Beck: What is it about reading that facilitates friendship for you?
VaLinda: Me and Arrylee, we will argue or discuss a book for days.
Arrylee: We have different opinions on every book we read.
VaLinda: I am a big Agatha Christie fan. She likes the Hercule Poirot TV show, and I like it too, but I always say, “Did you ever read any of Agatha Christie’s books?” She goes, “No, I don’t want to read that.” But I’ll get her to read an Agatha Christie eventually.
Beck: Are there any books that have been particularly important to your friendship?
VaLinda: We love V. M Burns. She’s an African American author who writes books about this woman whose husband died and she bought a bookstore. There’s a murder that happens, and she’s solving the murder with her grandmother and the grandmother’s three friends. Reminds you of The Golden Girls. The bookstore they run carries murder mysteries, and we are big murder-mystery fans.
Arrylee: The first book is The Plot Is Murder.
VaLinda: We loved Redeeming Love, by Francine Rivers. And we loved the Mark of the Lion series, by the same author. You know we must’ve really loved it, because I took the day off from work because I wanted to read all three books.
Arrylee: I stayed up ’til two or three in the morning finishing one of the books. I wanted to get past her, but, of course, she got past me.
VaLinda: I would go, “Did you get here?” She’d say, “No. Let me finish.” She’s downstairs and I’m upstairs, and we are screaming at the top of our lungs. I’m sitting there going, “Don’t you just hate that bastard? What is he thinking?” She’s going, “I haven’t got to the bastard yet. Give me a minute.” That’s the connection that we have.
Beck: How did you come to own a bookstore, VaLinda?
VaLinda: After my kid graduated from high school and went to college—you know how you have the empty-nest syndrome? I guess mine was pretty bad, because I sat in the house going, “What am I going to do?”
Then I [heard about] a class on how to own and run a bookstore, and I signed up for it. It was in Florida, and when I was down there, the people who were running the class told me about a bookstore [for sale] in Seneca, South Carolina. In 2014, I bought it from the previous owner. A lot of people told me, “Don’t do it.” I said, “But I love books and reading and kids.”
Beck: I feel like a lot of people who love books, myself included, have this fantasy of owning a bookstore, thinking it would be like You’ve Got Mail. And you’re running it with your friend, which just makes it even better. But I’m sure I’m romanticizing it too much. How off is that fantasy, in your estimation?
VaLinda: You do run into that customer who says, “Oh, I’m looking for this particular book,” and you’re able to have a nice conversation with them. But the reality is, it’s like running any other business. You don’t realize the problems you’ll have until you jump into it.
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