Logos Today

When I arrived at Logos, I could see that we now have a new painter on display.  Logos turns its walls over to local painters who can hang what they want and advertise their work.  I can't remember how long the paintings stay up, but when the time is over, another painter displays his/her wares.

Art is another one of those subjects about which I know very little.   I can talk a bit about VanGogh, but get me much beyond that and I display my ignorance pretty quickly.

My tastes tend to lean more to the literal than the abstract.   This isn't entirely literal, but it is more literal than the other abstracts.   I haven't decided if I like this artist or not, but I kind of think that I do.   (Sorry--I didn't get the name of the artist, and it's not on the Logos Blog yet)

It had not been my intention to write about my day at Logos today, especially since it seemed to be a pretty dull day.  In the first hour, I only had one sale and that guy was shocked when I rang up $81 first.  Turns out Peter had left so quickly that he hadn't cleared out the cash register, so I was adding this guy to the previous sale.  He was very relieved when I canceled that sale and rang up the right amount.

But then "they" came in and I decided to start taking notes.

"They" were a group of four young women, who all came in together.  They were all tall, all had long-ish hair, three of them wore ankle-length gauze skirts over what looked like Bermuda shorts.  The fourth one wore a long black dress, very form fitting and looking beautiful.  She had what looked a jeweled evening bag over her shoulder.  She could have been going out to a fancy dinner.   I was so taken aback by the group that I told them they were the best dressed group that had ever been in the book store.  They laughed, but offered no explanation for what they were doing there, other than looking at books.

They wandered around the store for a bit of time and finally one asked me if I had a copy of "East of Eden."  I directed her to the section where she would find the Steinbeck books and mentioned that it was my favorite book.   She said that she doesn't own any books yet, but she is thinking of getting one and she might also add "East of Eden" to her as yet nonexistent collection.

She left the store saying she didn't find any Steinbeck books.   I went to the shelf and found a bunch of Steinbeck books, but no "East of Eden." But they were long gone by then.

A Latino family came in--a couple of young women with an older boy, a younger girl, and one had a baby.  The woman with the baby just wanted to sit, but the others looked around for awhile.  The little girl was the most excited about the store, especially when I showed her that there was a whole room just for children's books.   I've said this before, but I'm always tickled when kids come in excited about books.  It's what I love about Bri and Lacie, that they love books so much.   Laurel is now reading Bri her first "chapter book" at night when she goes to bed.

A man came in to buy a copy of "Walden" but decided it was too thick to carry on his bicycle so he bought a copy of "Tom Sawyer" instead and said he would be back to get "Walden" if it was still there.

A Latino young man came in.  He was the kind of person that you might shy away from on the street, scrubby clothes, one earring, tattoo, and scruffy beard.  But he headed right for the literature section and spent a lot of time looking through the books, deciding on what he wanted.

A middle-aged man came in and gave me my biggest sale of the day.   He bought 2 cookbooks (including the huge "Gourmet today" by Ruth Reichl), 2 books on flowers, one Trees of Puerto Rico and one on wildflowers of the Rocky Mountains.  He also bought a book about bicycles and two books about the history of American Indians.  Now that's eclectic!

The next customer also bought a book about American Indians.

There was a cute little European man who comes in frequently.   He always mistakes me for someone else.  Today he said he was glad that my arm was better because he remembered my having it in a sling the last time he was there.   Uh.  No!  But he's very nice.

A woman came in and looked around, and then left, then came back looked around some more and left again.  She finally came in one more time to give me a Bargain Book, from the sidewalk, those books which are $1 each.

Around 5 p.m. my regular customer came in.  He apparently attends a meeting downtown on Thursday and he always stops in, always buys at least one book, always pays cash, always gets a receipt.  The books he buys are always eclectic.  Today he bought 3 bargain books, a book on paper folding for pop-up books, and a book on Sundials.  I would love to see what his home looks like...probably a lot like mine!

A woman with copper colored hair must have wandered around for half an hour before buying one bargain book.

I was a customer today too.  I found not one but two books about Turkey (I've been looking for a long time and we never had one before) and I also found an Albert Peyson Terhune book in the "old book" section.  I couldn't remember if I had this one or not, but I sort of pick up his books whenever I find them because I love his stories.  So now I have a big stack of them on a book shelf and a big stack of them on my Kindle.  I'm going to have to make a list of the Terhune books I have so I don't keep buying ones that I already own, even if they are inexpensive these days.