According to Marianne, the Director of The Willoughby Book Club, communication, interpersonal skills, and a desire to help customers all form a core part of what makes the people working with books so great.
"Empathy is extremely important, as well as good listening skills, as well as good communication and customer service skills in general," she explained to us.
"People want to be heard, and an excellent book for one person could be an awful choice for someone else," she said that every customer is unique and should be seen that way by the staff.
Bored Panda was interested to get Marianne's take on how the pandemic has affected people's reading habits and what can be done to get people stuck in literature once again.
"I think people have gone one of two ways since the pandemic: either they’re reading more than ever, or they are really struggling," Marianne mused.
"If you have fallen out of love with reading, it's about rebuilding the habit. Carve out a little bit of time on a regular basis and think of this as a gift to yourself," she said.
"In terms of what to read, there’s really no right or wrong answer. Maybe try something aligned with your interests, and not too ‘challenging’, and if a book is not for you don’t feel guilty about moving on to another one, life’s too short to struggle through books you are not enjoying," she added that we shouldn't feel guilty about changing books (and, let's be honest, that just removed a lot of guilt from my shoulders).
Librarian Amy’s post got over 264k likes on Twitter. The biggest victory was the photo of the letter going viral and reminding people just how much they love reading, books, and the people who helped them in school with wise words and genuine support.
There are plenty of book-lovers who end up working with them outside of school libraries, too. For instance, during an earlier interview with Marianne, the Director of The Willoughby Book Club, she told Bored Panda all about the pet peeves that her staff and other book-lovers have and about the crimes against books that she’s seen with her own eyes.
“Our staff are comprised of book obsessives, booksellers, and library assistants—I was a bookseller myself for 20 years before joining The Willoughby Book Club, so we have seen a lot of abominations towards books in our careers!” Marianne said that, unfortunately, far from everyone is kind to books.
One book ‘crime’ that she has seen in some people’s homes, for instance, is books being arranged with their spines facing inwards. “This is a crime against literature,” she quipped.
What’s more, Marianne and her fellow staff members also hate it when people crack the spines of books on purpose. Especially if they do it in front of everyone. What’s more, the book club isn’t a big fan of film tie-in covers: “We’re all snobs, and loathe these!” They also frown upon anyone who buys books just for show, without any intention of reading them.
Some of the worst things that Marianne has seen people do to books include: having lent a beloved book to a family member, only for the dog to maul it; a burst pipe destroying an entire collection of books that reduced Marianne to tears, and someone using a bread knife to saw a large book in half because it was “too big to read in bed.”
“From working in bookshops, I have had books returned for a refund that have been dropped in the pool on holiday and are crunchy with sand… or when 50 Shades of Grey was the thing, we’d get copies returned with the spine cracked on the saucy bits,” she told Bored Panda.
