Running a bookshop is hard. It’s not easy to make a living. The returns dwindle year-on-year. Books are heavy, and you have to lug them around all day. Customers are weird and unsettling. The bookshop cat gets sick and vomits on the counter…
Over the past few months, I’ve been involved with stories about the joys and the demands of working in the book trade in Taiwan, working on the translation of a series of thirty-five interviews with booksellers for the Shumei Culture and Art Foundation. And last week, at the Taipei International Book Exhibition, I was delighted to pick up my translator’s copy of_ Mastery of the Everyday _(高手在民間).
The book, which is a project linked to the Dushu Awards for independent booksellers, consists of interviews with thirty-five independent bookshop owners from across Taiwan, talking about the book trade, their obsessions, their background stories, and the strategies that they use to survive. The strategies are many, from Bruce Lee’s “be like water” to the very Taiwanese art of “catching clams while you wash your trousers” or bong lâ-á kiam sé-khò͘ 摸蜊仔兼洗褲. The book is a lavishly designed thing, with beautiful photographs and architectural drawings. And in the background of these images and stories prowl an impressive cast of handsome cats—who, everybody knows, are the real powers behind the throne of Taiwanese book-selling.
