Forthcoming April 2024
Reading the Room: A Bookseller’s Tale
By Paul Yamazaki
“All booksellers are the unsung heroes of American literature, but Paul Yamazaki is a superhero.”
Reading the Room is Paul Yamazaki's love letter to the work of bookselling and an engaged life of the mind. Over twenty-four hours, Yamazaki leads us through the stacks of storied City Lights Booksellers in San Francisco; the care and prowess of his approach to book buying; his upbringing in a Japanese American family in Southern California and moving to San Francisco at the height of revolutionary foment; working with legendary figures in the book publishing industry like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Sonny Mehta, and others; and his vision for the future of bookselling. Navigating building trust with readers and nurturing relationships across the literary industry, Yamazaki testifies to the value of generosity, sharing knowledge, and dialogue in a life devoted to books.
Paul Yamazaki has been the principal buyer at City Lights Booksellers, the legendary San Francisco bookstore and publisher founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin, for more than 50 years. A champion for national and global literature, writers, publishers, and independent bookstores, Yamazaki was the recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2023 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community. He has mentored generations of booksellers across America. Reading the Room is his first book.
“This transcript of a two-day conversation with Paul Yamazaki is the Tao of Bookselling. One comes to the book expecting shoptalk, and finds instead a vision of the bookstore as a spiritual, intellectual, and political microcosm of the universe. How many of us are as wise as Paul about what we do, and can see the world in it?”
“A wry, stirring, profoundly uplifting ode to bookselling––complete with riffs on capitalism, San Francisco, jazz, even the meaning of life––from one of the underappreciated literary titans of our time. ”
“Paul Yamazaki is one of the greatest and most influential readers in the world. [This volume] reminds us that reading is an act of imagination, defiance, optimism and love. Paul brings the whole of his being to the world of books. May we all learn to do the same.”
“Step into City Lights, corner of Columbus and Jack Kerouac Alley in North Beach, San Francisco, and you might not notice the curl of stairs that leads to a loft above what used to be the cash register. That’s the cubby of Paul Yamazaki, professional reader, the guy who chooses, from 50,000 titles a year, the books that become the bookstore. If you catch Paul, invite him to Vesuvio next door for a meditation over drinks, the best way to get him to do his raconteur riff, a jazz rendition on what he calls “the possibility of joy,” spinning stories, revealing his imagination of books in conversation. All this is hidden to most of us who wander in just to browse. But browsing is everything, and curating that space—its magic, possibility, and freedom, is Paul’s unique gift and genius. I love this little book… It’s a love story to books and City Lights.”