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A review by zabcia
Seven Kinds of People You Find in Bookshops by Shaun Bythell
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
4.25
83%
A tremendously funny (see selected quotes below) and quick read, I chose this book because I figured as a lowercase librarian, there's probably considerable overlap in the types of people you find in a bookshop and in a library - and I was right. With a few exceptions (most notably, bookshops are blessed with not having to deal with being an IT technician for the technologically illiterate), this book's depictions were spot-on; as I was reading each section, a particular patron (or several patrons) would spawn fully-formed in my mind, as if this author had met and interacted with the same exact people I have. At least now I know bookshops don't have it too much better than libraries.
<i>"Their husband/wife will have become so cataclysmically bored with their company over the years that they've tuned them out completely, and a bookshop provides the perfect location for them to deliver their lecture."
"you could flip it up and move instantly from an uncomfortably seated position to an even more uncomfortably standing position to show entirely undeserved reverence to whoever wandered into the room"
"oblivious to the alarm that they'd caused, and appeared utterly perplexed by the fact that the staff in the bookshop weren't trained babysitters, part of whose job was to free them up on a Saturday afternoon to go shopping"
"For the miser, the concept of inflation is incomprehensible, despite the fact that they're fully cognizant of the value of their house having trebled since they bought it in 1992."
"I have no idea how they hunt them out, but they do so with such determination - like pigs hunting for truffles every time they visit"
"In a way, there's something slightly more noble about an audible father, though. They appear at least to have the courage of their colonic convictions [...] a part of me wanted to salute him for his audacity."
"Nothing is goof enough for the tutter, and they manifest this through an almost incessant shaking of the head and disapproving clucking sound. It is like a mating call, but the call of a creature with which no creature of sound mind would wish to mate."
"It is touching, though, that they feel so passionately connected to the land that spawned an ancestor from five generations back. A land whose owners treated them so badly that, when faced with a choice between sticking with what they knew or taking a perilous journey across the Atlantic into an unknown world, they chose the latter."
"It's not as thought there's anything wrong with identifying as being American, although perhaps in a land of immigrants the only way to differentiate yourself is to cling on to a piece of the land you left, even if it is several generations behind you."
"student Hugo's mind is rarely troubled by even the smallest cirrostratus cloud of original thought, and is consequently incapable of contemplating the notion of failure (despite an overwhelming body of evidence)"
"Sci-fi paperbacks (and they're mostly first published din paperback) tend to have the most extraordinarily lurid and stylishly illustrated covers. I suspect that the publishers have insisted that the illustrators spend at least a week on a mind-bending daily dose of LSD before putting brush to paper in most, if not all, cases."
A tremendously funny (see selected quotes below) and quick read, I chose this book because I figured as a lowercase librarian, there's probably considerable overlap in the types of people you find in a bookshop and in a library - and I was right. With a few exceptions (most notably, bookshops are blessed with not having to deal with being an IT technician for the technologically illiterate), this book's depictions were spot-on; as I was reading each section, a particular patron (or several patrons) would spawn fully-formed in my mind, as if this author had met and interacted with the same exact people I have. At least now I know bookshops don't have it too much better than libraries.
<i>"Their husband/wife will have become so cataclysmically bored with their company over the years that they've tuned them out completely, and a bookshop provides the perfect location for them to deliver their lecture."
"you could flip it up and move instantly from an uncomfortably seated position to an even more uncomfortably standing position to show entirely undeserved reverence to whoever wandered into the room"
"oblivious to the alarm that they'd caused, and appeared utterly perplexed by the fact that the staff in the bookshop weren't trained babysitters, part of whose job was to free them up on a Saturday afternoon to go shopping"
"For the miser, the concept of inflation is incomprehensible, despite the fact that they're fully cognizant of the value of their house having trebled since they bought it in 1992."
"I have no idea how they hunt them out, but they do so with such determination - like pigs hunting for truffles every time they visit"
"In a way, there's something slightly more noble about an audible father, though. They appear at least to have the courage of their colonic convictions [...] a part of me wanted to salute him for his audacity."
"Nothing is goof enough for the tutter, and they manifest this through an almost incessant shaking of the head and disapproving clucking sound. It is like a mating call, but the call of a creature with which no creature of sound mind would wish to mate."
"It is touching, though, that they feel so passionately connected to the land that spawned an ancestor from five generations back. A land whose owners treated them so badly that, when faced with a choice between sticking with what they knew or taking a perilous journey across the Atlantic into an unknown world, they chose the latter."
"It's not as thought there's anything wrong with identifying as being American, although perhaps in a land of immigrants the only way to differentiate yourself is to cling on to a piece of the land you left, even if it is several generations behind you."
"student Hugo's mind is rarely troubled by even the smallest cirrostratus cloud of original thought, and is consequently incapable of contemplating the notion of failure (despite an overwhelming body of evidence)"
"Sci-fi paperbacks (and they're mostly first published din paperback) tend to have the most extraordinarily lurid and stylishly illustrated covers. I suspect that the publishers have insisted that the illustrators spend at least a week on a mind-bending daily dose of LSD before putting brush to paper in most, if not all, cases."