This bookshop is crazy

Two young people, a couple, consulted their phones, looked at lists, and asked me to help them find the books they wanted. They wanted Sigmund Freud, Hilary Mantel, and Gone with the Wind. They made a stack with The Penguin History of the World on the bottom and their wild evening party plans on the top.

‘Tonight’, they kept saying to each other.

But they didn’t leave; they kept looking, unable to stop thinking. ‘Man, this place is crazy, we should go, do y’have Jonathan Swift?

Later, at dusty three o’clock, an old man told me that we have to get kids off computers. ‘They don’t read, they don’t want to learn… always doing things they shouldn’t. What about those game stations and drugs? How do you keep your shop going?

He turned around and turned around and found his wife in her bright orange coat reading Bring Up the Bodies, and said, ‘Come on, we’re going home.’

 

Artwork by Gerhard Gluck