Alex

Welcome to Paper Defiance, a fortnightly podcast all about indie bookshops and their owners. My name is Alex, and I am recording this on Wadawaurang land, in Ballarat Australia. It’s exciting to have you join me. 

Today’s interview is with Annie, the owner of the Neverending Bookshop, and those of you who know me may be impressed that I’ve waited this long to interview someone whose main focus is science fiction and fantasy. But here we are at last. Annie has been just had her seventh anniversary running the Neverending Bookshop, and we have a wonderful discussion about why it’s called that, and about rebranding to being a feminist activist genre bookstore and the fact that some people feel like they’re allowed to comment on that, as well as a whole range of other things about running a book store. I should note that unfortunately for you people in the Seattle area, the amazing silent reading night with hot chocolate bar that Annie is hosting for the winter solstice is already sold out, so you have missed your chance. Which does mean that we all just have to organise our own. And for those of us in the southern hemisphere that wouldn’t usually be what we’re interested in for December but since where I am, as I record this, it hasn’t cracked 10 C in a good few days and we had hail yesterday – well, who knows what mid December will be like. Could be snow, could be a heat wave. Annie also mentions the US mid-term elections, which shows you when we recorded, and of course that’s now all over with for better or worse. 

Before we get to Annie, I should also remind you that on the website, paper defiance .com, you’ll find not only audio but also transcripts of every interview, and pictures of each of the shops featured. So if you know someone who might be interested in these bookshops but who for whatever reason can’t do a podcast, you can still access what we’ve been talking about at paper defiance .com. 

And now, over to Annie. 

Annie  

Hi, everyone, my name is Annie Carl. I’m the owner and operator of The Neverending Bookshop in Edmonds, Washington, United States. I don’t know if this is international or what. But I’ll designate I’m in the United States.

Alex

It’s such a cool name for a bookshop. How did that come about?

Annie  

Oh, wow. That’s a story. But not really a story because my very favorite all-time book and movie – well not movie but book for sure – is The Neverending Story, because it was the first time I ever read a book where the protagonist Bastion spends the first half of The Neverending Story reading about someone else’s adventures, reading about Atreyu’s adventures. And then the second half of the book, Bastion is in Fantastica, which is what the magical land is called – the fantasy world is called in the book; in the movie is called Fantasia. So he’s in the book, enacting change, using his magic for good and for ill – he goes a little power-mad at one point. And I really love that idea that when readers read a book, you know, they’re in the story with the characters and they’re engaged in the story, in the adventure or the romance or the mystery. And so that’s why I decided to name my bookstore The Neverending Bookshop, because it’s a bit removed from The Neverending Story so that if you know The Neverending Story were – like his estate were to come and say, “Hey, that’s not quite – ” it’s a little removed from that, but it’s still kind of invokes that. My logo is a dragon. So not the same kind of dragon as Falkor. But I think that she is her own version of a luck dragon.

Alex

It was the first movie I ever saw at the cinema. I finally read the book several years later, and it is definitely better than the film. 

Annie  

Oh, I love the movie, though. It’s so 80s cheesy goodness, it’s marvelous that way.

Alex

So you have a fairly specific focus for the bookshop in terms of the genres that you stock. Does that come out of your own personal reading preferences?

Annie  

Yes, kind of. So within the genres that I sell – science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, young adult and children’s books – yes, I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy and romance, across age ranges. So I really love any age protagonist or a villain – I love good villain backstories. That’s one of my weaknesses. My mom reads a lot of mystery. So she sort of informs me on the mystery section sometimes. And my sister is really into graphic novels, so do have a small graphic novel section. So Marie is kind of influential on some of the things I carry there. But mostly it’s my reading preferences. It’s also – so my more refined branding is a feminist activist genre bookstore, which means 95% of my stock is written by disabled, people of color, female, LGBTQIA+ authors. And that is very purposeful. Obviously. Because I feel like in cis het white male dominated genres like science fiction, fantasy and mystery, pulling those authors out, that aren’t that, I feel like their stories are – this is going to maybe piss some people off. But I feel like the stories are more interesting. They come from – and that’s not to say I don’t love like John Scalzi. John Scalzi lives in the store. He’s a raging feminist. So he gets to live in the store. Peter Beagle, who wrote The Last Unicorn, I have copies of Last Unicorn in stock. Michael Ende, who wrote The Neverending Story, I mean, he was a German – white German author – so I always have copies of The Neverending Story because of the name of the shop, right? So there’s some give and take there. But I’d rather illuminate and lift up voices that have been largely marginalized and I myself am a cis het white disabled woman. So it’s sort of me using my privilege. I’ve been very privileged in my life and with my health care. So it’s sort of me using that privilege to lift up other voices. I also carry a lot of small press releases. I myself have been published by a small press – two of them actually. And with a third on the way next year – it sounds like we’re talking about babies now, right? So that branding, it’s not just a branding to me – it is because I physically cannot protest. I can’t go to marches. I can’t – like standing and that slow shuffling walk? Super hard for me. And very painful on my knees and joints. So this is my version of it, my version of helping make a difference, of living my ethics and morals, and supporting those ethics and morals and being a good ally, if that makes sense. I have a disability in fiction section, where all the books have been vetted by me and pass the Kenny Fries test (https://medium.com/@kennyfries/the-fries-test-on-disability-representation-in-our-culture-9d1bad72cc00). So that’s my pet project. The whole thing is my pet project.

Alex

I was just looking at the list of books that you’ve had in your book club over the last few years. And it’s such a fabulous range from Octavia Butler to NK Jamison and Kij Johnson and Nicola Griffith. I was very excited to see that you did Nicola Griffith’s Spear this year, which is one of my favorite books from this entire year I think so – was a really great range.

Annie  

 You take all the time you want, it’s fine.  I love our range for the scifi book group. It is fantastic. Our members are awesome. So I am working on a – well, and my work on it is kind of done. But my friend Laura Stanfill, at Forest Avenue Press is publishing my anthology in September 2023. We don’t have a title yet. We have a working title, but I’m not allowed to share it yet. And it’s science fiction and fantasy with positive disabled representation written by disabled authors and Nicola did the foreword for it. So – I know right? So she and I have collaborated on a few things together, including a panel in 2018 that I could hardly talk at because she was on the panel. It was Nicola Griffith, ih my god! She was very wonderful about writing the foreword. And she’s like, just give me till October because she’s working on Meanwood right now, which is the sequel to Hild. I can’t wait. So excited it’s gonna be great. The deadline is near the end of the year, and she wrote this gorgeous foreword for that anthology. And yes, so I’m a huge fan of hers. I’ve read as many of her books as I can get my hands on.

Alex

Also on your website, in the About section you talk about how you’d been dreaming of this bookshop since you were a very small child. Tell me about how the bookshop came to be real.

Annie  

Well, my my first job at 15 was in a used book store in my hometown, which is Kingston, Washington, also United States. You have to take one of the world-renowned Washington State ferries to get there. It’s the Edmonds to Kingston, Kingston to Edmonds run. My parents still live in the house that I grew up in. And when I was 14… so when I when I was a child, I was born with a rare spinal birth defect called like women, Ninja Maya. So – and I was born in ’84. So I was a 90s child. And so we didn’t have things like tablets or cell phones or screens. We didn’t even have cell phones or really home computers yet, when I was very little. I begged my parents through TV for my room. And my parents were very smart and said, No, you can’t do that. And we’re not going to buy that for you. And maybe someday, if you have your own money, you can. But they bought me books. They taught me books, they got me a library card. My parents are very literate in their own ways themselves. And so they bought me books and brought books home from the library, as many as I wanted, so my room was full of books. And so recovering from surgery – my cesarean for my six year old was my 20th surgical procedure. So I’ve had a lot, not as much as some, more than others. So I was a bit book obsessed. I really took to it because it was an escape, post-op; it was escape if I was sick, it was escape from bullies, it was escape from a lot of things. So when Mr. B’s Bookary opened when I was 14, I went in almost every week to ask if they had a job. And then when I was around 15 they expanded into the space next door. And then they hired me. I wasn’t 16 yet, so it was a little too young to work on the books, but I worked for books – they paid me in books, and I was in hog heaven because that’s probably what I would spend my money on anyway, right. I had already thought as – I had this vague notion, probably starting around nine or ten, about what a bookstore was, that it was a fun game to play with my Barbies. Alphabetizing books was so much fun. Then Mr. B’s opened, and I started working there. And yes, shelving books is super fun. But there’s so much more to it than that, right. Fast forward to me in my late 20s, early 30s. Mr. B’s was up for sale; the couple that started it, it was their retirement project. And Bill was starting to have some health issues and his wife, they were looking to sell it. They offered it to me, and my mom and I tried to figure out how we could possibly buy it – I had moved to a different, still nearby, but a different part of the Seattle area. And owning a bookstore in Kingston would have been really hard, the commute would have been terrible. And so it was impossible and – which is great, because actually, Jeff, the owners’ son bought it and and has taken it over in the years since. But it kind of got the cogs turning at that point; I was working at another local bookstore as a bookseller. And it had been made clear to me that I was only ever going to be a bookseller there. And I was kind of bored with that. I know that sounds silly, because book selling is amazing. But I wanted to learn some new skills. And so I decided to quit my job and open a bookstore. And boy, did I learn some new skills doing that. It was basically saying, “I sort of know how to swim”and then going off the high dive into the very deep end. And am I sad that I did it that way? Not really, because I kind of like doing things that way sometimes. But it was also a lot. It was like setting my hair on fire. So maybe not what I would recommend for everybody, unless you’re a book selling adrenaline junkie kind of person. So that’s kind of where the bookstore idea stemmed from – it was one that I had had sort of vague in my brain from a young age, and then starting to work – I’m sorry, my cat is in the background playing with something. So if that comes through, I apologize. And so that – and then working with Bill and Shirley at Mr. B’s – because they were the owners, and then it was me, and that was it. And so I didn’t learn about the business part of a bookstore, but I learned about the customer part of a bookstore. As I as I grew with their store, I was running it for a few days a week for them towards the end of my tenure there. And so that really influenced how I work in my shop, along with working at other bookstores and going to other bookstores and talking with other booksellers and bookstore owners. Also about a month and a half into opening The Neverending Bookshop, I – with all of the stuff my body has been through, I’m a cancer survivor as well – I got pregnant. My husband and I got pregnant. Yes, we have a six year old now. He’s incoming from school, actually. So if there’s a kerfuffle, that’s Calvin. So I was a brand new business owner, and about to be a brand new mom. And it was just like, that’s how my life kind of is, it’s just this – we’re gonna try all these things at once. Why not? And it’s worked out okay. It’s worked out okay. There were bumps in the road as life is but but for the most part Calvin’s turned out pretty normal. The bookshop’s still going. 

Alex

The bookshop’s still going – you’ve just had your seventh anniversary?

Annie  

Yes, in October.

Alex

That’s super exciting. When you were setting up the space, having obviously had lots of experience in other bookshops, were there specific things that you wanted to do to make it feel like or look like?

Annie  

I wanted a coziness to it. And so the bookstore is actually in its second location. So the first location I had was in downtown Bothell, which is just seven miles from its current location. And I started kind of on the main street, I was on the back side of Main Street and I faced a bunch of parking lots. And my space was 560 square feet; it was dinky. And I just wanted the space to be cozy. I wanted it to feel safe. I wanted people to come in and just “[sigh]”, you know, let go, and, “this is a bookstore and this is what a bookstore should be.” And I had a lot of people who did that; I had a lot of people who came through and they were like, “This is it?” and I’m like, It’s 560 square feet. It’s small. You know, I’ve packed as much in here as I can without it seeming claustrophobic because I am very claustrophobic. And I didn’t want it to seem that way to customers. Kind of tried to keep it as packed to the gills with books as I could, but also not overwhelming. When I moved, I doubled my space. So I’m now in a space that’s around 1200 square feet. I actually wasn’t given an option of staying in my original space, the landlady… there was another tenant in the in the building who wanted it and the landlady liked her better than me. That’s – it was very political. And it was a very charged situation. And I’m now in hindsight, and foresight, very happy to be out of that situation that I didn’t realize how stressed I was in, if that makes sense. So my current location, which I hope stays my location for a very long time, is lovely. All of the business owners that are around me are super awesome, friendly people and I’ve partnered with a lot of them over the years. In fact, I’m partnering with the local bakery Mel and Mia’s next month for a winter solstice silent reading party: they’re setting up a hot chocolate bar in the store for people who buy tickets for that. So my current store, my current location is a lot bigger, I have it set up kind of the same as my original location, just with more space to play with. I have a kid’s room, which is super cool. And I actually have wall space – I have decorated it sort of like my room when I was a teenager. I’ve got posters everywhere, and book posters all over the place and dragons everywhere – people seem to think (I don’t know where they get this impression) that I like dragons. And so my mom has knit a few, people have given me little Christmas ornaments that are dragons. And I just have them all over the store. And I had one intrepid 10 year old bookstore goer come in one time and they counted all of them. And so I have 29 dragons in my store right now and I’m always looking to add to that. It’s super fun. I love my space now, I feel like it’s not claustrophobic at all. It’s very tidy and organized, which is how I am. And – there are those stores, right, where you just have books piled everywhere. And I love those stores because I love hunting for books. I do not want my story to be like that, because I couldn’t manage it that way. So that’s kind of the vibe of my store is nice and big and airy and open but packed to the gills on the shelves with books and posters everywhere and book posters everywhere.

Alex

Over the last seven years – now, I guess as the owner, rather than as someone working in somebody else’s bookshop –  have there been things that have particularly surprised you about that experience? 

Annie  

Yes. Boy… just all of the learning that I’ve done, and that I have to do as a business owner, I’ve never been a business owner before. This was my first endeavor at it. My mom is a retired musician and flute teacher. So she was very entrepreneurial when I was pre-teen to older teen. One of my very good friends was one of her first students in eighth grade, which is when she started teaching. And so I got to see how she ran – music teaching and owning a store and leasing a space are really different. But I saw how she did it. My paternal grandfather was a very great entrepreneur on the East Coast and very well known in his town. A lot of his entrepreneurial and business ownership were around boats, and owning property and that kind of thing. And he was he was brilliant at it. And I can only hope that like a 10th of what he was good at and a 10th of what my mom was great at pass to me. So I think what surprises me constantly is customers and how they respond to my store. I’ve been in my current space for four years, and I get people all the time who are like, “Wow, you you haven’t been here that long have you?” and I’m like “[gasp]”, and they’re always surprised when they find out how long I’ve been in the space. But at the same time we’re all just going through our lives and when we veer off course and find something wonderful. It’s like “oh, I had no idea, how could I not know?” Um, other things that have surprised me: I had some really horrible pushback when I rebranded into the feminist activist genre bookstore, which I did during COVID. Before that I was a genre store. And before that I was actually a general bookstore. But I didn’t do that very well, because I don’t read a lot of regular fiction or nonfiction –  there’s certain nonfiction books that I will read on purpose. But it’s not my my brand of happy. So when I rebranded all the way into what the shop is now, and how great it feels now, and I get so many compliments on it, I can’t even tell you, but I had some members of the community cough, cough, old white men, boomers if you will, and some women too, who were very upset about that. And who didn’t understand the need to support authors of color, or trans authors, or non binary authors, or to use gender pronouns that were appropriate for the author, or to donate books where it’s the author’s dead name on it – because Neon Yang changed their name while they have their contract with Tor – their last book just came out recently. And so I donated all of the ones with their dead name on it; I like having Neon Yang in the store, which is what they prefer. And I got – it’s amazing what people decide to get upset about. And so some of the pushback – it never got scary. And that I think is what surprises me most is, I’m there and occasionally, the one time that I’ve had a scary interaction with a person, they were homeless, and this was in my old location, I was across the street from the Bothell police department, so it wasn’t too terrible. They had a different kind of issue going on. They had a mental disability, I think, that was really impacting their judgment and impairing them very strongly that day. So for the most part, it surprises me how people have opinions about something that they have no control over. I think that’s the biggest surprise to me. Like I have people telling me where to shelve books, and I’m like, when you own your store, which I’d highly encourage you to do, then you can put books where you want. But for now, Neon Yang lives in fantasy. So that’s surprising to me how people – and they have comments about me personally. And they comment on my appearance all the time, and I’m a pole dancer. So there’s a pole studio that I share a wall with. And when they find that out, because I’m really open about it, and it’s on all of my biographies and everything – my writer biographies – I’ve had a few people get really upset about that. My joking stripper name next door is Bookseller Bitch. I don’t do any stripping. I just love dancing next door, I’ve been doing it for three and a half years but it’s surprising to me what people decide to get upset about. You know, I think that’s the biggest thing that has surprised me and from my whole 23 years of book selling that has surprised me – what people pick to be upset about. And usually when I get upset about something, and I pick my really weird thing to get upset about at my husband for, it’s usually because there’s an underlying issue. So I try to cut people some slack. But there have been moments where I’m like, you just need to get out, not come back. Because I don’t want to deal with you. I don’t need your money. I don’t need you. You can just and tell all your friends who are like you… But I try to have some compassion for it because I know when I’m upset about something and taking it out on someone else, it’s usually because there’s something underlying that upsetedness. Although I think there there are a lot of racist, sexist, misogynistic people in the world. And they don’t need an excuse.

Alex

So it’s clear that you think bookshops are a fantastic space. Given that it’s easy to buy books online, why do you think we still like physical spaces for books? What place do those – do your shop and other shops have, do you think?

Annie  

It’s the people. It’s us, it’s the booksellers, it’s them coming in, and me saying, “Hey, Hi. How’s it gone? Can I help you find anything today? If you have any questions, let me know.” And me just quietly sitting there, pricing books, receiving books or reading books, or knitting, I’m sometimes knitting at the end of the day, because I’m an avid knitter. I’m working on my holiday projects right now, like frantically trying to get holiday projects done. So a lot of that goes on at the store as well. And when Calvin, he’s in kindergarten now, but before he started school, he was with me – at the very beginning every day, because, you know, I was the food source. But as that slacked off, he was at the store a couple days a week, and people will come in just to see him and say hi. And, I think, as a disabled person, and I’m friends with other people in the disabled community, online shopping, it has a boon in many communities. For people who – agoraphobia is where you’re afraid to go outside, I think – it’s my day off, so my brain is mushy – but for people who maybe have a harder time leaving their house for whatever reason, yes, online shopping is fantastic. But it doesn’t beat human interaction. And me going off the deep end on some book that I totally love, or I have a section on the shelving behind the store, which is where I keep the books on hold for people who are coming to pick them up or have me special order them, and I have a section on the top shelving that has a label above it that says “today I’m reading” and whatever book I’m reading goes there when I get in in the morning. And if I remember to grab it before I leave, hopefully I do. Or when I’m reading, you know, and I think that’s really important: to talk about books, the algorithms cannot do that; AI cannot do that. As much as I love reading science fiction, it’s the human interaction that I think people want and crave. Even with all of the social media stuff, even with the ease of online shopping. I think a lot of it is people seeking out other people. We’re a very social species, if you will, humans are incredibly social. I mean, however many tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago when we first started evolving, we were very tribal. And I think that continues today. And so I think that that’s why people crave really great bookstores, even subpar bookstores like Half Price Books, or Barnes and Noble, you know, they’re brick and mortar. And people want that interaction: they want to go in and they want to smell the books. I love used bookstores because they’re musty, and sometimes it’s gross, but it’s like you can smell the ink and the glue and you can just open a really tattered copy and stick your nose at it and go “Ooh, okay, that was weird” – and. for the most part, it’s the people that we’re seeking out who are going to sit there and talk with you ad nauseam about whatever book they’re reading – love with every fiber of their being and they want you to have – and that’s why I love going into bookstores. I want that human interaction. The cat interaction – I don’t actually have a bookstore cat. I would love a bookstore cat. But my bookstore is too small for one. Have the cat at home. He’s sitting right next to me right now. And so it’s so easy to go online with a title in mind. And just – I can get this for cheaper. It’ll ship to me in two days. Why wait two days? I kind of put that out there all the time. Why would you wait when you can have it in hand right now? I think it’s social. Even if it’s just you silently standing there browsing books, and me silently sitting behind the counter, reading my book or knitting or doing whatever work I have to do. And you come up and set the book on the counter, I ring you up – very few words are exchanged. It doesn’t matter. It’s a social thing as well. And I think that that beats out algorithms every day of the week.

Alex

Which leads me to my second last question, Annie, which is what are you reading at the moment?

Annie  

Oh, I am reading Talk Santa to Me by Linda Urban. I have started my cozy holiday reading. I’ve had a rough couple of months personally. In August I was diagnosed with my third major medical diagnosis called ankle vasculitis. It’s an autoimmune disorder that attacks the tiniest blood vessels in my body so my sinuses, skin, lungs and kidneys. I’m okay. It manifested as a lesion that just kept getting bigger and bigger. Over the summer I saw all the doctors – I have a great care team at a local hospital, costs an arm and a leg because the United States is terrible about health care,  capitalism and healthcare should not be connected in any way. But that’s a different podcast for a different time. And so I have really needed a lot of cozy reading recently. And so far, it’s pretty great. We just finished reading The Girl in Red by Christina Henry for the sci fi fantasy book group, and Mooncakes, which is one of my favorite graphic novels for October, and we’re reading A Cat Cafe Christmas by Codi Gary for the romance book group, which looks amazingly cozy and wonderful. So I’m really seeking out my favorite authors right now, in romance, which are Julie Murphy, and Talia Hibbert. And Alyssa Cole, and I’m doing a lot of rereading like Star Wars novels that I really love. But yes, right now I’m reading Talk Santa to Me by Linda Urban, and I’m enjoying it. It’s YA romance. So it’s good. It’s well-written. The characters are quirky, and I love quirky characters.

Alex

The last thing that I wanted to ask is, what do you want listeners to know about your shop? You mentioned you’ve got this amazing-sounding solstice event coming up, which sounds incredible. I love it. Are there other things you would like people to know about?

Annie  

That, yes, I’m very excited about that. And it’s going to be from seven to eleven on December 21, which is a Wednesday. Usually the shop closes at six, which we will close at six that day – the royal we there – to set up the hot chocolate bar and to get things moved out of the center of the store. I am planning on turning my back room storage area into a reading room next year that people can – I sometimes get parents through that are like, I just don’t have time to read any more. Because there’s so much to do at home and I go home and my house needs to get clean, you know? And it’s like, well, what if you had a space that was away from – because I look at my house? And I’m like, Oh, how am I reading right now ?I should clean up the dishes or, you know. So that’s very exciting. And we’ll be posting more about that in the new year. Other than that, you know, she’s just kind of holding steady. It’s been challenging, because in – so in the United States, right now we’re seeing inflation levels that are causing the cost of goods to skyrocket. And we’re not seeing inflation levels in paying workers what they should be getting paid for a livable wage. And that’s been a horrible thing that has happened in our society, in our country for a very long time. My husband and I struggle with that, you know, we’re lower middle class, that’s just where we are in our lives right now. But the cost of that for small businesses is that people have money for groceries and gas. And that’s kind of what they have money for right now. And so the shop has actually – she and I had a rough summer, a really rough summer. And I’m not saying that because I want people to feel bad for me or to guilt them into buying from small businesses: if what they can afford is online, I don’t guilt anyone for that. Because if what they can afford is online, then great. But I hope that they remember that when they spend money in their small community or their large community or their local community, it stays in the community. I pay taxes that go back into the infrastructure of Lynnwood and Edmonds for the two local communities. I pay sales tax to Lynnwood. My zip code is Edmonds. It’s a very confusing little Bermuda Triangle area that my shop is in. But my kid goes to school in city of Lynnwood, Edmonds School District, which covers a broad spectrum in the area, and so the inflation that is happening right now is so detrimental and so full of greed. And so political, and a lot of people here are pushing back on it, which is great, but a lot of them are pushing back in a way that means small businesses are not doing very well. It’s not just me, I’ve talked with a lot of my friends who are struggling right now, whatever small business it is that they’re that they own, and are trying to run. So the past is the past; the way the US is going right now – we have midterm voting tomorrow. I voted; if you are in the US please vote tomorrow, November 8. Very important that you do, whatever and whoever you vote for, please just vote. The future of small businesses in this country, I think, is shifting, and adjusting, and we’re doing our best to adjust. We don’t set the price of the books, the publisher does, and they’re adjusting for inflation. So books are getting pricier. Which sucks. Because one, I have to buy those books. And two, we’re competing with like grocery stores and Costco and Target and all of these businesses that can sell books, you can buy books at a loss and sell them for 25% off and it’s like, okay… And we’re not going to even mention the evil empire. Because this is an indie bookstore podcast, I’m assuming. And so my hopes for the store… I have many, many hopes for the store. I have many ideas for the store, and how to pivot in and out I believe – I managed to keep it open through a pandemic, that’s continuing. It’s not over yet friends. I don’t know – I don’t have a time travel machine. I hate time travel tropes, because they make my brain hurt. I love them and hate them as I hate and love the ring. I’m a giant nerd. I’m sure that’s come through during our interview. And our discussion together today. As with any small business and small business owner, you can only hope for the best and plan for the worst. And that’s kind of what I’m doing right now. Living month to month, keeping the shop up and month to month making month to month decisions that will keep the shop open and accessible to everyone, but also pay the rent and have money left over for rent and taxes and bills and everything. So I’m very hopeful but this country just needs to figure the f**k out what it’s doing – excuse my langauge – and I think that answered the question, but I’m not sure.

Alex

I’ll pause it there in that case – thank you so much.

Annie  

You’re very welcome.

Amy

Hi, I’m Amy, and one of my favorite book shops is called Shakespeare and Company. I suppose this is what they call a rather cliche thing to say if one is a reader of the English language, and one loves to travel. But there’s little not to love about an English bookshop set in the middle of Paris, where I once got my hands on a turn-of-the-19th century edition of Pilgrims Progress for four euro. It’s also where I like to flesh out my modernist philosophy collection, because they tend to always have cheap copies of Locke and Hobbes at the ready. And if I’m feeling existential, some Kierkegaard and Kant. This may sound pretentious, but reading philosophy is actually part of my day job. So it’s all in a day’s work, I guess. But the best part about it is that chances are good that if you want to expand your language repertoire, you can buy a book in English at Shakespeare and Co and then walk right across the street and get it in French from the Bouquinistes. Not a bad way to spend a day.

Alex

Thanks for listening to this eighth episode. If you enjoyed it, consider leaving a rating or a review, or just tell someone else about it! You can find paper defiance on Twitter as paperdefiancepod. On Instagram, as paperdefiance. And on Facebook, it is Paper Defiance Podcast. 

This podcast is created and produced by me, Alexandra Pierce. The music is called Loopster, by Kevin MacLeod; you can find the attribution at paperdefiance.com.

Music: “Loopster” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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