When Dream Comes True

 Just finished reading this delightful book entitled "The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap" by Wendy Welch. I love the book because it is about doing something you always dream about doing, taking on the challenges, making friends along the way, learning and relearning about yourselves, about life and human relationship and about being part of a community. Doing things because you love doing them, despite the struggles and obstacles, not because you want to be filthy rich or famous.

Ms Welch is a bookworm and a bibliophile, is American, has a Phd in ethnography and I believed she is in her early forties. If you are wondering what is ethnography I have written at the very bottom the meaning which I gathered from a few online dictionaries. Wendy is married to Jack Beck, a Scottish folksinger and college professor. Both Wendy and Jack are seasoned travellers. They have visited more than forty countries and have lived in eight, the last being Scotland where they have lived for five years before deciding to set up home in the states.

Back on American soil, Wendy took a job in some government establishment only to find it is really a "snake pit" where the culture was biting and being bitten and you moved forward if you were able to bite a larger chunk of someone else. She resigned and decided to take another small college job in Virginia, in a town called Big Stone Gap. It is here that Wendy and Jack came across a large Edwardian house that they fell in love with. They thought the house would be perfect for their longtime dream, to open a secondhand bookstore.
So they bought the house and Jack and Wendy moved in with their pets. This book will always have a soft spot in my heart because of the couple's love of their pets and the rescue and rehoming of dogs and cats that become one of the volunteering activities at the bookshop. When they first moved in Wendy and Jack have a black Labrador named Zora, a Terrier named Bert and two cats Val-Kyttie and Beulah.

So Wendy took us through the couple's experience of setting up the old house to become a secondhand bookstore. From renovating the house, to gathering books to stock up the bookshop, to making efforts to get accepted in the community, to becoming a good sales person for secondhand books, to setting up various activities that involved the community in her bookshop, to making a tour of other secondhand bookshops in the neighbouring states.

Wendy to me is down-to-earth and frank in her writing and I love that very much.

Ethnography: 1 research designed to explore cultural phenomena 2 scientific description of individual cultures  3 descriptive study of a particular human society or the process of making such a study  4 the study of social interactions, behaviours and perceptions that occur within groups, teams, organisations and communities. 

Bibliophile: a person who loves or collects books especially as examples of fine or unusual printing, binding or because they are very old or first edition books.

Bookworm: someone who loves books for their content and otherwise loves reading.