Shopkeeping

A love letter to the shop by beloved bookseller Peter Miller. For the past forty-five years Peter Miller has run his bookshop in Seattle. He has also written three books about his love of the meal, from cooking (Lunch at the Shop, Five Ways to Cook Asparagus) to cleaning up (How to Wash the Dishes). Along the way, he has written for Food 52 and Post Alley (a Seattle-based writers' collective). In Shopkeeping, Miller writes for the first time about his other love: "There is a tradition of shopkeeping, a tradition of codes, etiquette and customs. For the most part, it is an oral history, passed along, person to person. You learn to be a retailer - not by going to college, but by going to work. You learn from people who have learned how to run a shop." In ten chapters, Miller crafts his stories from the bookshop floor with wry humor and skillful storytelling that will have readers laughing out loud. Along the way, he sends out a plea that only small shops can really characterize our towns and cities, making them unique, special, and worth visiting and living near.