diary of a worm

A thirty-forty-something French woman was looking for the latest work by Doreen Cronin, author of the children's book Diary of a Worm. She's also written Diary of a Spider, which the woman couldn't stop raving about. In an attempt to quell her excitement, I looked up the author online and found out that her next book, Diary of a Fly, won't be out until Fall 2007.

The woman said in a polite but insistent French, "Oh, you really should have them all! She's just fabulous!" To which I replied in my most believable, customer service French, "Yes, you're absolutely right. I'm sorry we don't have them all. But if you'd like to order it . . . " But they rarely do in these cases. They simply want you to know how wonderful this book is, or how talented this author is, how much their work means to them, how important a contribution it is to children's literature, blah dee blah blah blah.

So sometimes my work as a bookseller is more that of a book counselor. People come in looking for that book they read as a child which we frankly haven't carried since then because times have changed and so must the contents of bookshelves. But I understand the attachment one forms to a book, so I nod my head sympathetically and apologize whole-heartedly and say "You're right" whenever they say we should carry this book, that it's a shame we don't. I wish I could find a magic spell or a genie for hire to conjure up these beloved missing books with a snap and a puff of smoke.

Meanwhile I must hold back the urge to explain to them that we cannot carry every book and that over the last few decades bookstores have become slaves to the media, following the wave of the latest craze, the bestsellers that fly off our shelves, the books that change their covers to suit the movie that follows, the short-winded tendancies for this classic or that depending on what Oprah Winfrey's reading on TV.

Some people will venture upstairs and inquire about ordering their beloved book, others shrug their shoulders and slump out disheartened, perhaps suddenly conscious of their place in the time-line continuum of books. Still others linger, chatting with me about that book they can't find anywhere anymore (except Amazon of course, but with those shipping charges and delays . . .) and I try to prop them back up before they leave empty-handed. The worst is when they learn the book is out of print, they look physically hurt, confused, as if they have just found out a dear friend has died. I am thus the bearer of bad tidings, a literary reality check, if you will.