A View of Reno from the Bookstore
By Emily Bennett
Here’s something you may not know about bookselling: it’s hard work. There’s a lot of skill involved, including knowing what people want even when they aren’t sure themselves. Customers are constantly growing and changing, but if you’re a caring and observant bookseller, you can change and grow with them. To me, being a bookseller means loving books, staying informed, and, above all, caring about your community. The most important thing is to know who is shopping in your store and what matters to them. While my personal ideals don’t always align with those of our customers, I care about what people are reading and at the end of the day, I’m just happy that they aren’t buying their books from a giant corporation bent on world domination.
I came to my current job during a series of big life changes. Things were shifting, rearranging, and ending—real existential stuff. After working at a major chain bookstore and the university library throughout college, I had convinced myself that the adult thing to do was to find a grown-up career in a different field, but I never felt fulfilled. As my life started to upend, I asked myself point-blank what made me truly happy. The answer was working with books. The more I thought about it, the more I missed it, so one random Friday I called the store where I work now, they happened to be hiring, and after months of hard work both emotionally and professionally, things fell miraculously into place.
During this difficult time, the thing that kept me going most was the community I had found at the bookstore. Every day I was learning more about the ins and outs of the shop and starting to feel more secure. The people coming into the shop were becoming familiar, I started to gain confidence, and most importantly, I had found the best team of booksellers in the world. When I made a mistake, they were kind. When I was unsure, they were patient. When I was feeling low, they were understanding. Best of all, they knew everything there was to know about books, music, and the literary world. I had gained a second family and become part of the vibrant and passionate Reno book community. Three years on and I still feel lucky that I get to spend my days with these people, especially during the last year.
You can tell a lot about a person based on what they read, so you get to know your customers in a special way when you work in a bookstore. Over time, you learn who the people are who frequent your shop and you form genuine friendships with people you otherwise may not have met. During the time that we were shut down in 2020, the hardest part wasn’t learning a new way to do business or the uncertainty of what was to come, it was the absence of customers in the store. Sure, we got really good at describing jigsaw puzzles over the phone and our language could be as salty as we wanted, but we all celebrated when we got the news that we could once again let people inside. The added health precautions can make things tricky, but I’m happy to have constantly foggy glasses if it means getting to swap book recommendations with our regulars and see our favorite shop dogs once again.
In addition to getting to know everyone through their reading choices, I often feel like I’m watching Reno live its life around me from our spot in Midtown. Horses trot by on their way to parades, marathoners run past with numbers pinned to their chests, and every December our walls shake from the rumble of the hundreds of motorcycles that make up the annual Reno Toy Run. Late this past May, I stepped outside to ask a group of sign-holding women how the Black Lives Matter protest had been. “Wonderful!” they said. “Everyone was respectful and peaceful.” Keeping an eye on Reno Twitter feeds, we knew that the initial march accomplished what BLM had set out to do—raise voices in outrage and solidarity. By the time I was driving home, the crowds had already been tainted by those who were twisting the message to shift focus and feed their own hunger for chaos.
The next morning, our city had changed. The sky was clear and the sun was bright, but there were police cars everywhere and many buildings showed signs of the unrest from the night before. After a sleepless night listening to the shouts and flash grenades moving closer to my apartment, I wasn’t sure what our day would look like. I expected business to be slow and people to be in shock. Who would want to spend a quiet morning browsing a bookstore when something so impactful had happened a few short hours before? Then, after a slow morning, a steady crowd of energized, impassioned customers started to flow through our door. Reno had woken up. Everyone wanted the same books—How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad, and White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. By the end of the day, we had stacks of special orders for books that were suddenly selling out throughout the country. For weeks we all waited as publishers reprinted these titles and others that hadn’t been in demand for years. People of all ages were looking for books they’d seen their friends and favorite celebrities recommending on social media. Throughout the summer, we couldn’t keep anti-racist literature on our shelves. Our most popular novels were by authors like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Colson Whitehead, and week after week bestseller lists from a wide range of outlets were filled with Black authors.
It isn’t just anti-racist titles that have seen a rise in popularity—in the last year, my fellow booksellers and I have watched as interest has grown in books by and about members of the LGBTQIA community, and books by BIPOC authors have never been in higher demand. People are looking to educate themselves about experiences that are different from their own. With everyone at home during the last year, news outlets focusing on a wider range of social topics, and lives being more visible than ever before, many people don’t have a choice but to pay attention to the voices they’ve never heard. Being in charge of the store’s social media I’ve noticed more people recommending titles to their friends who then actually take the recommendations. Many of these people are also promoting their favorite independent bookstores, having realized the power of where they spend their money. Authors from every genre have started threads asking their fans to shout-out their favorite indies, which would explain why we now regularly ship orders to other states.
The continued popularity of a wider range of titles and the outpouring of support from customers both new and old gives me hope for our town. I’m not naïve enough to say that we don’t still face challenges—continued racism, slow vaccine distribution, the demolition of low-income housing and lack of resources for the unhoused population, ever-rising rent and median house prices, low funding in the school district, global climate change leading to less snowpack and precipitation—I could go on, but I won’t. A year into the biggest tragedy of our lifetimes, I try to focus on the positive changes: People are looking out for one another. Our community is becoming more aware of the benefits of supporting local businesses. People are trusting science and wearing masks (sometimes two). The Northern Nevada Food Bank barrels in our store are regularly overflowing with donations.
I don’t know if the positive strides we’ve made will lead to sustained change. I can only hope that the people buying books about social issues are then taking the most important step of reading them and reflecting on their own roles in society. From what I’ve seen in the last year, I’m optimistic that better times are ahead. Through the many dark moments in U.S. history that we lived through in the last twelve months, it was often difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel. We still have a long, hard road ahead of us, but if we continue to care for each other, accept responsibility, and read good books, then there’s hope for us yet.
Photo/Emily Bennett.
Emily Bennett is your friendly neighborhood bookseller. She has lived in Reno most of her life and earned a degree in Women’s Studies and English Literature from the University of Nevada, Reno. As a bookseller, she gets to spread her love of books to the unsuspecting public. Although she’d prefer to be drinking beer in foreign countries, she spends most of her free time at home with her cats either reading, watching British comedy, or tricking herself into believing she’s a good baker. Emily turned 30 during quarantine, which was a real doozy.
Thank you for visiting Humanities Heart to Heart, a program of Nevada Humanities. Any views or opinions represented in posts or content on the Humanities Heart to Heart webpage are personal and belong solely to the author or contributor and do not represent those of Nevada Humanities, its staff, or any donor, partner, or affiliated organization, unless explicitly stated. At no time are these posts understood to promote particular political, religious, or ideological points of view; advocate for a particular program or social or political action; or support specific public policies or legislation on behalf of Nevada Humanities, its staff, any donor, partner, or affiliated organization. Omissions, errors, or mistakes are entirely unintentional. Nevada Humanities makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on these posts or found by following any link embedded in these posts. Nevada Humanities reserves the right to alter, update, or remove content on the Humanities Heart to Heart webpage at any time.