Today at Logos

I met Sandy's daughter and her two children when I arrived at Logos this afternoon.  They were on their way to the nearest Froyo (yogurt place), so didn't stick around to visit.  

She told me that the back room was filled with donations.  Susan and Peter have been on vacation in Europe for the past several weeks so the donations have piled up, awaiting their pricing the books.

The photo at the left shows only one half of the room.  The rest of it looks just as full.  And while I worked today there were two new donations, one of which was four boxes.  You could hardly move in the place by the end of the day.  (Harrison, the manager, said he's going to take some boxes home to get them out of the way and bring them back after Susan and Peter get home).

It was a pretty busy day, except for the last hour, so I didn't have a lot of time to read, though I did make it through Mark Twain's "Eve's Diary," from day #2 of creation through the next 40 years (with big gaps in between.

I'll tell ya, for someone only two days old, she had a pretty impressive vocabulary!  The book is actually kind of interesting given that it was written by Mark Twain and must depict his view of women.  Eve is a flibbertigibbet and Adam is a strong, competent man of few words.  Eve sees color and beauty and makes friends with all of the animals (even the dinosaurs).  Adam is the strong silent type who wants to take care of things, build shelter, etc.  Reflects not only Twain's idea of paradise, but also obviously his view of the role of women and men, though the final page, with Adam at her gravesite is touching...the book was written shortly after Twain's wife's death.

So anyway, work.  The first customer was a woman who came in with 3 children and took her youngest to the children's room, leaving the other kids to roam through the store.  I kept hearing the sound of books moving and kids giggling and I was sure that they were moving books to different shelves, but after they left they were apparently just straightening things up.  Mom bought 6 kids' books.

The next woman had earphones on and was holding her cell phone and talking in a language that was not one I recognized.  She was dressed in somber colors except for a bright purple purse.  She wandered around talking for a long time and finally, when her conversation was finished, asked if we had "The Rise of Asia."  When she couldn't find it, I gave her directions to the Avid Reader.

A bow-legged Asian man with a white baseball cap was looking at cycling books, but did not buy anything.

A couple who have been friends of ours for several years came in.  We had a nice brief conversation and then she bought a mystery and a book on gardening.  It was nice to see them

A guy whom a Lamplighters friend of mine would have described as "a long thin drop of water" (tall and very thin).  He spent a lot of time looking through theater books.  He wanted something on George Bernard Shaw, which he found, as well as four other theater books.  A good sale!

A mom and her teenage daughter, both dressed in different black and white patterned dresses looked around for awhile.  Finally Mom bought a Japanese-English dictionary and her daughter bought two Japanese books.  She had apparently been living in Japan recently.

A couple came in looking for a book by Mary Stewart (which they didn't find).  I didn't notice her much, but he looked sort of, but not quite, like a farmer with a flat wide-brimmed straw hat, which he removed, politely, when speaking to me.  She bought 2 contemporary fiction books (one of which was "The Help") and he bought "The Dancing WuLi Masters: An Overview of the New Physics" by Gary Zukav and the #1 Ladies Detective agency.  They both left and then he returned two different times to get other books he spied on the way out of the store.

A young girl who was a Molly Ringwall type with a short shag hair cut, dyed red, a short chiffon flowered skirt with a knitted black top with spaghetti straps, and brown boots that came up to mid-calf.  She looked around for a long time before leaving.

An older man with white hair and beard and a bunch of mail sticking out of his shirt pocket.  He was in and out so quickly, I almost didn't have time to record him.

He was followed by a woman who was a Janice Soprano (Tony's sister) type, with messy hair, a baggy sweater, and a huge purse.  She was a vision in off-white.  She also was in and out in a matter of seconds.

The store was full now, with clients in all the aisles and two people sitting at the front table reading.  A guy came up, all smiles, because he was happy to buy a Dave Barry book.  We talked a bit about Dave Barry (I didn't tell him I liked Bill Bryson better

A mother and adult son came in and bought 1 literature books, including Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin."

A white haired gentleman bought "The Legends of New Hampshire."

A mother and her young daughter, who looked younger than Brianna, bought 3 books, two of which were part of a series.  The girl had an armful of other books in the series which they bought at the other book store.

Three female friends came in together, all past middle age, all in shorts, one with a pony tail and one with pigtails.  Grey hair in pigtails is not a good look!  They looked around for awhile, but left.

A woman wearing a safari hat, who looked a lot like my late friend Diane (in Seattle came in to ask the time, and then left, she was followed by another woman who needed to kill time while waiting for her dinner companion.  She didn't buy anything either.

A strange man who reminded me of Rhys Ifans (who played Hugh Grant's roommate in Notting Hill), but with long scraggly dyed blonde hair sticking out under his snow white baseball cap. in stark contrast to his otherwise soiled-looking outfit.  He wore Bermuda shorts and old-fashioned tennis shoes with holes in them and he had a dirty looking backpack over one shoulder.  He wanted a book on honey bees, which we did not have.  I don't remember his buying anything.

But Harrison, the office manager, arrived about that time and it was time for me to pack up and leave.

At some point I finished Eve's diary and started a book about elephants that someone had donated.  I have my work cut out for me the coming week!