I was at !NDIGO in Edmonton recently after their spectacular renovation, and naturally I had a good look around.
I wandered around refamiliarizing myself with everything – the changed stacks, the new displays, all the little book related gifts in the labyrinth prior to reaching the relocated service counter!
The store looks fabulous.
Then I did what every author does when she walks into a bookstore…I looked for my book.
Authors will tell you we’re there to browse. We’re lying. We are looking for ourselves.
Yes, the renovation is beautiful. It feels fresh and new—a wonderful welcome to the newly renovated store—but it still holds onto that comfortable, familiar feeling of the old one. You know the feeling.
Things have changed, but it still feels and smells like your bookstore.
I love it.
***
However…the renovation had a ripple effect on the location of the books, not only the stacks but the shelf positioning of the books themselves.
Including mine.
Eventually, I found I Finally Have the Smoking Hot Body I Have Always Wanted (having been cremated) in the biography section.
And there she was. On the bottom shelf.
Not eye level,
Not waist level.
More like “I’m going to have to bend at the knees” kind of level.
I had officially been de-eye-leveled. (I’m pretty sure that isn’t a word, but it is now.)
***
For a second, I stood there looking down at Mom on the cover and thought, huh – well, damn it!
I think because somewhere along the way, we’ve been taught that eye level is where the important stuff lives.
Eye level is prime real estate.
Eye level says, Look at me!
And you know what?
I wasn’t upset. (Okay, maybe my knees were, just a tad.)
But I wasn’t.
***
My sister, who is short, has spent decades looking at the books closer to the floor. While the rest of us have been staring straight ahead, she has been discovering those bottom-shelf gems we’ve all been missing. (She will laugh at this, partly because she knows its true and partly because she has always had a better view of the lower shelves than I have.)
Which got me thinking: maybe we all have a bit of an eye-level bias. If something isn’t directly in front of us, apparently it doesn’t exist.
***
My husband, Gord, has perfected this theory.
He can open the refrigerator, look inside for approximately three seconds, and announce, “We’re out of hot sauce.”
I’ll say, “Bend over.”
He’ll say, “What?”
“Bend over. Look on the bottom shelf.”
And there it is.
The hot sauce.
Right where it has been the entire time.
Sometimes the things we’re looking for aren’t missing.
We’re just looking at the wrong level.
Because when I looked around and realized my book was on the bottom shelf, I failed to see it was sitting beside some pretty fabulous company.
To be fair, my book had recently been restocked, and my other copies were featured in other sections of the store still sitting proudly at eye level. So this was hardly a literary emergency.
There are thousands of books in a bookstore. Thousands of authors who sat at kitchen tables, computer desks, coffee shops, cosy chairs and hotel rooms, rearranging sentences, deleting paragraphs, putting them back in only to delete them again after reading them aloud, all the while wondering if anyone would ever read the pages they were pouring themselves into.
AND THEY CAN’T ALL BE AT EYE LEVEL.
Some are on display level, some get their covers facing out, some get the coveted little staff-pick sticker, some are turned sideways and squeezed between two thicker spined books, some get the ultimate literary distinction: Heather’s Gold Seal of Approval, some move up a shelf, and some move down a shelf.
AND…some get shuffled around after a renovation and suddenly discover they are inches from touching the carpet.
Mine. Yes, the multiple award winning book and there it was. Bottom shelf. But you know what?
Awards to not come with a guaranteed altitude clause.
I kind of loved that.
It reminded me that where something is sitting isn’t necessarily an indication of its worth.
That my friends applies to more than books!
Some of the best treasures at an antique store require crouching, digging and possibly inhaling a lot of dust.
The best pair of shoes at Winners might be hiding on the bottom rack.
The quiet kid at the back of the classroom might have the most interesting thing to say.
The employee whose name isn’t at the top of the organizational chart might be the one quietly holding the whole place together.
We spend a lot of our lives looking straight ahead, which means the things at eye level tend to get our attention first. The bestseller. The display. The shiny new release with the giant sign above it. But first noticed doesn’t necessarily mean most worth noticing.
NOTHING is wrong with any of those books.
BUT…what are we missing because we never look down?
Maybe there’s a hilarious memoir six inches from the floor. Maybe there’s a book that will make you cry on the very first page. Maybe there’s a writer you’ve never heard of who is about to become one of your favourites. Maybe there’s a small book full of words that’ll be life changing just waiting for you to notice it.
Maybe there’s hot sauce in your refrigerator. AND maybe the only reason your haven’t noticed any of these things is because nobody reminded you to look down.
So, here is my advice…
The next time you walk into a bookstore, browse the tables, check out the new releases, grab a genre you’ve never read before, pick up something you’ve never heard of, read the back — or judge it by the cover (I admit, many times I do), — wander through your favourite sections, and then…
…look down.
If this made you smile, think, or perhaps just look at the bottom shelf differently, there are more blogs below. Sign up so you don’t miss the next instalment of whatever happens to catch my attention.
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