Best beloved bookstore customers,
While I love books, and love talking about books, and even love spirited and lively debate over books, it really is not necessary for you to call the bookstore and tell me -- for a lengthy and dreary ten minutes -- exactly why a particular book did not plant an undying love in your own reader's heart.
I don't need for you to tell me that you think the author is not "the right sort of person." Or for you to describe exactly how disappointed you are that the bookstore gave him the time and space for an author event. I don't need for you to describe your astonishment that such a person, with such differing views from your illustrious self, ever had a book published at all.
Please remember: We are a bookstore. We mostly like you. We are not, however, your friends. Those ten minutes that you spent with the perforated plastic of your phone pressed to the folds of your ear are now irretrievably lost. They would have been so much better, so much more satisfying, if they had been shared with a friend. Over coffee maybe. Or tea. And in the forgiving company of someone who might actually say how your displeasure makes them feel.
With warmest regards,
Me
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