What would Nancy Spungen do?

[constance]

I worked at the bookstore until closing time tonight, for the first time, I think, since the HP release party. It's very hard for me to work late nights on Saturdays when the rest of my week is pretty early, and so I was expecting to be pretty cranky come, say, nine pm or so, but thanks to an unexpected convergence of Good Things--working with my favorite manager, finally remembering to return the book I'd checked out months ago so I could check out another one, things like that--it really wasn't so bad at all.

A strange thing happened to me, though. I was zoning back in the children's department (for those of you unschooled in BN jargon, this means scanning books and pulling some for returns, alphabetizing, dusting, things like that), and a boy, maybe about fourteen, walked up, picked up the post-it pad we use to return damaged books from where it sat on the floor beside me, stole a page from it, and walked away again without saying a word. And then about ten minutes later he did it again. I mean, it's not even as though the sticky notes would come in handy--they're preprinted and there's not much free space on them--and there was a blank post-it pad also on the floor, and I was hoping he would come back by so I could ask him what on earth he was doing, but I never saw him again. It was all very mysterious.

This late-night update brought to you by a 16-ounce iced caramel latte, without which I would even now be asleep in my snug little bed.

Comments

[submarine.livejournal.com]

I want to work in a bookshop :( I also want to have quirky occurances with crazy customers. Instead I sit here, jealous.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Well, not all the quirky occerences with crazy customers are nice ones, but yeah--working in a bookstore is pretty keen, most of the time. :D

[tofty.livejournal.com]

O_o occurrences, I mean.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

I miss the public, in all of their idiosyncratic glory. There are the schoolchildren, of course, but that setting doesn't offer up as much delightfully random fodder.

Apropos of nothing, except the post-it note incident sort of reminds me in a naively hopeful way of something that happened in this story, have you read A View from Saturday, by E.L. Konigsburg?

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Well, sometimes it does, of course (top models in stiletto heels, anyone? :D). But yeah, a classroom setting doesn't really do much to encourage kids to roam the aisles and flaunt their eccentricities, does it? It seems a real shame, sometimes, that it doesn't.

I have indeed read A View from Saturday, and adored it as I do all her books, but it's been years, and I don't remember a lot of the details. I'm planning to try and unpack most of my books this week (FINALLY GOT MY BOOKCASE YAY), and when I come across it, I think I'll read it again.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Oh! And may I return the favor and ask if you've read this year's Newbery winner, Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins? It's got a companion novel, All Alone in the Universe, and I just finished that and adored it and have barely started Criss Cross, and so far it entirely lives up to its predecessor.

Criss Cross has gotten a great deal of bad press from people who don't think it should have won the award, and I can sort of see why--Perkins's style is far too gentle and introspective for your average teenager--but it's so very lovely, gentle and introspective and subtly funny, and beautifully written in a style I think you'd appreciate very much. Which, you know, is why I brought it up in the first place.

[leestone.livejournal.com]

If that iced caramel latte fails to rock you, let me know. :-* I have connections.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

*writes your name in little black latte book for future reference*

It did the trick, though--in fact, it overdid it. I'm not used to drinking coffee, especially at night, and come midnight, I was still bouncing around. I didn't get to sleep till after three, and that's ver late for me, these days.

[leestone.livejournal.com]

That is ver ver late! :-*

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

I'm writing Criss Cross on my hand right now so that I can buy it during my scheduled shopping spree today. Excellent timing- I'm suffering for something to read and nothing languishing on the end table looks good right now. Thank you!

And speaking of Mr. Top Model, I had another hilarious episode with him that involved "the correct stance for Riverdancing". Note to self: don't bring lively Celtic tunes into the classroom for "drawing to music" episodes. It occurs to me that perhaps one of the reasons I can't maintain good classroom control is that I can't resist situations like this. If a big, lunky kid is flailing his upper arms and trying to pass it off as traditional Irish dancing, the correct thing to do is to tell him to sit down and get back to work, not give him the "everything above the knees must remain still" pointer and try to get him to sit down and get back to work afterwards.