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My Life, My Words: Sunny White — The books at my disposal

Sunny White, inventory specialist for Downtown Books, stands Thursday in the bookstore. White said she enjoys helping others pick out books they may enjoy, and nine times out of 10 her recommendations end up being the right fit for readers.
Joshua Gordon

“We are constantly bringing in new inventory and that is what the bulk of my work here entails. I also have to think about what I think the community will be interested in.

“I know such a broad array of people, so I use that knowledge of the community to order in new books. Besides that, I just sell books.

“The original owners, Caroline and Carol, got me started at the store. I knew Carol from Denver, when they lived in the same neighborhood, and I ended moving back here and she moved back here. I worked for them when they worked the store. And here I married into Caroline’s family. Then the store switched ownership to my mother in law. From there, I had just been volunteering a couple times for her. Finally the store switched over to Carol’s husband and I have been working here fully since about April.



“I really enjoy my job. I’m in college now, so it’s nice to know when I come here I can study and it is just very flexible.

“I love to read, and here we just have so many odd assortments of books. A lot of things we have here are Western and fiction, but my favorite part of working here is that I get to see and read things people don’t normally get to see in reference to books. It is really fun to help people choose what type of book they may like, and nine times out of 10 it ends up being a perfect choice for them. Still, it is quite a challenge trying to figure out what people will like. I have a lot of favorites, or at least too many to list, but there was a book called ‘Middle Sex’ that I really enjoyed mainly because of how it was really well written.



“I’m sort of a nomad. I spent most of my childhood here yet I have been back and forth. My parents moved to the eastern part of the state to like Canyon City and Pueblo when I was very young. My parents ended up getting divorced and so I moved in with my mom, my aunt, and my other sisters. My parents really just gave me that freedom to do what I thought best for myself.

“I changed high schools seven times before I ended up moving back to Craig to graduate. I liked to move a lot, I guess. After I graduated, I moved back to Denver for college and then moved back here to have our child. Now, though, my family is very grounded here. I’m married to Josh White. He just graduated from (Colorado Northwestern Community College) with an associate’s in science. He and I have a little girl, (and) she is fantastic.

“I’m currently taking classes online. I’m studding mortuary sciences to be a mortuary technician. I want to work more specifically with facial reconstruction.

“It wasn’t as if I picked this job completely out at random. My mother worked in a mortuary for a little while and I was sort of exposed to that industry because of my mom. There has been a lot of death in my life, with so many funerals where things that could have been done so much better.

“It is pretty interesting — the prerequisites I had to take were like English classes, psychology, and even an accounting course. Once you get into the bulk of it, though, it is pretty interesting. I had to take a lot of anatomy classes. Also, a lot of it deals with the business side, like how to sell caskets. I try to be as optimistic about things as possible and I hope that it will end up helping out as much as I think it will.”

— Interview by Skyler Leonard

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