Who is the BOOKtique store manager?
Vera Vos profiles our Michael Peck

Michael Peck, BOOKtique’s manager, is a book lover. He knows books inside and out, as a reader, reviewer, collector, and seller of rare books and also as a writer. His short stories and essays have appeared in magazines and journals (one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize), and he has published a novel. He married a librarian: both he and his wife make sure their daughter gets plenty of book time.

The reality of a love of writing, like acting, is that it’s rarely lucrative. When Michael got the job as BOOKtique’s manager he knew he hit the jackpot - embraced in books and a paycheck. On his first day he was greeted by a roomful of boxes filled with books, stacked willy-nilly, in the back of the Monroe store. Initially, what landed was that book scent - musty, with a hint of sweet and an overlay of vanilla - a bibliosmia of stories yearning to be read.

“Being surrounded by books was like paradise,” he recalls.

Like a kid at Disneyland, Michael dove into those boxes, full of treasures, and some trash, sorting, separating, organizing, cataloguing, until every book, found a place, on store shelves, or listed on online platforms. Each book was inventoried making specific titles easy to find, in the store and on the BOOKtique website, turning second-hand random chaos into ordered presentation. But donated books kept pouring in and Michael is an organizer. He expanded online book sales beyond Amazon to include eBay and AbeBooks.

Customers looking for specific titles, subjects, or genres, have two brick and mortar locations, a store website, and numerous online options to find what they are seeking. Of course, browsing amongst the shelves, searching for what piques an interest, is still the favorite past-time of most book lovers and BOOKtique customers.

“My goal was to make the BOOKtique stores a haven from the noise, a comfortable and intellectual gathering place for customers,” says Michael.

That goal required something he had rarely done before, training and supervising the volunteers who run the BOOKtique stores, many of whom had been there years before he arrived. BOOKtique volunteers come from a myriad of backgrounds but the “throughline” for Michael and the volunteers is books.

As he comes to know every current and new volunteer, he says he was humbled by their wide range of ideas, their interests, their opinions, and their breadth of knowledge, based on life experience, and honed by their shared love of books.

“There is a genuineness and kindness here that is brought by the volunteers and extended to customers. It is a delight to work side by side with them,” he says.

Towards the end of our talk, I asked Michael, “What do you see as the purpose of the BOOKtique and online venues?”

He paused to think about this. “I know what I’ve told you relates only to these spaces (BOOKtique) and the people who shop and work here. But the money we raise has a higher purpose. It extends the joy, widening of horizons, and intellectual growth possible by reading, through Lake Oswego Public Library programs to the entire community. That is a purpose worth buying a book for.”

Visit either or both of our BOOKtique locations (City Hall or Monroe Street in Mountain Park) or browse and order online at www.ourbooktique.com. BOOKtique is brought to you by The Friends of Lake Oswego Public Library (www.FriendsLOPL.org) to support current library programs and expand the coffers in order build a new library for our community’s future.

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