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The Gradual Maturing of the Overwrought Book Lover
“I’m still trying to grow up, bit by bit by bit. I kid you not.
Even at the age of what it is I am, I’m still trying to grow up.”
–Jim Reed
The anxious customer, fraught with self-imposed deadlines of earth-shaking immensity, enters the bookshop and proclaims, “Hello! Anybody here?” as if she’s summoning an aide to organize her affairs.
I wait a beat before replying, wondering whether this is the way she enters Wal-Mart or Publix. “Hello! Anybody here?”
“Good morning,” I say in my best and most cordial voice. Maybe she needs a little TLC.
“Oh, THERE you are!” she peers down her nose as if chastising me for my momentary invisibility. “I need books for my new bookcase.”
“Well, maybe I can help. What kinds of books do you like to read?”
She sniffs at the dusty air in something resembling disdain. “Oh I’m not going to READ them. I just need books to fill the shelves.”
I bite my tongue and switch over to my must-act-as-if-this-is-the-kind-of-work-we-do-every-day at Reed Books tone.
“OK,” I say. “Well, perhaps you would like to look around and identify the kinds of volumes you prefer…then I can gather more to your liking.”
“I don’t have time to look around, just show me your section of fine books—I need about four feet for the bookcase.”
I lead her to some turn-of-the-century titles with “nice” bindings to see whether these will do.
“How much are these?” she snaps.
“Uh, each one is a different price.” I pull several titles down and show her a range of prices, from $8.00 to $95.00.
“I’m not going to pay that much for ANY book,” she proclaims.
I keep trying to help.
“Well, what is your price range?”
She says, “Five dollars each is all I intend to pay.”
“Hold on,” I reply and scurry about making a sample stack of appropriately-priced volumes.
“These fall into that category,” I say.
She sniffs again and squints at the books. “Are they all leather bound?”
“Well, as you can see, they have attractive bindings but they are not leather—leather usually means much higher prices.”
“You don’t mean that!” Her haughty manner is not going to get to me, I decide.
She goes on, “Well they are all the wrong color, too. I must match them to my blue curtains.”
“Right. I need to answer the phone, so take a look around to see if there’s anything that suits you. I’ll be right back,” I say.
When I return to her, she’s standing with hands on hips, staring at a box of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books—sans dust jackets–that I am donating to The Foundry, since no-one has purchased one since 1986.
“These are mostly blue—what do they cost?”
HERE ARE THE THINGS THAT I DO NOT SAY ALOUD: “Ma’am, these are very inexpensive, but I would hesitate selling them to you,since any of your visitors, seeing them in your Liberty Park book cases, would know that no real book lover would ever invest in these.” I ALSO DO NOT SAY ALOUD: “I would recommend purchasing a variety of non-matching books, with some great classics and popular titles thrown in, so that it will appear that you actually have selected, loved and read each one.” AND, FINALLY, I DO NOT SAY ALOUD: “And I would encourage you to pick some titles that you will read yourself, just to season your conversation with the appearance of having intelligence.”
What I do say aloud is something like this, “Well, they are well within your price range, and we have enough to fill your space. Would you like for me to load them in your car?
The woman pays, her vehicle is full of books, and she rides away into the city sunshine.
There might have been a time when I would get all worked up and preachy in my effort to save the world through inducing people to enjoy reading. But what the heck. Non-readers have rights, too. I just don’t think they have as much fun as I
© Jim Reed 2014 A.D.