Staff Profile

BOOKSHOP STAFF PROFILE
RACHEL MEIER
Used Book Buyer

The strangest thing I ever found in a used book was an egg. Like an actual, non-hardboiled egg, sandwiched between the pages of a mystery novel. The book was wedged beneath four or five other books, and sat atop the same number. When I told the customer about it, she said, “Hmh.” Then she asked for it back, so I gave it to her.

More recently, I found an envelope with a clipping of hair inside, and a woman’s name written on the front. When I tried to give it back to the guy who unknowingly brought it with his books he said, “That’s disgusting,” and walked away. Once I found two hundred dollars in a book, and when I returned it to the man whose book it was, he tried to refuse it. “It’s yours, I found it in your book,” I said. “But how can you be sure it’s mine? How do you know it isn’t yours?” He pushed the money toward me. “Because I would remember putting two hundred dollars in your copy of The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin sometime in the past hour.” He eventually took the money. The next day he brought me a thank you note.

My coworker found a photograph of her boyfriend’s father naked, circa 1972. Suffice it to say she was surprised, particularly since the book she found it in came from someone who wasn’t her boyfriend, or his father, or his father’s wife.

When I am not sorting through boxes of used books at Bookshop Santa Cruz, I go to the opera, search fruitlessly for New York pizza and then lament its absence (though Gaspare’s in San Francisco isn’t bad), and run a website called readafuckingbook.com. The website, in particular, keeps me busy because people ask me what to read, and then I have to tell them.

I hate all books that make noise (except The Very Quiet Cricket, which, if you ask me, is not all that very quiet, but is still, somehow, charming), but love pop-up books. I don’t understand why so many people think they don’t like short stories, but have never actually read a collection of them. And my favorite customers are people who are excited by grammar book recommendations.

For twenty-three years my little sister claimed to (and pretty much only) read street signs and menus. Then she started dating this guy, and poof, suddenly now she reads. Her boyfriend is my new favorite person on the planet.  

If you want to talk more about my sister’s boyfriend, a book you’ve read, or the merits of books that make noise, come visit me at Bookshop Santa Cruz—but not before I’ve had my coffee; I’m very surly until then.