When I walked into The Bookseller life was beautiful once again. I was on a car trip with a girlfriend and four kids on a hot afternoon. Grass Valley is a quaint village in the Sierra Nevada foothills with one commercial main street. As the horde of us window shopped, we left the blazing sun for the soothing cool of the bookstore. My attitude perked up as soon as I noticed the clerks laughing at the front desk; I caught their playful attitude. The Bookseller is one store front with an entire basement, the Children’s Cellar, dedicated to children’s books. When we walked up to the cash register with our purchases, the employees were talking about the traffic jam on the highway. Since I’m from Los Angeles, I asked them what rush hour meant to a town of 12,000; does that mean you aren’t the first car at the stoplight or that you can’t get through the intersection in the period of one stoplight? They were bewildered, traffic means you can’t go 65 MPH on the highway – in Los Angeles traveling at 65 MPH is not an expectation, it’s a gift.

Kim Allen-Niesen
Co-Founder of www.bookstorepeople.com, a blog reviewing independent bookstores and encouraging people to buy from them