The Orange County Register, January 9th, 2007
Irma Wolfson answered the phone one day at the first bookstore she worked in, and a male voice asked, "Do you carry adult books?"
Thinking he meant books for adult readers as opposed to picture books, she assured him that they did.
"He says, 'I'll be right over,' " Wolfson said.
That man was probably the last bookstore customer Wolfson led astray. In her two-decade career in bookstores in Orange County and beyond, the former English major has earned a reputation as a top-notch bookseller, someone who has a knack for buying good books and steering customers to ones they enjoy reading.
That's why when Glenn Schaeffer, then an executive with Mandalay Bay, wanted to open a bookstore in Las Vegas three years ago, he remembered the woman who had run Lido Book Shoppe in Newport Beach, where he has a second home.
He tracked down Wolfson to Book Soup in South Coast Plaza and proposed that she help him realize his vision for a literary haven in the midst of the gambling capital.
"She's a curator of books," said Schaeffer, who praised her selection of literary fiction, rare and limited-edition books, and children's books for the 1,200-square-foot store called the Reading Room.
"In a world where books are bought anonymously by invisible buyers, she … has a passion and a belief in this field. She's an intellectual and in a way an activist."
And when Jane Hanauer needed help creating a store to reflect Laguna Beach's artsy, beachy vibe, she turned to Wolfson, as well. They collaborated on Laguna Beach Books, a general-interest independent located in the Old Pottery Place complex on Pacific Coast Highway.
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Opening an independent bookstore has long been a tricky venture. General-interest independents struggle to compete with chain bookstores, Internet retailers and stores from Wal-Mart to Urban Outfitters.
According to the American Booksellers Association, there were 4,700 independents in 1993; now there are 2,500 such stores. There have been major losses locally. Dutton's Beverly Hills closed last month, and Book Soup in South Coast Plaza will soon be shuttered.
Laguna Beach Books isn't a sure bet, despite Wolfson's considerable expertise.
The store is one of several businesses in the historic Pottery Shack, including an art gallery, a chocolate shop and a restaurant. The idea is that the mix of businesses would attract more customers.
With its all-white décor and bleached wood flooring, the store resembles an airy beach cottage. At the entrance, a display case built to look like a lifeguard tower holds books about surfing and the ocean.
Of course, the heart of a bookstore is books, and selection is key. Big chain bookstores can stock more than 200,000 titles on their shelves. At 2,200 square feet, Laguna Books has room for 11,000.
Publisher reps are the salespeople who sell books to bookstores, and they say that Wolfson is a whiz at understanding what her customers will and will not buy.
"This is what Irma understands. She can sniff it out before I even tell her. She knows, 'This is for me.' " said Dory Dutton, who represents small publishers like Copper Canyon Press, which specializes in poetry. "It comes from years of interest and passion. She's in a very small elite group."
Wolfson's skill as a buyer also goes back to a lesson she learned from her father, who owned a clothing store in Ventura: "I remember one time holding up a blouse and saying, 'This blouse is really ugly.' I've never forgotten. He said, 'You have to buy what your customers want, and you can buy what you like. But you have to buy what they want, and you can't make judgments about it,' " she said.
She still heeds her father's advice about not judging people's taste.
"I think in bookselling, that's really important – that customers feel free to ask for whatever they want," she said. "You want to say, 'Oh, you like that? Let me show you something else that you might be interested in,' and maybe move them up a notch. You always give them what they want."
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Bookselling is actually a third career for Wolfson, 64 – the first rearing two children, Julia, 27, a chef in Brooklyn, and Ben, 24, a philosophy graduate student at Stanford. She also worked as a college and financial-aid counselor at Washington High School.
She got her first bookstore job in 1986 at Lido Book Shoppe, and she discovered she has an instinct for it.
Every so often as she's talking with a customer about their favorite authors, interests or travel plans, her hand will reach out and touch a particular book on a shelf.
"I'll just pick up a book I haven't even read," she said, "and the customer will say, 'Oh, my brother was just talking about that,' or 'That's something I've always wanted to read. Oh, how did you know?' " she said.
"It's just the weirdest experience."
Or, more prosaically, she will use her vast knowledge of books to act as a literary matchmaker.
If someone is traveling to France, instead of suggesting the obvious, such as Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence," she'll ask, "Have you read any M.F.K. Fisher? She's a California girl who ended up living in France."
If someone is looking for a good novel, she's likely to recommend Ward Just: "I have every one of his books. He's one of those writers who's never broken out of the pack, but you talk to any serious writer and they know who he is.
"He wrote a brilliant book on Vietnam that explains why we lost in Vietnam, 'A Dangerous Friend.' It's as brilliant and wonderful as Graham Greene's 'The Quiet American.' "
Anne Cusic, who owns an African safari company, is a longtime customer who's learned to take Wolfson's recommendations. She said Wolfson has tracked down out-of-print books about Africa for her – books that she can't even find in Africa – and introduced her to several authors who've become favorites, such as Kenyan journalist Aidan Hartley and novelist Doris Lessing.
"She just knows it all. She's my go-to guy," Cusic says.
Contact the writer: 714-796-6087 or vtakahama@ocregister.com
