Power to the (book) people

Running a brick-and-mortar bookstore in the age of Amazon sounds to me like one of the most stressful jobs imaginable. Yet it was planning such a project that helped a New Jersey Janeite named Charity Herndon weather a recent cancer scare. “This was just the peace that carried me through,” Herndon told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week.

And so it is that Austen’s Shelf, Herndon’s mobile pop-up bookstore, will debut this weekend at South Jersey’s Cherry Hill Mall. The store, housed in a 7-foot-by-14-foot trailer, is decorated to evoke Austen’s Chawton home, complete with leaf-patterned green wallpaper and faux fireplace mantel.

The store’s 98 square feet hold an inventory of only 380 books, including some choices “inspired by what Herndon thinks Austen might read if she were alive today,” the newspaper says. The stock also includes multiple copies of Austen’s own novels, plus assorted Austen-themed merchandise.

"Guided by a deep belief in the power of stories, Austen’s Shelf is designed to meet readers where they are," the bookstore's website explains. "Books should be available to everyone." (Hear, hear!)

Bookseller is just the latest of Herndon’s multiple pursuits: She works for a student mental-health agency, is studying for a master’s degree in counseling, has published a young-adult Romeo and Juliet update, and has another novel on the way. Her bucket list apparently includes a couple of other careers as well, so it’s probably lucky that she’s only twenty-nine.

Herndon, who is Black, told the newspaper that she wants Austen’s Shelf to be welcoming and inclusive in ways that her school library wasn’t. (Officious, gatekeeping librarians are a pet peeve of mine, too, so I welcome this effort.) Herndon also claims that Austen “used her pen to speak against patriarchy and racism,” which. . . seems to me to overstate the case. (Patriarchy? OK, sure. Racism? Um—no.)

Never mind: This project looks charming and fun, albeit unlikely to challenge Amazon’s dominance. But hey--the world can always use another bookstore.