Customer: Oh, the Bible! But isn’t there a book?
Cassandra Chan
Borders, Jensen Beach, FL
Bookseller: Can I help you find anything?
Woman: Yes. We’re looking for the portal.
Bookseller: Sorry?
Man: We’re looking for the portal.
Bookseller: ….
Woman: We’ve been tracking the portal to Lemuria for a long time and we’re pretty sure it’s here.
Bookseller: In this bookstore?
Man: Yes, we’ve been tracking the energy for years and we’re certain it’s in a bookstore in Lincoln City. We’re pretty sure it’s this one, but it’s possible it could be in a bookstore a few miles away.
Woman: No. Everything indicates it should be here. Maybe under the stairs.
Bookseller: Right. Well, have a look around, I suppose. Let me know if I can help you find anything!
Diana Portwood
Bob’s Beach Books, Lincoln City, OR
Customer: Do you have a book with a photograph of Jesus in it? I want to prove to my friend that he was white.
Michael G. Martin
Barnes and Noble, Pittsburgh, PA
Customer: Do you have a book that interprets life?
Bookseller: I’m not sure I know what you mean.
Customer: Well, I was out hiking the other day, and I saw a wolf. I want to know what that meant.
Jody Mosley
Barnes and Noble, Boulder, CO
(Punching the second to last hole on the customer rewards card)
Bookseller: Oh look, you’re getting very close to your reward!
Elderly Customer: In more ways than one!
Mary Jane Reed
G. J. Ford Bookshop, St. Simons, GA
Customer: Which way is it to the cemetery?
(Bookseller hands over a map)
Customer: Thanks. And that vampire that used to live there… he’s dead now, right?
Customer: I’m always on night shift at work.
Bookseller (jokingly): Is that why you’re buying so many vampire novels?
Customer (seriously): You can never be too prepared.
Lauretta Nagel
Constellation Books, Reisterstown, MD
OUT OF PRINT
Customer: What kind of bookstore is this?
Bookseller: We’re an antiquarian bookstore.
Customer: Oh, so you sell books about fish.
Customer: Do you have black-and-white film posters?
Bookseller: Yes, we do. They’re over here.
Customer: Do you have any posters of Adolf Hitler?
Bookseller: Pardon?
Customer: Adolf Hitler.
Bookseller: Well, he wasn’t a film star, was he.
Customer: Yes, he was. He was American. Jewish, I think.
Bookseller: …
Customer: I tell you something, you must get some odd requests, working here.
Customer: Hi, do you have any new books?
Bookseller: We’re an antiquarian bookstore – our stock is made up of books which are out of print.
Customer: So other people have touched them?
Bookseller: …Presumably, yes.
Customer: I don’t think I’ll bother, thanks.
Bookseller: … Ok.
Customer: I have The Pickwick Papers, first edition. How much will you buy them for?
Bookseller (examines book): Sorry, but this was was printed in 1910.
Customer: Yes.
Bookseller: The Pickwick Papers was first printed in 1837; this isn’t a first edition.
Customer: No, it was definitely first printed in 1910.
Bookseller: Dickens was dead in 1910.
Customer: I don’t think so. You’re trying to con me.
Bookseller: I promise you, I’m not.
Customer: (Glares for a while, then snatches the book back up) I’m taking the book elsewhere! (Storms out)
Customer: Hi. We’ve just moved and we’ve found some really old books in the attic. Would you be interested in buying them?
Bookseller: That depends—what sort of books are they?
Customer: Well, one of them is a copy of Gone with the Wind, printed the in 1890s.
Bookseller: Well, you know, Gone with the Wind was written in the 1930s.
Customer: Well, yeah, but this is a really old copy.
Terry Dallas
Armchair Books, Pendleton, OR
Customer: I’m looking for a signed copy of any book by Marcel Proust as a gift for my daughter.
Bookseller: I’m sorry, signed Proust material is very rare, but I can show you the books of his that we have in stock.
Customer (after paying): Do you have a pen?
(Bookseller hands him a red pen. The customer opens the book to the title page and writes: “I hope you enjoy my book, Marcel Proust.”)
Customer: Do you have a copy of Mrs. Dalloway, but, like, really old—so from, like, 1850?
Bookseller: …
Customer: Some of these books are dusty. Can’t you vacuum them?
Customer: Do you have any old copies of Dickens?
Bookseller: We’ve got a copy of David Copperfield from 1850 for $150.
Customer: Why is it so expensive if it’s that old?
Customer: This book has a couple of tears to some of the pages.
Bookseller: Yes, unfortunately some of the older books haven’t had as much love as they should have done from previous owners.
Customer: So, will you lower the price? It says here it’s $20.
Bookseller: I’m sorry but we take into account the condition of the books when we price them; if that book was in a better condition, it would be worth a lot more than $20.
Customer: Well, you can’t have taken this tear here into account (points to page) or this one here (points to another page), because my son did those two minutes ago.
Bookseller: So, the book is now more damaged than it was before, because of your son?
Customer: Yes. Exactly. So will you lower the price?
Customer: (Drops an old, expensive book on the floor by accident): Great shot!
Bookseller: (glares)
Customer: I mean… sorry.
Customer: Do you have a copy of Bella Swan’s favorite book? You know, from Twilight?
(Bookseller sighs and pulls a copy of Wuthering Heights off the shelf)
Customer: Do you have the one with the cover that looks like Twilight?
Bookseller: No. This is an antiquarian bookstore, so this is an old edition of the book.
Customer: But it’s still the one with that girl Cathy and the dangerous guy, right?
Bookseller: Yes, it’s still the story by Emily Brontë.
Customer: Right. Do you think they’ll make it into a film?
Bookseller: They’ve made several films of it. The one where Ralph Fiennes plays Heathcliff is very good.
Customer: What? Voldemort plays Heathcliff?
Bookseller: Well…
Customer: But that’s Edward’s role.
Bookseller: Wuthering Heights was written well before both Harry Potter and Twilight.
Customer: Yeah, but Voldemort killed Cedric, who’s played by Robert Pattinson, and now Voldemort’s playing Edward’s role in Wuthering Heights, because Edward’s character is Heathcliff. I think that Emily Brontë’s trying to say something about vampires.
Bookseller: … that’s $10.
Customer: For what?
Bookseller: For the book.
Customer: Oh, no, it’s ok, I’m going to go and try and find the Voldemort DVD version.
Bookseller: Right.
Customer: Thanks for all your help!
(Phone rings)
Bookseller: Hello?
Customer: Hello, I’ve got some books I’d like to sell.
Bookseller: Sure. What kinds of books do you have?
Customer: Oh, boxes and boxes of stuff. I’ve got some children’s books, some comics,
some old magazines and newspapers, an exercise bike, a couple of art books and some cookbooks, too.
Bookseller: What was the one in the middle?
Customer: Erm. Old magazines.
Bookseller: No, the one after that.
Customer: An exercise bike.
Bookseller: Yes… we won’t be wanting the exercise bike.
Bookseller: Hi, can I help?
Customer: Yes. I’ve got a copy of The Secrets of Houdini that I’d like to sell. It’s very rare. And it’s signed by Houdini himself.
Bookseller: Actually signed by Houdini?
Customer: Yes. (hands book over)
Bookseller: Ah (upon noticing signature to frontispiece), I’m pretty sure that this signature is actually part of the printing.
Customer: Why?
Bookseller: Because the date next to the signature is 1924.
Customer: So?
Bookseller: Well, this book was printed in 1932.
Customer: Perhaps the date on the signature actually reads 1934.
Bookseller: In that case, the signature is fake.
Customer: Why?
Bookseller: Because Houdini died in 1926.
Customer: But if you feel the signature, you can tell that it’s ridged. It doesn’t feel like the rest of the page.
Bookseller: Yes, I see what you mean; it’s almost like someone’s gone over it with a pencil, isn’t it?
Customer (frowning): That is a genuine Houdini signature.
Bookseller: I assure you; it’s part of the printing.
Customer: He signed the book himself.
Bookseller: And dated it 1924? In a book published in 1932? Six years after he died?
Customer: … Perhaps it was his last unsolvable act of magic.
Bookseller: Unfortunately I don’t think that Houdini’s last cryptic trick was to come back from the dead, sign your book, and make you a whole lot of money.
Customer: …
Customer: I’ve got some books I’d like to sell (plonks them on the desk). I’d like twenty-five dollars for the lot.
Bookseller: Didn’t you buy these from us last week?
Customer: Yes.
Bookseller: I see they’ve still got our prices in.
Customer: Uh-huh.
Bookseller: … You didn’t even pay twenty-five dollars for these in the first place.
Customer: Yes, but they’re older now than they were last week, see. So they must be worth more.
Customer: I’ve got some books to sell.
Bookseller: Hi, thanks. I’m just helping some customers at the moment. Could you join the back of the line?
Customer: Er, I’m selling you books; I’m here for your benefit.
Bookseller: These other people are here to buy books, they are also here for the store’s benefit.
Customer: You’ve got thirty seconds to buy them, or I’m leaving. You need to learn to prioritize.
Customer: Do you have any second-hand crosswords?
Bookseller: You mean crosswords that have already been filled in?
Customer: Yes. I love crosswords, but they’re ever so difficult.
Customer (holding up a copy of Ulysses): Why is this book so long? Isn’t it supposed to be set in a single day? How can this many pages of things happen to one person in one day? I mean, I get up, have breakfast, go to work, come home… sometimes I might go out for a drink, and that’s it! And, I mean, that doesn’t fill a book, does it?
Customer: Do you… um… pay, like, more for signed books?
Bookseller: For some books, yes, a signed copy would certainly be worth more.
Customer: What would you give me for… um… like, a signed copy of, like… The Diary of Anne Frank?
Bookseller: I would give you something like a billion dollars for that.
Customer: Oh, awesome!
Anonymous
Customer: Do you have Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust?
Bookseller: No, I don’t think a publication date has even been set for that book yet.
Customer: I know, it’s just I thought you might already have a copy, considering you’re an antiquarian bookstore.
Bookseller: … Antiquarian means old. We don’t have books, you know, from the future.
Customer: Ah.
Customer: Do you have any old knitting patterns?
Bookseller: We do, as it happens, yes. They’re over here.
Customer: And do you sell knitting needles?
Bookseller: No, I’m afraid not.
Customer: But I’ll need those when using the old knitting patterns.
Bookseller: Well…
Customer: And do you sell wool?
Bookseller: No, just the knitting patterns and magazines.
Customer: You haven’t thought this through properly, have you? How am I supposed to knit a scarf without knitting needles and wool?
Bookseller: You’re going to have to buy those things from another store, I’m afraid.
Customer: It would be much better for me if I could buy everything in one place.
Bookseller: Unfortunately we can’t stock everything relevant to the books we have, otherwise we’d be full of gardening tools, sewing machines, cooking ingredients and paint brushes.
Customer: What are you talking about? I don’t need any of those things. I only need wool and knitting needles. I’m not going to knit with a paintbrush!
Customer: I’ve always wondered how one writes a book.
Bookseller: How do you mean?
Customer: I mean, how did authors do it before computers were invented?
Bookseller: Well, there were typewriters and, before that, they wrote by hand.
Customer: You would have thought they could have invented computers faster to make writers’ lives easier.
Bookseller: … Yes.
Customer: And then, now that they have computers, is there a program that they use?
Bookseller: A program?
Customer: A computer program that you know, puts everything in the right order. Tells you what to name your characters and things.
Bookseller: No, I don’t think so. Well, I’m sure that there are programs with guidelines but I don’t think people tend to use them. They just write.
Customer: They just write?
Bookseller: Yes, they just write the story they want to tell.
Customer: So they just use something like Word?
Bookseller: Yes, I guess so.
Customer: But, you see, that’s what I really don’t understand.
Bookseller: What?
Customer: Well Word documents are 8½ × 11 and a book is never that big. It’s a lot smaller.
Bookseller: …
Customer: So, how on earth do they get it all to fit?
Bookseller: …
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Oodles of thanks to my wonderful agent, Charlie Campbell, who used to be a bookseller in Paris. He once served a customer who spat cheese soufflé all over him. He still doesn’t know why they did that.
Many thanks to my lovely UK editor, Hugh Barker, who used to work at Ripping Yarns.
Big love to Greg for the wonderful illustrations, especially for the crucified bunny rabbit.
Many thanks to the lovely people of Constable and Robinson, The Overlook Press, and Ed Victor.
Thanks and love to Vanessa, Malcolm, Becky, Polly [and Magnus], and to Celia, Sasha, Sherry, Marie, Gloria, Lucinda and Zoe.
Thank you to the booksellers who submitted their own “Weird Things.” It was heart-warming [and hilarious] to confirm that customers are saying strange things in bookstores worldwide.
Many thanks to Neil Gaiman and all the wonderful people of Twitter who enjoyed, and spread the word about, “Weird Things.”
Thanks and love to my wonderful friends and family.
Thank you Miles.
JEN CAMPBELL is a poet, short story writer, and bookseller. She graduated from Edinburgh University with a Masters in English Literature. Weird
Things Customers Say in Bookstores was a London Times bestseller in its UK edition, with rights sold in Germany, Finland, and Sweden. She currently works at an independent bookstore in North London. Visit jen-campbell.blogspot.com for more.
GREG MCLEOD, one half of The Brothers McLeod, is an award-winning illustrator, animator and director. Greg has a distinctive hand-drawn style and has worked on a wide range of projects including animation, illustration, exhibitions and book covers. Visit bromc.co.uk for more.
Printed in the United States Copyright © 2012 The Overlook Press
Jacket design by The Brothers McLeod
THE OVERLOOK PRESS
NEW YORK, NY
www.overlookpress.com
Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores Page 6