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PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media − and booksellers.

Portrait of a Bookseller

Portrait of a Bookseller: Dana P.

by Powell's Books, February 26, 2020 9:17 AM
Portrait of a Bookseller: Dana P.

How would you describe your job to someone you just met?
The morning inventory team does a lot of the "behind the scenes" work of making sure each item gets to the right place in the store, so as part of that team I do things like shelve books, pull items for Internet orders, merchandise displays, and in general try to keep things organized and looking good.

Last book you loved:
The Archived by Victoria Schwab (who also wrote the fantastic Shades of Magic series) — it's heavily inspired by a Doctor Who episode, and even has a character based on David Tennant's Tenth Doctor. 

Where are you originally from?
Northern New Jersey

What did you want to be when you grew up?
A librarian! I love being around books, organizing them, and seeing the latest releases — which pretty much describes my job now.

What is the best part of your job?
The best thing about the inventory team is the variety — we get to do a lot of different things each day all over the store, so it's never boring and I get to learn new things all the time.

I love the feeling of just starting a book.
Recommend an author you think everyone should read.
If you haven't read anything by Neil Gaiman before, please go immediately and pick up something he's written. There's a lot to choose from: comic books, short stories, novels, children's books, poems, fairy tales, and audio books (some of which he narrates himself). He has such an amazing imagination and twists words in a way that I find magical and really clever. 

What’s your biggest literary pet peeve?

I'll forgive a lot in the way a book is written, but I'm more critical of the way a book is made and how difficult is it to hold or display. Some of the choices that are made during the publishing process about a book's paper, cover material, and general size really affect how a reader will interact with the book, and if it's not easy to physically pick up and open, I'm probably not going to, and I'll have a harder time recommending it to someone else.

Do you have any odd reading habits?

I definitely have a bad habit of hoarding books and then starting too many of them at once. I love the feeling of just starting a book, when it holds so much potential, so I'll often have about six books I'm in the middle of — but I'll bounce back and forth between them so none of them feel neglected.



Books mentioned in this post

Archived

Victoria Schwab
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