Top 10 Amusing Customers

June Recap

I. The teenage girl I managed to convince to get Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded. 18th-century conduct literature has certainly fallen out of fashion with the Youth in the past two centuries so naturally, it pleases me immensely when an honest epistolary novel still seduces readers with its licentiousness, excessive fainting and disregard for class barriers. Below see Pamela Fainting by Joseph Highmore. With high hopes about 18th-century novels making a comeback, I wrote a short recommendation about Moll Flanders, along the lines of this Goodreads review that says: "Moll Flanders; the tale of a bawdy wench out and about being bawdy and getting up to all manner of, well, bawdiness." Still waiting for a prospective buyer

II. The man that finally! purchased a copy of John Barton's A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths that hands down was my favourite nonfiction release last year, right next to The Five, but have only been intimidating would-be readers with its daunting title and populous cover design.

III. The elderly lady who scared the soul out of me with signalling to her husband with a sudden yelp from behind my back and then proceeding to spend twenty minutes apologizing with the most aggressive cordiality I have ever witnessed.

IV. The middle-aged woman who was unnecessarily mean about us not stocking the full collection of Pope Francis' writings. In French. Now, the story goes that she went back to the religious section to browse and displaced a copy of Diarmaid MacCulloch's Silence so that for until it was recovered a day later we all thought she had stolen it. Which would be a far superior a story of course.

V. The recent high school graduates who made friends with another recent high school graduate over the penguin classics table and exchanged contacts.

VI.The well-meaning but clueless teenage girl who insisted that John Green books are the best pick for a 14-year-old who is not yet into reading.

VII. The guy who threw a Hitler salute so I had to humiliate him by sternly asking him to leave but first to walk back to the browsed books trolley feeling the burning, demeaning gaze of everyone in the store.

VIII. The woman who came to get one specific crime book and was somewhat mean about her being in a hurry and then ended up browsing random travel books from every possible corner of the planet.

IX. The 8-year-old girl with huge, beautiful curly hair who was paying for a giant kids' encyclopedia and announced that she's going to be a lawyer when she grows up.

X. The girl who asked me for sci-fi/fantasy recommendations and then didn't like anything even though I literally went through the whole section.