Our used receiving staff are knowledgeable, generous and sometimes even funny! Jonathan, Scott, and our newest receiver, Blythe, are each willing to consider your books with the same fair and balanced attitude, but that doesn't mean they have the same personality. After reading their responses to a recent interview for this site, I think you'll understand what we mean!
Jonathan
How long have you been working at Auntie’s?
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If by “work” you mean getting paid a legally required amount, nine months, but I have been crawling around bookshelves sucking up dust bunnies since I was two. By three I was getting paper cuts sorting through pay stubs, and at five I was organizing Children’s Classics by size and color. You could say I’ve worked a few.
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What’s your earliest memory of Auntie’s?
Begging for scraps of turkey and dill pickles from the bucket at the Auntie’s Café.
What do you like best about receiving used books?
Examining the secret lives of customers, or at least their reading habits.
What do you personally like to read?
I like Current Affairs, Theology, and novels about social outcasts.
What author event is the most memorable for you?
Hiding in a dust nook of the still un-renovated bookstore listening to the crowds chuckling during some author named Douglas Adams.
Any future plans you’d like to share with us?
The World Wide Web is no place to share future plans.
Scott
How long have you been working at Auntie's ?
16 years - I worked about two months at the Riverside location before the move into the Liberty Building on Main. I had been a bookseller for 7 years at two independents in Kansas City and felt right at home from day one at Aunties. |
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What's your earliest memory of Auntie's?
One evening during my first week a couple entered the store and approached me at the check-out area. As they neared I could hear the gentleman saying, "Let's see if he recognizes us" and his wife chiding him, "No, no, tell him who we are". Four months earlier I had met them at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We were writing postcards and it seemed most of their's were being mailed (by mule) to Spokane. I commented I had never been there but was headed to Auntie's Bookstore to get a job. They said it was one of their favorite spots to frequent.
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On that sweltering day all three of us were dirty, dust covered, sweaty desert rats and two of us wore nearly a week's worth of beard stubble. When, at the bookstore, we met for the second time I greeted them saying, "I'm happy to see we all made it out of the canyon alive!" Now cleaned up and presentable we got reacquainted and they remarked with pleasure that I had indeed come to Spokane and was now selling them books at Auntie's. |
What do you like best about receiving used books?
Working at the used desk can be a lot like mining for precious metals. You normally have to go through a lot of ore to find a gem. On a regular basis I get to see very interesting books that are scarce or objects of art in their own right and occasionally a book will appear that nearly takes my breath away, such as the copy of The Collected Prose and Poetry of Rudyard Kipling bound in vellum and signed by the author, a customer brought in to show me.
What do you personally like to read?
I enjoy a wide range of writings and nearly always find myself in the middle of no fewer than three books. Right now I'm reading The Big Burn by Timothy Egan (regional history), Why Sinatra Matters by Pete Hamill (biography), American Skin by Ken Bruen (hard-boiled fiction), and Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth (a graphic novel about the philosopher Bertrand Russell).
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What author event is the most memorable for you?
Terry Tempest-Williams has read several times at Auntie's and I find her appearances are always memorable because she has the gift of being able to connect to her audience on a one-to-one basis. She is genuinely personable, her writing is passionate, her sense of observation of the world around us is acute, and she is able to share that with her readers.
Any future plans you'd like to share with us?
I'm hoping to build a chicken house in my backyard and enjoy farm fresh eggs for breakfast.
