The Path of the Bookseller

I was surprised that the customer did not have ashes on her forehead. Today was Ash Wednesday, and most of the other customers who came in wearing crosses like hers also wore the ashes, but she did not.
“Can I help you find anything?” I asked.
“I was hoping that you might have some tissue paper for [...]

I’m terrible with faces. I can meet someone several times and, other than a vague sense of having met the person before, retain little information as to who the person is.
Oddly, I’m very good with email addresses. I can be talking to a customer at the register and not know who he or she is. [...]

Tonight, the store was about as quiet as I’ve ever seen it. The occasional customer drifted through, but for the most part, little was happening. February is usually quiet, and weather forecasts warned that we were to get slammed with snow starting in mid-evening. The snow didn’t happened while we were open, but the threat [...]

The weather gods gave us three glorious days without snow: three days on which I didn’t have to wear boots to work; three days on which our vistas turned from stark white and grey to a refreshing blur of green and brown.
That ended last night, as the snow resumed control of the landscape. As we [...]

The customer seemed almost too eager to buy things. She had only been vaguely aware of eReaders before, but when I gave her a very brief demo of ours, she bought it. Offered the company’s Rewards Plus cards, she bought it. I mentioned several books that she might like, and she bought all of them, [...]