A Few Questions for the Head Rodent

Over on the Melville House blog there was a little blurb about a book that goes on sale tomorrow. So they asked the author, a bookseller, some questions. As I started to read the article, I thought to myself, gee, that's a swell thing to do.

And nobody has ever asked the Head Rodent any questions like that, so... (Note for the skeptics: Yes, I do still call myself a bookseller, although in 2015 that has been less true than it has been in some other years.) So, I grabbed the questions and erased his answers without reading them, wrote it all out on a scrap of white screen real estate, and I now post the Smashed-Rat-on-Press version here for your questionable enjoyment.

What’s your mantra?

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. (Schiller) As true today as it was at the dawn of time, and will be until the end of it.

Your greatest extravagance?

I did once pay $350 for a copy of the Codex Seraphinianus, a book which I have not yet been able to read. But I do still like the pictures.

Favorite size of book?

Six by Nine trade paperback. It just works for almost everything involving words but not so many images.

Favorite sandwich?

Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato, and Avocado; with an added dash of guilt over the poor pigs.

The sound that you hate the most?

Anything involving American news announcers. I would rather listen to an hour of stereophonic automotive repair at high volume than endure ten minutes of an American news announcer of any "gender", at any volume.

Favorite last name of an author?

Oh, that's a hard one, but I'd have to go for Etherbright or Hematode. Oh, and fancy that! Coincidentally, they're in the SROP stable.

The book all teenagers should read?

A Room of One's Own (Woolf) Unless you're talking about the male-dominated so-called classic all teenagers should read? That would probably have to be The Communist Manifesto and Rights of Man bound into a single volume.

If you could only play one album on repeat all day long in the store, the full 12-ish hours of the day, what would it be?

Bitches Brew (Miles Davis), in part because almost nobody could handle an unending sound-wall of Prokofiev ballets and concerti, but everyone loves Miles.

What, in your opinion, is a book?

An immense container full of words, strung end-to-end in specific sequence, bound up in any manner of your choosing.

Book(s) most frequently stolen from your bookstore?
That would have to be Fanny Hill, although that's also the book most frequently dropped back through our mail slot after midnight because most teenage kleptomaniacs can't get through it. (Well, you asked.)