We decided to play the Q&A game with the ABC staff, and asked all sorts of bookish questions. In the coming weeks we will be posting their (sometimes cheeky!) answers here on the blog, so you can learn a little more about us.
Enjoy!
This time around we talk to Sophie, the main face behind Leidschendam, renewed blogmistress and buyer for the Young Adult, Sports, and Politics & Current Affairs books in both The Hague and Leidschendam.
What are your top 3 favorite books or authors?
Trick question for any booklover, of course, but my 3 favorite authors, for a few steady years now, are Ursula K. Le Guin, Ann Leckie and Maggie O’Farrell. I’ve read everything published by the latter two and am making it my life’s work to read everything by the first. All three write gorgeously and always get me thinking.
What is your favorite genre to read?
Nowadays it’s Science Fiction, but Fantasy is still close to my heart, too, as is general fiction. I also adore books that play with what being a book is, and stories within stories, in any genre.
In which literary world would you like to live/go on vacation?
Ooo, I’d love to visit Ann Leckie’s Radch Empire. And Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, of course. Even though I’d probably get accidentally blown up in both within a day.
What is your favorite bookish animal?
They’re Dutch animals: the elephant and the kangaroo in De olifant van de bovenbuurman by Roos van Rijswijk. I have never laughed harder than when reading this little book.
Do you have any reading tips for our customers?
I think the most important thing is to read what you like without embarrassment, and, if you’re not a student anymore, please STOP reading books that don’t do it for you. You can always come back to them later, and in the meantime, you’ll have enjoyed a bunch of other books instead. Life is too short!
What non-book item at ABC can you not pass by without looking at it?
I’ve gotten pretty good at resisting the store’s non-book temptations. But I will admit I have a weakness for the Out of Print t-shirts we sell. I own two now; they’re fun, comfortable, and good quality, too.
Which book changed your (look on) life?
The introduction to The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. I had to read it for my Literary Criticism class at university, in which I was the only girl, and the professor explained that even though it was a little dated (first published in 1979, and I was reading it in 1996), he supposed it was interesting. In the introduction, the authors make clear that, for 2000+ years, (white) women hadn’t had a literary tradition, and that all we could choose between was virgin or whore as far as heroines went. I was SHOOK. My world quite literally shifted. Here were two women who explained exactly why I never connected to all those stories by and about white men that my degree was all about. When I tried to explain how RIGHT the authors were in class, I was met by 14 pairs of blank stares, and a deafening silence, and then of course the boys just went on, blathering about Roland Barthes or whatever dead man the next required reading was about. My strident feminism started there and has grown and expanded since.
What is your favorite part of being a bookseller?
Being surrounded by books of course! Seeing them, touching them, rearranging them… The stores, especially The Hague, are my home away from home, and my colleagues are my adopted family. As for what I actually have to do as a bookseller: I love buying for and taking care of my sections most of all. A close second is helping a customer find the perfect book for themselves/whoever they’re buying for.
What’s your secret for choosing the books you buy for your sections?
I grab onto absolutely anything for inspiration: publisher mails, advance catalogues, social media, and of course customer and colleague tips. It also depends on the section: for my YA section, social media is an important fountain of ideas, but for my Politics and Current Affairs section, I rely a lot on gut instinct and my own interests (well, and on the news, of course, but you have to be very lucky to have the books in-house when something dramatic happens). And for the Sports section, I’ve learned mostly from experience—I love all sports, but the customers in The Hague and Leidschendam mostly love basketball, Formula 1, and soccer. :-)
About the Author: Lilia
