kind enough to continue to send coupons via their rewards program, I had a good incentive to shop there.

The past year, I've missed working at the bookstore - a bit. When I first worked at the store, I had a very positive outlook on just how a bookstore would be, and that lasted for a little while, before it became a form of hardened cynasism - the bookstore wasn't a place of books, it was a store, one with goals, objectives and key items that needed to be sold. Rewards cards had to be checked, signed up and logged, drawers had to be counted over and over again, and the customers take on an attitude that we're not there to help them, we're there to serve them. Thinking back, I wasn't sure why I really missed working there.

Stepping back behind the register desk, going up to customers and everything came flooding back when I went back last night. I actually remembered my old store code, how to work the register, and everything that I really needed to know to start up again. The Berlin Mall hasn't changed from an employee's point of view. The same customers walk up and down the hallway, the food is still just as greasy and bad as I remembered it. Essentially, almost nothing has changed.

But, returning there, I realize just how much I've changed in the meantime. My entire view of customers, the business process and the book industry has changed as a result of my work at the bookstore and the ensuing years of different customer service sort of work, as well as how I think about problems and approach solutions, for the better, I think. I still anticipate customer problems, but I'm far more confident in myself and how I work that I can address these sorts of things in a much better and more mentally-stable fashion. That's the plan anyway.