A book can open an entire world of experience or provide a recipe for meatloaf. Either is wonderful to Lewis Buzbee, who has spent much of his life in bookstores as a bookseller, a sales representative, and a customer. In The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Buzbee celebrates the unique experience of the bookstore—the smell and touch of books, getting lost in the deep canyons of shelves, and the silent community of readers. He shares his passion for books, which began with ordering through The Weekly Reader in gradeschool. Interwoven throughout is a fascinating historical account of the bookseller trade—from the great Alexandria library with an estimated one million papyrus scrolls to Sylvia Beach's famous Paris bookstore, Shakespeare & Co., that led to the extraordinary effort to publish and sell James Joyce's Ulysses during the 1920s.
Rich with anecdotes, Buzbee offers a delightful look at bookstores past and present. For those who relish the enduring pleasures of spending an afternoon finding just the right book, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is the perfect choice.
Lewis Buzbee looks back over a lifetime of experiences in schools and classrooms, from kindergarten to college and beyond. He offers fascinating histories of the key ideas informing educational practice over the centuries, which have shaped everything from class size to the layout of desks and chairs. Buzbee deftly weaves his own biography into this overview, approaching his subject as a student, a father, and a teacher. He credits his success to the well-funded California public school system and bemoans the terrible price that state is paying as a result of funding being cut from today's budgets. For Buzbee, the blackboard is a precious window into the wider world, which we ignore at our peril.
Meg Pickel's older brother, Orion, has disappeared. One night, Meg steals out to look for him and makes two surprising discoveries: She stumbles upon a séance that she suspects involves Orion, and she meets the author Charles Dickens, also unable to sleep, and roaming the London streets. He is a customer of Meg's father, who owns a print shop, and a family friend. Mr. Dickens fears for Orion's safety and for the children of London, and is trying to solve the mystery of their many disappearances. If he can, with Meg's help, then perhaps Dickens will be able to write once again.
It's been two months now since Travis's family moved from their shabby old house to a development so new that it seems totally unreal. There's one place, though, where Travis can connect with his old life: the Salinas library. He and his parents used to go there together every Saturday, but now he bikes to it alone, re-reading his favorite old books. It's only natural that Travis likes the work of John Steinbeck - after all, Salinas is Steinbeck's hometown. But that can't explain why Travis is suddenly seeing Steinbeck's characters spring to life. There's the homeless man in the alley behind the library, the boy who writes by night in an attic bedroom. Travis has met them all before - as a reader. But why are they here, and how? As Travis struggles to solve this mystery, budget cuts threaten his library. In looking for a way to save his safe haven, he begins to sort out fact from fiction and stumbles into a story Steinbeck might have started, and Travis needs to complete. Here is a mystery that delves deeply into the ways that books take us, one at a time, out into the vast world.
