Lewis Buzbee

A former bookseller celebrates the experiences of being in a bookstore, from the smell and touch of books to getting lost in between shelves and joining a silent reader community, in an account that is complemented by a history of the bookselling trade. By the author of After the Gold Rush.

A Memoir, a History

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

Sarah Sammis

I borrowed The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop from a dear friend and savored the experience of reading it over the course of a week. It is part memoir and part love letter to books and the publishing industry.

Lewis Buzbee is a Bay Area native. He was born and raised in San Jose about the same time my mother was growing up in the Bay Area. Many of the places he describes are places I've heard about from relatives or visited as a child on the trips I took to the south Bay with my grandmother.

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop was therefore a very personal memoir for me. I felt most connected with the memoir parts. I have the feeling that I was supposed to find the history pieces the most compelling but I didn't.

The history pieces cover the creation of paper in China and the move from scrolls to the creation of traveling book sellers and libraries. Mixed in with all of this is some book terminology and other trivia.

From the history pieces, my favorite part comes near the end in "Not My Doolittle You Don't" which covers banned books, censorship and other legal troubles that booksellers, authors and publishers have faced throughout the ages. In this chapter Buzbee includes a lengthy discussion on Ulysses and Shakespeare & Co, the bookshop turned publisher that helped get the novel published despite numerous obscenity charges and banning around the world.

My least favorite part of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop comes near the middle where Buzbee tries to defend books against other forms of story telling. He falls into the trap of saying that books are better for you because your eyes move when you're reading and don't when you're watching a film. This passage led me (as an ex-film major) and my husband to mock this part of the book into the ground for about an hour.

Despite one idiotic passage, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop was a delight to read and one I will probably add to my personal collection.

Emily Bertram

In The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, a Book Sense selection, Lewis Buzbee celebrates the unique experience of the bookstore-the smell and touch of books, the joy of getting lost in the deep canyons of shelves, and the silent community of readers. He shares his passion for books, which began with ordering through the Weekly Reader in grade school. Woven throughout is a fascinating historical account of the bookseller trade-from the great Alexandria library to Sylvia Beach's famous Paris bookstore, Shakespeare & Co. Rich with anecdotes, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is the perfect choice for those who relish the enduring pleasures of spending an afternoon finding just the right book.

The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop A Memoir, a History

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