The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir of a Life with Books
A review
If you have read any of my other book-related articles, you already know I have a special fondness for books about books. This is true whether it’s fiction (especially bibliomysteries) or nonfiction; as long as it’s about books I’m happy, even if the story isn’t instant-classic caliber. Sometimes, however, I strike gold.
In The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, author Lewis Buzbee does something few writers would be able to: he makes the history of the book and the bookstore something you just cannot put down. During his long career, Buzbee has written both nonfiction and fiction, and he has the ability to paint a vivid picture with very few words. When he describes a favorite bookshop on a dark, rainy Tuesday in November, you can feel the biting wind and see the inviting warmth of the store beckoning.
The book is billed as both a memoir and a history, and perhaps that is what makes it work. Just when the history could start to become tedious, Buzbee switches over to the memoir side, giving readers a glimpse into the world of the bookseller that few knew existed. And he is no newcomer to the book world, having started as a clerk at a San Jose bookstore during his freshman year of college, and continuing in either book selling or as a publisher’s sales rep for the next thirty years.
