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- [00:01]
Charlie Gibson
Not all meals are created equal. For instance, breakfast has the spicy egg McMuffin for a limited time and lunch doesn't. McDonald's breakfast comes first. Ba da ba ba ba.
- [00:22]
Kate
Hello, bookcasers and book nerds everywhere. It is Thursday, and that means it is time for a new episode of the Bookcase. I know you haven't really felt like you've live all week long until Thursday comes. You're up at three in the morning when we post. You're listening to this at 4 in the morning. And I am half of the host team.
- [00:41]
Charlie Gibson
I am the Kate part and I'm the Charlie part. Charlie Gibson here. I love the idea of people sitting around anxiously waiting Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday at.
- [00:51]
Kate
4 o' clock in the morning to.
- [00:52]
Charlie Gibson
Get to the place.
- [00:52]
Kate
At 4 o' clock in the morning, they're up at Thurs. On.
- [00:55]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, but you can listen to it anytime and you can go back and listen to past versions and just to put in a plug. Kate, we hope you'll tell your friends about this. If you like it, we need listeners. We want to keep going with this. And you know, there's ratings in television. I was a slave for those for years and years and years when I was at ABC and Good Morning America and at World News. And now we need listeners on this podcast. So mention it to a friend. Stop them in the street. Tackle them in the street. Stop cars, jump out in front of traffic and tell people, do not jump.
- [01:27]
Kate
In front of traffic. Do not risk your life for the Bookcase podcast. We may do it every week, but you don't have. And I think if you'll find, by the way, if you go back into our back catalog, if you haven't read what we've done this week, you'll certainly find something you've read. If you're a reader in our catalog, we try to do just about a little bit of everything, including, as my father likes to remind me, a whole couple of months of horror. We did some horror because I'm a horror fan. So you'll find there is something for everyone in the Bookcase catalog that's not.
- [01:56]
Charlie Gibson
Going to bring people in. Katie Horror. No, it is.
- [01:59]
Kate
I'm still hoping. I'm still hoping for all you horror listeners out there. So this week we have a great, I don't know, it's almost sort of. I don't feel like this year we've done a sort of summer pastoral book. And this feels a little like a summer pastoral. It's a great beach read. But really what it is is a Love Letter to Italy. It's about a young woman who finds herself by traveling to Italy and experiencing Italy firsthand. And it's. I don't know, there were passages where I felt like I was there. The richness of the color, the beauty of the culture, the fantastic food. Like, if you love Italy, this is a great book for you. It's called the View From Lake Cuomo by Adriana Triggiani, which I just love to say, and I'll probably say a billion more times.
- [02:42]
Charlie Gibson
Adriana Triggiani. Triggiani.
- [02:45]
Kate
Adriana Triggiani, who also hosts a podcast, by the way, that is called you Are what yout Read, which also does very well, but I don't recommend you listen to that. You listen to this one and you get to Adriana Triggiani if you can, because she's very talented and a lot of fun.
- [02:58]
Charlie Gibson
The name of the book is the View From Lake Cuomo. And it has sort of a double meaning because it starts in a town in New Jersey that feels it has a humdrum name and changes the name of the town to Lake Cuomo and then suddenly has a. A better standing and. And. And prospers a little bit more than when it had an old, tired New Jersey name. But the woman who is the protagonist in this. Jess. Her name is Jessine. Jess wants to go to Italy, and an uncle who owns a Marble & Granite Co. Firm, sells granite and marble, gets his marble from Italy and talks about sending her there. She wants to go to Italy because she feels underappreciated in her own family. So she wants to get to Italy and see the marble quarry and find out what she's about. And once she gets to Italy, as Katie says, the book takes off. But while Jess is in her family, she does feel underappreciated. But just to give you a sense of Adriana Trejani's prose, we asked her to read a little bit about Jess's mom.
- [04:07]
Adriana Trigiani
One of my jobs in my family is to pull my mother back from the brink before she spirals out of control when things don't go exactly according to her plan. Her anxiety level percolates to panic level whenever she has to feed a large group of people. And yet she invites them. This is one of the many mysteries that is my mother. Her dreams of what might be exceed her ability, which frustrates her. Instead of knowing her limitations, she pretends she has none. Our family has learned to work around her impossible expectations. You want to nip to crazy before she pulls her own pin and explodes Like a grenade. And we are forced to serve my mother's rage on crackers during the appetizer course.
- [04:56]
Kate
So as you can tell from this passage, it's not just a love letter to Italy. It's also a very funny novel about family and familial relationships and parents that are overly involved in their children's lives. But I wouldn't know anything about that. Um, and I wouldn't know anything about that at all.
- [05:17]
Charlie Gibson
At least don't talk about it now.
- [05:19]
Kate
Yeah, exactly. The first rule of family is we don't talk about family. But it's really. It's funny, it's refreshing. It's got some great Jersey stuff in it. If you're from Jersey, like I am, and if you love Italy, it's a. It's an amazing book. And the way she describes the marble and the family business is just amazing.
- [05:36]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah. There's a couple of things I want to mention. First of all, Katie told me that it can be really interesting to get an audible of a book and to read along with the audio version. And Mira Sorvino, the Oscar winning actress, does the reading. She obviously knows Italian because the way she pronounces the Italian sections of the book, it's not a whole section, just phrases. It's beautiful. It's really beautiful. And so I loved listening to Mira Sorvino read this along with following it along in the book itself. Also, one other thing I should mention. She gets married when she's in New Jersey. Jess does, and then she leaves her husband. It seems like a pretty good marriage to everybody. But we talked a little bit about this with. With Adriana. She doesn't feel she's found herself and she doesn't really feel she's found herself until she gets to Italy. So with all that as preface, here's our conversation with Adriana Trigiani. Adriana Triggiani, it is good to have you with us in the bookcase. The view from Lake Cuomo, as we've said, is the book. Did you set out to write a love letter to Italy?
- [06:46]
Adriana Trigiani
You know what, Charlie? Kate, every time I write a book, I bring you to Italy on some level, somehow, I think, because that's my people and I love it. So I would say yes. It's a part of the waft and weave of everything for me. It's where I get my strength.
- [07:05]
Kate
What came first for you and how did marble become such a big part of this story?
- [07:10]
Adriana Trigiani
Well, if you visited my home or any of my relatives homes, you will find marble because it's part of the Italian canon of decorating. We have to have it. And I always found it hilarious that I would go to a cousin's house and they would have the same marble that my other cousin had because it would be shared, okay? So we would forget what bathroom you were in, because they were all alike. That's kind of how we are. And for a long time, I wanted to do something with marble because of the great sculptors. And then a series of things happened, and I went there, to Carrara, or as Mira Sorvino says on the audio, Carrara. And I. I loved what I found out. You know, like, I found out little things that they turn the key as a novelist. I talked to an old man, and he said, you know, that mountain up there is where Michelangelo got his marble to sculpt the David? And it's where we still go for marble today, all these hundreds of years, centuries later. And he said, that mountain will be here when the world ends. Full of marble. We can't use it all. Will never use it all. And think of the churches and the mosques and all the, you know, the buildings that were built with it. And, yeah, it'll never, never be gone. And I love the idea that there's something permanent in this impermanent world.
- [08:46]
Charlie Gibson
It is lyrical about Italy. Some of the passages are wonderful. We had you read one just now.
- [08:55]
Adriana Trigiani
The lakes in Tuscany and Lombardy are of the deepest blue India ink. The Italian skies are any color they want to be. Sometimes the clouds are cotton candy pink, and other times swirls of arabescado or folds of pale blue silk. Today the sky is ribbed with clouds that appear to be skeins of white wool. From the lake to the mountains. I'm here to find solitude, like Catherine of Brunswick before me on the shores of Lake Como on a cold holiday weekend, where I will find warmth inside the pages of a good book.
- [09:34]
Charlie Gibson
Typical of how lyrical it is. I love the name of your principal character. It rolls off the tongue. Can you say it for me?
- [09:44]
Adriana Trigiani
Sure. Giuseppina Capodimante Berrata Blancha. And they called her Jess. Thank goodness they called her Jess.
- [09:56]
Charlie Gibson
You're of Italian origin, but born in the United States and living here. Did you as a kid, long to go to Italy the way Jess does?
- [10:06]
Kate
When was the first time that you went?
- [10:08]
Adriana Trigiani
It was hilarious. I went with my parents and my sisters, and I was really broke, and it was in the 1980s. And to go with your parents is another whole thing, because my father. My father would plan nothing, but he Never met a stranger, and just the hilarity ensued. But I treasure that trip because I saw my parents, you know, having a ball, and my parents were really hard workers, and I didn't see them have that kind of fun all the time. So that was great.
- [10:42]
Kate
Although, what do you say in the book? The most horrible words in the English language isn't unexpected turbulence or loose skin.
- [10:48]
Adriana Trigiani
It's family vacation. I think family vacations are the worst. Yeah. Well, there's a one funny point in the trip with my dad where I had no money. I was a playwright living in New York, and my father hands me a giant stack of money, of Italian money. And my very sophisticated sister said, you have about $3 in your hand. Yeah.
- [11:15]
Charlie Gibson
Do you write when you're in Italy, or do you write in the United States just with images of Italy in your mind?
- [11:22]
Adriana Trigiani
Well, I can write Italy here, but I always go because I think I do a better job for the reader if I'm giving you an on site account of what I'm looking at. And nothing thrills me more than a reader comes up and said, I went up to the mountain and you described it. And I go, okay, then I did my job. So I try really to embed. But I have to tell you, you know, there are great writers that don't have to go to the place they're writing about. And this says something really important about reading, I think, which is it's all in us. It's in us and. And we can feel it. Our souls can do the traveling. And it's true. So I love that aspect of it.
- [12:10]
Charlie Gibson
There's two Lake Cuomos in this Lake Cuomo in Italy and Lake Cuomo in New Jersey. And one of the great strengths of this book, Adriana, to me, is that you. I lived in Jersey for many, many years. You have Jersey down. It's not all the Sopranos. Jersey is a very distinctive state. And Lake Cuomo in Italy is such a beautiful place. So you may be writing in Italy about Lake Como. Did you go to Jersey to write about Lake Como there?
- [12:43]
Adriana Trigiani
Of course. You know what got me about Lake Como, New Jersey. That's different from, of course, our Lake Como in Italy was that. It was called. Until 2005, it was called South Belmar. It's between Belmar and Spring Lake. And the people of that town looked around and said, we're the bad neighborhood. We're the dumping ground of Belmar. Like, the kids would party there. They'd leave trash, and they saw their property values going down. So These Irish, German, Italian settlers got together and said, we need a Hail Mary. We gotta save our town because our houses aren't worth anything. Well, what they did is they pulled together and they changed the name of the town to Lake Como. Now, suddenly, they got a new name and a new point of view. And I was just there with the mayor. Mayor Higgins. I'm telling you, that town is unbelievable. It is picturesque, very European, quite beautiful. And they saved their town. You could do anything you want in America.
- [13:49]
Kate
Jess is, in some ways, a stream of consciousness narrator. And she journals as she needs. Do you journal?
- [13:56]
Adriana Trigiani
Yes, but intermittently I used to. And I. And I. I do so much writing that I. I'm working seven days a week. So I'll write something down that I saw or I'm feeling. Yes. But I pour it all into the books you mentioned.
- [14:12]
Kate
You don't journal, but you write down ideas and then you pour it all into the novel. You have a lot of titles to your name. Do you have a nailed down process that you do? Pretty much every book. And did this book, you know, wander away from that in any way?
- [14:26]
Adriana Trigiani
Kate, that is a profound question. Okay. No, it is, because it's like. It's like. It's the thing you just asked me the thing like. Like, tell me how you do this thing. Well, the first thing I'm going to share is that my number one concern always is the reader. What does she or he want from me this year? And you have to predict it, you know, way in advance. And here's what happened with this book. This book is set in the present, contemporary, maybe. There's a couple of scenes that go back in time, but those are for flavor or for propelling the plot forward. I wanted to write in the present because I had just written a historical novel called the Good Left Undone, which was a gigantic book. I was all over Europe with that thing, and I loved it. And I love writing historicals, but I didn't feel the audience was into the historical. So I said, what can I do? And I had a story, which is my great grandmother's story. My great grandmother Giuseppina died at the age of 42 from pleurisy. She got the flu, died from it. So I was going to write her story, you know, in 1915-1929. And then I went, no, I don't want to do that. I'm going to take her story and set it in New Jersey now.
- [15:45]
Kate
And do you plot? Are you a careful plotter? I mean, you got all these disparate elements. Do you sit down and go, okay, now I'm just going to start. Or do you outline it?
- [15:52]
Adriana Trigiani
I do outline it. Like, I keep it on a pad, like next to me, like a handwritten, you know, just like this. And I just write it down, Write it down. But here's what happens when I'm working on it. Something crazy will happen. Like I'll get a call from my sister or somebody or, you know, who wants to talk to me about something, and then I go, oh, yes. And it finds its way into the book. And I don't know why that happens, but there's a point in this book that it happened. And I thought, oh, okay. Yeah.
- [16:26]
Charlie Gibson
So there's a lot of family history that is transposed into this novel always. But so many authors tell us my characters surprise me at times. Is that true? And how did Jess surprise you in this book?
- [16:41]
Adriana Trigiani
Well, I didn't really understand why she left Bobby. I was in her head, like when. Miss you at the beginning, she divorced him and he seemed like a perfectly nice man, and in fact, he is, you know, But I was stunned by that because I was going to go the route of my grandmother, my great grandmother, as told to me by my grandmother, who was the daughter of my great grandmother, that when she made the choice, she went with her initial choice. My character didn't.
- [17:17]
Charlie Gibson
Well, there's a. There's a.
- [17:18]
Adriana Trigiani
That was a shocker.
- [17:20]
Charlie Gibson
As you intimate, she. She marries her boyhood crush and then divorces him. The marriage seems to be going all right, but as you say, she's an unhappy woman in her family. And the line. I thought that explained it better. I learned I couldn't make my husband happy if I hadn't found happiness on my own first. I thought that pretty well explained why she left Bobby.
- [17:43]
Adriana Trigiani
It was as if her family saw her in a certain role in a certain way, and inside of herself she knew. Well, I'm not really that even though, you know, she loved this boy since she was 8 years old. You know, I always find those love. Love stories really fascinating when I meet somebody and they go, we've been married for 50 years and we met when we were 12. I was like, oh, that's interesting. You know, there is something to it. It's kind of the old village idea of the match, you know.
- [18:17]
Charlie Gibson
But it's fascinating to me that you're sitting there thinking, oh, to make this work, I've got to get her out of this marriage. How do I do it? And then you struggle with that problem. It's Interesting to think about the author sitting and struggling with the problems that she has created.
- [18:34]
Adriana Trigiani
That's hilarious. And I never thought of that ever. It's the first time I've heard that. Yeah, I kind of get myself into a jam to get. To get them out of it. But, you know, that's really interesting.
- [18:46]
Charlie Gibson
This is your 19th novel, if I count correctly, and you've done other writing as well. How do you keep it fresh and how do you keep it different? And. And what's the process that you go through when you're starting with the thought in mind that I have to make this one different?
- [19:00]
Adriana Trigiani
Each one is different because that's my intention. There's no formula. I enter a world. What happens in this world happens in this world. And I'll find out as I go. If I haven't. If I don't follow my outline, if something comes up and there's a moment where I learn something new, it'll go into the waft and weave of the novel. But I think that's what I owe my reader. I owe them the experience. You know, I always like to say these days, a book is the cost of a plate of macaroni. But I want mine to have some staying power with you. I want it to resonate. I want you to say once you've read it, hey, you read it. Give it to a friend or pass it along somehow.
- [19:49]
Kate
I wanted to close by asking you. You grew up in rural Virginia. And I read also that you've set up a foundation to teach kids to write. So I wanted to let you be on the soapbox for a minute and ask you, why is it so important to teach kids to write? And is that one of the ways you tell them to write, to listen to the world.
- [20:07]
Adriana Trigiani
About 16 years ago, I called a friend of mine and I said, who's a philanthropist? And I said, I need your help. I want to do a writing program in Appalachia. So she came in. Her name was Nancy Bohmeyer Fisher. She passed away young a year ago, and she came down and, how are we going to do this? So we used the bank street model, which was the kids have to write one story in a year. And we put it in an anthology. We published them, and we've been doing it for 15 years. And the Appalachian kids, much maligned in this country are brilliant. And the idea is, it's the Origin Project. Tell us about your family. And of course, there's an immigrant population now. There's every hue and creed. And some of the kids write about their faith and some don't. And it's really a magnificent thing. So we're going strong. We'll keep doing it as long as we can. The children get such a kick out of being published in grade K through 12. We have all the ages covered. Yeah, it's very exciting and I thank you for asking about it.
- [21:16]
Charlie Gibson
Adriana, thank you so much for taking the time. We're going to ask you to stand by, if you would, for some rapid fire questions. We'll be back in a moment. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [21:52]
Adriana Trigiani
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- [22:30]
Charlie Gibson
Your burger is served.
- [22:31]
Kate
And this is our first finest Pepsi Zero sugar.
- [22:35]
Adriana Trigiani
Its sweet profile perfectly balances the savory.
- [22:37]
Charlie Gibson
Notes of your burger.
- [22:38]
Adriana Trigiani
That is one perfect combination. Burgers deserve Pepsi.
- [22:51]
Kate
Rapid fire. Questions for Adriana. Ciani. Do you prefer a shower or a bath?
- [22:57]
Adriana Trigiani
Bath always faff, especially with Epsom salt.
- [23:03]
Charlie Gibson
It's a big part of the view from Lake Fomo. Chess wants a bathtub.
- [23:08]
Adriana Trigiani
Yeah, she wants that tub.
- [23:10]
Charlie Gibson
Dickens or Shakespeare?
- [23:11]
Adriana Trigiani
Oh, that's hard. Shakespeare. But I love Dickens. But Shakespeare.
- [23:16]
Charlie Gibson
Alice Monroe or Margaret Atwood?
- [23:19]
Adriana Trigiani
Margaret Atwood because I know her great book.
- [23:22]
Charlie Gibson
You feel guilty for not having read.
- [23:24]
Adriana Trigiani
I mean really read it. Moby Dick. I cruised it. I cruised it. I didn't like it. Now everybody tells me to go back. I will.
- [23:32]
Kate
How do you celebrate finishing a book? Do you have a ritual?
- [23:35]
Adriana Trigiani
Start the next one. I don't do that. I'm accused of not being able to let you know. Let it go.
- [23:43]
Kate
Fair enough.
- [23:44]
Charlie Gibson
I mean this. Only complimentary. So you're a drudge You're a drudge.
- [23:48]
Adriana Trigiani
I kind of am. I'm a little bit of one. Yeah. Maybe a lot of one.
- [23:54]
Kate
How do you mark your place in a book?
- [23:56]
Adriana Trigiani
Oh, that's interesting. With a Post it. I love post it because I can move them.
- [24:04]
Charlie Gibson
Adriana for Johnny. It is a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for taking the time. This has been fun.
- [24:09]
Adriana Trigiani
Thank you so much. Thank you. So. So.
- [24:17]
Charlie Gibson
Again, the book is the View from Lake Pomo. Lake Pomo in New Jersey. Lake Pomo in Italy. But the view is better in Italy. Really?
- [24:26]
Kate
Probably. Although we don't want any letters from folks from Jerseyites. We do know that Jersey has those. And I know this because I grew up there. Jersey has those fantastic lakes that are populated with old tires. Those are beautiful and they smell good. And they always made me proud. I remember you're gonna. When you would fly into Newark Airport, it would be like, you know my best friend who lived in Northern California, she'd be like, there's Alcatraz, there are the redwoods, there's the great Golden Gate Bridge. And I remember when we were landing in Newark and I was showing her my hometown, I'm like, there's Ikea and there's the Lake of Tires, and over there is the Anheuser Busch factory.
- [25:02]
Charlie Gibson
No, New Jersey is a wonderful state and we both live.
- [25:04]
Adriana Trigiani
It is a lovely state.
- [25:05]
Kate
They're beautiful parts.
- [25:06]
Charlie Gibson
Beautiful. As we were. As we were landing in. In Newark once, I heard a flight attendants say, there it is. Newark. The paradise on the Passaic.
- [25:17]
Kate
I think it's the Anheuser Busch factory that really brings the skyline.
- [25:20]
Charlie Gibson
I love New Jersey. I went to college there. We lived there for years. It's a good state. So don't. It's Kate who's on New Jersey's case, not. Not me. We got a bookstore for you this week. It is in Delaware. And I've got to admit, it's in a town A, I've never heard of, and B, I couldn't pronounce. Hockesson. Hokesson. Hakason. What is it, Kate?
- [25:42]
Kate
Did you ever do Hokessen.
- [25:44]
Charlie Gibson
Hokesson.
- [25:44]
Adriana Trigiani
You actually managed to just pronounce it four different ways, all wrong, and none.
- [25:48]
Kate
Of them were right. Not one of them. Like you got one syllable right. It's Hokessen in Delaware. It's near Wilmington.
- [25:55]
Charlie Gibson
Right.
- [25:56]
Kate
And it's. And it's. And that is how it is pronounced.
- [25:59]
Charlie Gibson
Well, I never did get it. I never did get it. Jen Blabb owns the store, runs its very small. I Love small bookstores. And as you'll hear, this one is very small. Here's our conversation with Jen Blab. Jen Blab at the Hokuson Bookstore. Small state in Delaware, small town, Hokesson. Small bookstore.
- [26:22]
D
Yes, very small. About 900 square feet.
- [26:25]
Charlie Gibson
How do you make 900 and some square feet work?
- [26:28]
D
Well, it's tough sometimes. We are a new and used store, so we have customers bringing in their books all the time. And sometimes we do run out of space, but we have. We do have a small collection of new books. And yeah, we make it work.
- [26:44]
Kate
Well, I want to ask you about how you stumbled into bookstore ownership, but I also want to ask you. So when you have that little space, do you have a curation philosophy? Like, how do you serve the community and get them what they want? When you have to sort of be choosy, it's.
- [26:58]
D
It's tough. I mean, we do work with publishers and pretty much can only take in the bigger name titles.
- [27:08]
Adriana Trigiani
So it's.
- [27:09]
D
Yeah, we don't have much room. So we. So we do. We do have to be selective in what we choose.
- [27:15]
Kate
How did you stumble into bookstore ownership four years ago?
- [27:18]
D
Well, so ever since college, I've always either worked in bookstores or worked in libraries. And about four years ago, this store was in danger of closing, and I stepped up. I did not. I had been a regular customer, and I did not want the store to close, so I bought it.
- [27:36]
Kate
Had you always had an ambition to have a bookstore and this just pushed it up earlier, or did you never want a bookstore and you were like, I have to save this institution, my town institution.
- [27:46]
D
That was more what it was, that I just needed to save it. Yeah, I always wanted to work with books, but I don't know that I ever had in my mind that I would actually own a store. It just sort of fell into my lap, kind of.
- [28:00]
Charlie Gibson
Where is Hokesson?
- [28:01]
D
It's near Wilmington, Delaware, the northern part of the state. Right on the border of Pennsylvania.
- [28:07]
Charlie Gibson
So I say small town, small store, small state. Can you be profitable at. I don't want to know numbers, but can you be profitable at that size?
- [28:16]
Adriana Trigiani
We are.
- [28:16]
D
We are profitable. And I mean, the store has been there almost 25 years. So yes, really, it is an institution in the town.
- [28:25]
Charlie Gibson
Does the town support it? Do people come in from Wilmington? What is your customer base?
- [28:30]
D
So it's all over. We do get customers from Wilmington, of course, Hocusn. And then Pennsylvania, because right over the border is Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, which used to have an independent bookstore, but no longer does. So we have inherited a lot of customers from there.
- [28:46]
Charlie Gibson
So what's the greatest pleasure in opening a bookstore?
- [28:48]
D
Oh, goodness. Well, just to be surrounded by books. And I love our customers. I love getting recommendations from them and giving recommendations to them. Yeah, it's just, it's a lot of fun. It really is.
- [29:04]
Kate
Are you in charge of used book buying as well as new ordering?
- [29:08]
D
Yes. Well, how it works is customers bring in books and they get store credit.
- [29:12]
Kate
Ah, okay.
- [29:13]
Charlie Gibson
So what's the breakdown between used books and new books?
- [29:16]
D
So I would.
- [29:17]
Charlie Gibson
In terms of sales, I would say.
- [29:19]
D
We have about 80% of our books are used. So we do. Definitely. We make more from our used books than we do from new.
- [29:28]
Charlie Gibson
You do?
- [29:29]
D
Yes, we do. We get the used books at no cost to us. The customers just bring in books and we sell our books at half price. So that's just, that's pure profit for us because the books cost anything.
- [29:44]
Charlie Gibson
Having taken this leap of owning your own bookstore, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being, Gee, I'm glad I did this, 1 being, oh, God, Jen, what did I do? Where are you?
- [29:55]
D
Oh, I'm definitely a 10. No, definitely.
- [29:58]
Charlie Gibson
Really?
- [29:58]
Adriana Trigiani
Yes.
- [29:59]
D
Yes. It was a great decision.
- [30:01]
Charlie Gibson
Where do we find Hocuson Books? In Hocuson, Delaware.
- [30:04]
D
Our website is just hocessinbookshelf.com and we are right on Lancaster pike in Hocus and Delaware.
- [30:12]
Charlie Gibson
Thanks, Jen.
- [30:12]
D
Oh, thank you so much.
- [30:18]
Adriana Trigiani
Jen.
- [30:19]
Kate
Blab of the Hokessen Bookshelf. We're really glad she has more than one bookshelf. That's always good for bookstores, and we're glad she's turning a profit there. I, I, I like, Listen, I think small town bookstores are great community hubs, and it sounds like she's doing a great job of that. So.
- [30:35]
Adriana Trigiani
Yeah.
- [30:35]
Kate
A reminder of the folks who make this podcast possible. And then a coda from Adriana Triggiani. Do you want to say it one more time? You have so much fun saying it. Do you want to say it one more time?
- [30:45]
Charlie Gibson
Just I say it, Adriana. She says, in the United States, it's Adriana. It's Adriana in the United States, Adriana Trigiani.
- [30:55]
Kate
Don't worry about it, folks. He was not a language major at Princeton.
- [30:59]
Charlie Gibson
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie is a joint production of Good Morning America and ABC Audio. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions, and our executive producer is Simone Swink. We want to make special mention of Amanda McMaster, Sabrina Kohlberg, and Ariel Chester of ABC. Good morning, America and Josh Cohan of ABC Audio. You can follow us and rate and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts and if you like to find any of the books mentioned on this podcast, you can find them listed in the episode description I would like my.
- [31:33]
Adriana Trigiani
Coda to be really from my mom who was a librarian and I think she is my alpha and omega really when it comes to writing books. The first thing she insisted was read everything. Reading everything. Whether you agree with it or not, or you like it or you don't like it, it builds your intellect. So she's an anti book banner. She would say read it all and take it in. And then the second thing she said was you're always better for having read a book. Always. Whatever it is, you're always better for having read it.
- [32:10]
Charlie Gibson
The top stories, biggest headlines, entertainment buzz and viral moments. You give us less than 10 minutes.
- [32:16]
Kate
And we'll give you what you need to know. Your new daily must have habit. Start your day with what you need to know now. Streaming on Disney.