A quick update on what I've been reading recently, to be followed by some choice top tips about the how to behave in a bookshop:
I've just started a book entitled Calories and Counting. It's a history of dieting from the Greeks onwards, and so far, it is amazing. It'll be on the recommends table at work in January (when it is to be published). Profile Books are a super lovely publishing company too, so I'm glad to support them in whatever little way I can. I'm due to write a review of a novel called Q: a love story for Harper Collins too. I really must crack on with that - the novel is good - I never knew that Freud had spent his early career studying eel genitalia - but not wonderful. Not as wonderful as The Tiny Wife, which is a very short work by Andrew Kaufmann, which I finished at the start of the month. I also re-read Lolita and was once again amazed, simply amazed.
Here are some bookshopp etiquette tips in case today if a bookshopping day for you:
1. Customers: it's fine if you buy all your books from Amazon, but don't expect there to be any bookshops in ten year's time. And that's fine, if that's how you want it. But browsing in a bookshop only goes so far, and certainly not far enough to pay the rent. As found out the owner of The Travel Bookshop, a beautiful indy in Notting Hill.
2. Just because I work in a shop, I am not stupid. Have you read Ulysses? Five times over? We can have a brain off if the answer's 'yes', but otherwise, for now, accept that I do have a brain and I buck the 'retail = stupid' stereotype.
3. People who come in and buy the 'Life in the UK' book: I don't actually make the decision. You are all lovely, as a general rule, and I'd let you all stay, but it's not up to me, sadly.
4. Please do not let your kid/grandma vomit/shit in the bookshop. It feels excessive to state that this is not acceptable.
5. Do not assume that because I work surrounded by books that I must have necessarily read them all. Why would I read a David Nicholls book? Why would I read Sophie Kinsella? Why would you assume that my cultural opinions are in some way lacking for not having done so?
6. Please do not get pissy with me when I tell you that the book you want is out of print. I do not print the books.
....there'll be more to follow. There are always new breaches of behaviour occurring, and I'll notify you as and when they do.
Re point 5 - do people genuinely think you have read everything? The sheer volume of books that are published would mean you would never stop reading. All I want from a decent bookshop is some recommendations of good things to read. If an author I already love has written a new book I'm probably going to read it anyway regardless of whether or not someone else recommends it.
ReplyDeleteBooks like most interesting things spark different reactions in people. To say (or imply) you are culturally lacking for not having read the latest Richard and Judy Big Summer Read is incredible.
I would like to extend the message in point 4 to all public places.
5. Oh, exactly. For some people, the strength of the book seems to lie in the marketing. At times when I've not succumbed to the marketing - for example, I've still not read One Day - a lot of people think I'm missing out on a great work of art. No, I've just been reading other things!
ReplyDelete4. I think this needs a public interest campaign behind it.
(Thanks!)