Monthly Archives: November 2007

Customer Service

One of the things my store prides itself on is our high level of customer service. This means that if you come into my store with only one or two pieces of information about a book, we’ll try our hardest to figure out the answer. Every now and then, we get some rather silly requests, such as the person a few holidays ago who called on Christmas Eve and asked in a strange, high voice for books on “Monkeys? Monkeys doing things like humans”—turns out he wanted photos of monkeys having sex. I had a friend who worked at a Borders in Braintree who said that they had a customer say they knew the title, but not the author and could they help them? “The title is Dante’s Inferno.”

When the floor staff can’t figure it out, they usually call me to play what we call Stump the Bookseller. Today it was a book that had been on our front nonfiction table within the last few months, subject is something like Africa and economic development, and was reviewed in the Economist. Well, then. I threw out a few suggestions, none correct. Hung up, went back to work for a few minutes, then it came to me. Of course the customer had already gone by then, but I raced down to the floor just in case. I love the challenge of figuring these things out, like a test of my memory.
Oh, the book I think they were looking for was The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier.

It Takes a Blogger…

Finally, a review of Shalom Auslander’s book Foreskin’s Lament that looks past the hilarity to the angst religion causes. So many reviewers make this memoir out like it’s a shallow dig at Orthodox Judaism—it’s not. It’s a caustic memoir written by someone who truly feels conflicted. Mark Sarvas (I swear I’m not mentioning this because he’s a fellow blogger. I read the review and didn’t notice who had written it until the end). Mark and I don’t always see eye to eye on books, but more often than not, our tastes overlap. I’m glad someone out there is truly representing this book.

Genre Reading

I hear all kinds of stuff about genre books. On one side, they’re ghetto-ized, they’re neglected; on the other, they’re not serious, they’re not literature. I’m going to be a coward and ignore the debate. There are certain subjects I tend to avoid (paranormal romance, anything by Ann Coulter, etc), but I still consider myself an open minded reader. I do love reading a good sci-fi/fantasy. This week I’ve been lucky enough to pick up two excellent sci-fi fantasy books.

Our kids buyer Kari has mentioned her love for Robin McKinley repeatedly. She seems to be a a staff favorite. Recommends (those hand written shelf talkers you see in stores) have been written for Beauty, Blue Sword, Deerskin, and most recently Sunshine. I finally cracked under the pressure of so many fans and read Sunshine. I loved it. Rae “Sunshine” Seddon stars as a baker at her family’s cafe, comfortably ensconced in her life until one day she is abruptly kidnapped by vampires. Instead of finishing her off quickly, she finds herself chained to a wall next to another vampire, himself chained up. When he doesn’t eat her, she calls upon some long forgotten magic that helps them both escape. Now they’re connected and must join together again to fight off the malevolent forces once again. People might compare it to Buffy, but I think that’s slightly off. Sunshine isn’t a valley girl (I know Buffy wasn’t a valley girl. I faithfully watched the series. She was presented as a girl who could kick some ass but really wanted to shop, etc). She’s really more normal than Buffy. Anyway, I read feverishly read this book and hope that McKinley writes a follow up.

While in the middle of reading Sunshine, a copy of Naomi Novik’s latest in the Temeraire series, Empire of Ivory, arrived on my desk.  The Napoleonic wars plus dragons, how can you go wrong? I’m only half way through, but so far so good. It’s as gripping as the last three.