Hello internet.
After the distressingly large amount of views that my previous post got, a part of me (nearly all of me) went into total paralysis and decided that I should never post anything ever again ever and delete this whole blog. Don’t get me wrong, it was a lovely shock and thank you to everyone for reading it, for whatever reason you did. Or thanks to the one person that just opened and closed the page several times to make the view count go up. Pretty sure the latter is a more likely answer to the very intimidating number that it reached. I haven’t known what to write about after that and I was/am fairly certain that anything I do write will be quite terrible. It is the law of physics and what not.
This one time, at band camp (not really – actually on Long Street but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a movie reference), I saw a man, of questionable mental stability, rollerblading through the middle of the road. There must be something in the air of that… long… street that turns people into absolute maniacs. Drivers don’t care about the well-being of their vehicles or being convicted of homicide, and pedestrians don’t care about the well-being of their vehicles (as in their bodies) or the fact that death is remarkably closer for them than any other. Anyway, so I saw this man rollerblading, of all things, and rollerblading through the valley of the shadow of death. He must have looked at his life and realised that there is not much left. I thought, “surely this man knows he will not see the day’s end?”. However, right now, I could happily don a pair of rollerblades that I don’t own and follow this man’s strange actions. Why? Because I have recently achieved my goal in life, a childhood dream, something beyond my wildest imagination. Now I think, where from here? It is actually impossible to rise to any higher level in life. I have peaked at the tender age of 22 but that’s okay. What is this dream?
I am now an employee of…
A bookshop.
(I will not name drop)
Yes, yes, I too fell to the floor and wept tears of joy as you are doing right now. Don’t be embarrassed, it is an understandable reaction.
And yes, I am fully aware of how sad this is.
Unfortunately, I had to move on from my job at the coffee shop and I have certainly missed interacting with customers and their wonderful eccentricities. I had my first shift today and already witnessed some giggle-worthy moments. I found already found that the conversations of old couples’ are best to eavesdrop on. I heard a pair complaining to each other at length about the terrible design of a book, they seemed personally offended. My favourite moment was when a man was paying for his book while his wife continued to browse at some of the “new arrivals”. This section is fairly far away from the desk, at least far enough that a conversation between the two would have to be at a considerably louder volume than socially appropriate. This was obviously not a concern to either because the man gave an impressive call across the shop to ask his wife if he could use the discount on her loyalty card, to which she yelled back, in complete shock and horror, that he could “absolutely not!”. This first yelling did not seem to carry the impact she desired and she continued to yell across the shop, to make quite certain that her husband had abandoned the ludicrous idea that he could use her discount. Needless to say, I am rather excited to get back into people watching.
Unrelated, but I’ve also recently completed a barista course, another dream. I got a certificate and everything. Gee sir, I do feel like a regular go getter, one of those ambitious types.
That’s enough banging on about an update. The main point of this post is that I have been thinking about all the little books that have their temporary home in the shop. What does the life of a book look like?
It’s strange to think that most books aren’t really aware of their contents; I mean, think about how hard it would be to read something written on your chest. And for a book to look in the mirror would be completely hopeless because then all the letters would be backwards.
A book shop is divided into sections, a segregation, if you will. As you walk in, the first shelf you will be confronted with is filled with the latest best sellers. Here you will find the usual tear jerkers that involve two people meeting, falling in love and then running after each other at an airport. Lately the crime novel genre has exploded. They all have something to do with someone named “Girl”. This poor character seems to be terribly unfortunate. Gone Girl, Girl on the Train, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Girl Who Took other Methods of Public Transport, Found Girl, Dammit - Girl has Gone Again, Girl in a Station, Girl Catching the Connecting Train to Get to Her Final Destination. And somewhere in between all of that someone has been murdered, or will be murdered, or is plotting a murder. The other books usually get quite annoyed with the best sellers as they think themselves quite superior. They have attended many overhyped book launches which they will talk about at length, bragging about all the other famous books they have met. The stories that they so smugly carry normally get translated into an equally smug and predictable movie. These movies are required to star Katherine Heigl, playing the uptight workaholic who doesn’t have time for a relationship! This is until she meets a guy who doesn’t play by the rules, a regular bad boy who likes to make sexual innuendos. They hate each other! But, oh dear, they are paired together on the company’s latest project. What will they do? Then one of them ends up chasing the other to the airport.
Past the best sellers, we get the coffee table books. They sit on the display shelves, trying to take up as much space as possible while having some sort of shallow conversation about the glossiness of their pages. As attractive as the coffee table book looks, it tends to lack substance which results in a bland conversation. Their polar opposites? The philosophy section. Rows and rows of books about your mother and how pointless life is slump next to each other thinking nihilistic thoughts. Why are you looking at us? What is “looking”? Who is “us”? Some clearly hit some mad squats at the gym because they are remarkably thick. They like to bore the books around them with their very pretentious thoughts until every book has a headache. It is at this point that the other books all shuffle around in attempt to knock the thicc book off the shelf, making a nearby human panic and think it was their fault. Sneaky philosophy books.
If you wonder a bit further in, you pass the fantasy section, where all of them are tripping acid and telling each other to look at the dragons. Next to that is sci-fi. They’re all getting ready for next year’s Comi-Con and revving their spaceship engines to prove that they have the biggest… lightsabre.
I think one of the most interesting sections must be the children’s sections. There are books about a girl name Jane who runs and everyone has to see her do it, others that tell you about animals, showing you what their fur feels like and teaching you how to communicate with them in their language, and then it all becomes rather dark. The majority of children’s books are written by complete psychopaths. Roalh Dahl is a thoroughly disturbing individual (try and read one of his adult short stories), Enid Blyton was really off her head and very explicit (the first line of Five Go Down To Sea is, “ ‘Blow!’ said Dick”. I mean, please, Enid). And Dr Seuss? Hallucinogenics were undoubtedly involved. Shame, Judy Blume is probably okay though. Or maybe her basement is full of unnerving mannequins? Who knows?
Children’s books are also the genre that I feel most sorry for. In the shop they are subjected to children screaming very loudly next to their sensitive little dog ears (that the children have no doubt created). The undeveloped gnomes will then smear their sticky hands on the book before transferring the sticky hands to the pants of their caregiver. The pants will be tugged and tugged as they beg and plead to an exhausted looking parent to buy the ill-fated book. The parent eventually gives into the tugs and cries. That night the walking zombie parent is forced to dribble out the words with their last remaining bit of strength. They do this in the hope that it will lull the child to sleep. Sometimes it does but sometimes it doesn’t. It is at this point that the parent is forced to soak this book in chlorophyll and gentle laying it on the gnome’s face. The book will surely pass out too. Children’s books really have a hard time.
And those have been my wonderings over the past couple of day. My next challenge is not to be tempted to blow my salary on books with my employee discount.
Thanks for reading!
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