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Kindle Notes & Highlights
It is an irony of my position that—although I’m surrounded by books every day—most of what I know about them is imparted by customers, the self-same customers whom my first instinct is to discourage from talking.
She always seems in such a ridiculously happy/hippy mood that it’s almost impossible to imagine how she manages it without the assistance of hallucinogenic drugs,
😂
I spent the first hour of the working day being slowly asphyxiated by a customer’s perfume, which I can only assume was manufactured as a particularly unpleasant neurotoxin by a North Korean biochemist in a secret bunker. Kim Jong extremely ill.
Today’s blackboard: Avoid social interaction: always carry a book.
Captain (the cat) is already nudging the borderline of morbid obesity and is the size of a small child. He now has the bonus of the full thickness of his winter coat upon him, and frequently startles customers who, on feeling what they imagine is a svelte kitten rubbing against their legs in the shop, look down to find something more akin to a fat puma instead.
While we were discussing it, an old man came into the shop with a leather bag slung over his shoulder, full of books that he wanted to sell. I picked out a few, mainly erotica and devil-worship, and gave him £25. My father looked less than impressed that I was buying such sordid material.
Amazon provides to third-party sellers, it comes at a cost which always leaves you on the brink of wondering whether it is worthwhile. Inevitably their ‘charges’ will multiply and keep creeping up to the point at which your margin is so tight that it’s almost suffocating. But not quite. Parasites prefer to keep their hosts alive.
in 1904, R. M. Williamson observed: ‘The few who make fortunes by bookselling are not to be compared to the many who make no more than a modest livelihood. The happiest men in the business are not the wealthiest, but the most contented, the men who love their occupation, who look on it as a high privilege to buy and sell books.’
One year—by total chance—we both gave one another a copy of a book by Peter York called Dictators’ Homes. I have no doubt that Donald Trump uses it for designing interiors like normal people would use Terence Conran’s House Book.
😂
A customer brought a pile of books to the counter, then removed one and said, ‘I’ll put that one back, I’ve just remembered that I already downloaded it onto my Kindle.’ This has inspired me to produce some mugs with ‘Death to the Kindle’ printed on them,
In the shop I have a quotation from Erasmus painted on a wall which reads ‘Whenever I have money I buy books. Whatever is left I spend on food and clothes.’
