The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading

Encouraged by her parents, Sky has enjoyed reading since childhood. She has worked for over a decade now in the independent bookstores The Book House and Market Block Books in New York. The stores’ owner, Susan Novotny, recruited Sky from a managerial position with the chain bookstore Borders when Borders shut down. In addition to selling books, Sky runs the stores’ social media presence, which attracts both customers and compliments. She enjoys recommending books and building meaningful relationships with regular customers. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the community rallied around Novotny and her staff in support of their initiative to donate and mail out books to local children.

Roussin read voraciously as a child and recalls recommending books to her peers, lending them out like a “natural-born librarian.” She lives in San Antonio, Texas, and she now works as a middle-school librarian after working as a teacher for 10 years. She likes catering to middle schoolers because they still have the time and energy to read for pleasure, and she believes it is important for young people to make their own decisions about their reading material without having their choices limited by censorship. Roussin enjoys the young adult genre, volunteers as a reader for several committees dedicated to promoting books to teens, and is particularly moved when her recommendations resonate with students and their families.

In 2016, Judy Blume retired from a 50-year career as a multi-award-winning best-selling author to open the nonprofit independent bookstore Books & Books in Key West, Florida. The store is affiliated with the Miami branch of Books & Books run by Blume’s friend and bookselling mentor Mitchell Kaplan, and it’s located in the nonprofit art and culture center The Studios of Key West. Blume’s store is the only bookshop in Key West and serves a high volume of tourists alongside local regulars. Many patrons are fans of Blume’s work, and although she initially found it challenging to run the business and provide recommendations, she now feels that she is “living the dream.”

Martin is the director of the public library in University Park, Texas. Only a small proportion of the population has active library cards, but she aims to increase the number before she retires. Although librarians come from different backgrounds, they are all trained to be impartial and motivated by a desire to help people. She fondly recalls a former patron who wouldn’t consult her on matters of African American history for fear of making her uncomfortable, and she mentions current patrons including a group of elderly women who all read romance novels. Sometimes she must be a “detective” to discover what a patron really wants, and she firmly believes that parents rather than censors should control what their own children read.

Kehoe is the owner and operator of the independent bookstore Browseabout Books in Rehoboth, Delaware. She took over the shop after meeting the former owners while working as a sales rep for a publishing company. The store is popular with tourists and locals, especially children. President Biden and his wife are regular, well-liked customers.

Brewster is the owner and operator of the independent bookstore Park Road Books in Charlotte, North Carolina, where her dog Yola is a fixture and local celebrity. Brewster bought the store after meeting the previous owners while working as a sales rep for a publishing company. After the 2008 recession, the community of Charlotte banded together to support local businesses, making Park Road Books into a community literary hub. The store organizes an annual charity event for people to buy books for local children and ran mail orders during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Gardiner works as a collection development librarian in the public library in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her fondest childhood memories all involve being read stories, so she is delighted to run “story time” at her library, reading to young patrons. Libraries are currently facing an unprecedented number of objections to books, as a small but vocal and well-organized minority of citizens try to censor their collections. Gardiner’s first experience with censorship occurred when she worked as a middle-school librarian, and the headteacher objected to certain books in the wake of the Columbine school shooting. Despite such challenges, libraries remain beloved community places, versatile and ever-changing, where people connect and learn from each other.

Moore is a store manager at the chain bookstore Barnes & Noble in North Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Over the past 40 years, she’s worked in six different Barnes & Noble stores, and she still thoroughly enjoys making connections with regular customers. The job is never boring because the needs of the customers, the titles they offer, and the staff on Moore’s team are always changing. The staff at Moore’s store all prefer different genres, and Moore enjoys perusing the bookshelves when visiting someone else’s home to better understand and connect with them. Moore is aware, however, that her social circle is a statistical anomaly for how much they all read.

Blake lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and works as a planner-distributor for the chain bookstore Books-A-Million. She has worked for the company since she was 15 years old, but the constant influx of new books means that it never gets boring. She particularly enjoys the young adult (YA) genre and shared a love of James Patterson novels with her late mother and her circle of friends. Young people are big readers, often inspired by BookTok trends and social media recommendations, and Blake is delighted that all the children she knows love books.

Jordan owns and operates one of the oldest and largest mystery novel specialty bookshops in the country, Murder By The Book in Houston, Texas. The store is important to the mystery genre community, and Jordan helps to discover and advocate for new authors as a consultant for Minotaur Books at Macmillan Publishers. Jordan was a long-time customer before working at the store and eventually buying it when the former owners retired. She and her husband David met while they both were employed at the store, and when David died unexpectedly in his thirties, the conference of mystery writers created a major community award in his name.

Jarrell works as a reference librarian and digital archivist for the public library in Sanibel, Florida. She grew up in Canada but bonded with her grandfather in Sanibel over their shared love of Western novels. Jarrell is good at her job because she has always enjoyed being the person that others come to for help and information. The Sanibel library is very highly rated with community support and engagement, and it became a community information hub in the wake of the devastation left by Hurricane Ian in 2022.

Claudio is a head store manager of the chain bookstore Barnes & Noble in Staten Island, New York. Claudio has been working at the store for almost two decades, since she was 16, but is still excited every time new books arrive. Being a manager is like being a business owner, but Claudio’s favorite part of the job is still working the floor and connecting with customers by selling them books. Claudio never judges people for their choice of books, and customers share all sorts of personal stories and information with her because the bookstore feels so safe and comforting.