Sunday, December 14, 2008

a small request

Dear Bookstore Customers:

In this delightfully busy, bustling, and bountiful holiday season, there are a few things you can do that will make your book purchasing experience just a little smoother, a little less infuriating, and no doubt a bit more pleasant.

Conversations like the following are not one of them.

"Hello. Can you see if you have a book? I need it for the holidays. I heard about it on the radio sometime... I can't remember when. There was some guy talking about a book he wrote... I don't know the title; it may have had the word 'space' in it? Anyway, it was a paperback."

And yes, we do generally know how to spell the word "analyst"... However, if you believe that giving it to us in the radiotelephony alphabet would be useful, by all means say "Alfa, November, Alfa, Lima, Yankee, Sierra, Tango," but please excuse our expressions of incredulity.

If you own a very large bag of Good Omens books and Graveyard Books that is taking over the entire will call shelf, please come rescue your purchases. They are looking lonely. They also keep threatening to fall on our heads when we climb the ladder to pile more things on top of them.

Please stop trying to convince me to read all four of the Twilight books. Or Nicholas Sparks novels. Or books with titles like The Heart of Christianity, Too Fat To Fish, or the entire canon of Ayn Rand.

With thanks,
Me

2 comments:

Kat Howard said...

You could send me all the unclaimed copies of Good Omens. I keep leaving mine on planes, a pattern I am sure will continue with the flight to my parents' for Christmas.

Bookgeek said...

Oh, I am so with you on this. I spent SO LONG today with someone who said, my daughter came here a few weeks ago and saw a book she wanted but doesn't remember the title or the author but it was a fat book and looked really good. Can you help me find it? Aaaah.