Sometimes, I think I make it sound like working at the bookstore is a never-ending succession of strange interactions with odd and frustrating people. Which it isn't.
Yesterday, for instance, this tall, faded man who receded behind his spectacles bought a Terry Pratchett book (Feet of Clay, to be precise). I employed my usual Enthusiastic Small Talk (reserved for books I actually like), and asked him whether he had read many of Pratchett's novels. He said he hadn't. And then he looked embarrassed and said that he started reading them because he once passed a bookstore that was hosting an event for Terry Pratchett and he saw crowds and crowds of people who all looked jolly, excited, and brazenly happy. He wanted to join them, so he bought a book.
This was almost as satisfying as the time a woman told me that she had heard Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry" read on NPR and that it was haunting her. She said this very emphatically and repeatedly, with slightly different phrasing, and I was beginning to feel sorry for her when she looked me in the eye and said, "But where can I find MORE?"
On the other hand, we're hosting Rick Riordan on Saturday and I keep imagining that I'll be crushed flat beneath a tsunami of young people clutching their copies of The Last Olympian.
1 comment:
But you weren't! And I heard passers by actually come in to see who could possibly draw so many kids. Then bought the book because how could so many kids be wrong!
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