Customer: What kind of bookstore is this?
Bookseller: We’re an antiquarian bookstore.
Customer: Oh, so you sell books about fish.
Customer: Do you have black-and-white film posters?
Bookseller: Yes, we do. They’re over here.
Customer: Do you have any posters of Adolf Hitler?
Bookseller: Pardon?
Customer: Adolf Hitler.
Bookseller: Well, he wasn’t a film star, was he.
Customer: Yes, he was. He was American. Jewish, I think.
Bookseller: …
Customer: I tell you something, you must get some odd requests, working here.
Customer: Hi, do you have any new books?
Bookseller: We’re an antiquarian bookstore – our stock is made up of books which are out of print.
Customer: So other people have touched them?
Bookseller: …Presumably, yes.
Customer: I don’t think I’ll bother, thanks.
Bookseller: … Ok.
Customer: I have The Pickwick Papers, first edition. How much will you buy them for?
Bookseller (examines book): Sorry, but this was was printed in 1910.
Customer: Yes.
Bookseller: The Pickwick Papers was first printed in 1837; this isn’t a first edition.
Customer: No, it was definitely first printed in 1910.
Bookseller: Dickens was dead in 1910.
Customer: I don’t think so. You’re trying to con me.
Bookseller: I promise you, I’m not.
Customer: (Glares for a while, then snatches the book back up) I’m taking the book elsewhere! (Storms out)
Customer: Hi. We’ve just moved and we’ve found some really old books in the attic. Would you be interested in buying them?
Bookseller: That depends—what sort of books are they?
Customer: Well, one of them is a copy of Gone with the Wind, printed the in 1890s.
Bookseller: Well, you know, Gone with the Wind was written in the 1930s.
Customer: Well, yeah, but this is a really old copy.
Terry Dallas
Armchair Books, Pendleton, OR
Customer: I’m looking for a signed copy of any book by Marcel Proust as a gift for my daughter.
Bookseller: I’m sorry, signed Proust material is very rare, but I can show you the books of his that we have in stock.
Customer (after paying): Do you have a pen?
(Bookseller hands him a red pen. The customer opens the book to the title page and writes: “I hope you enjoy my book, Marcel Proust.”)
Customer: Do you have a copy of Mrs. Dalloway, but, like, really old—so from, like, 1850?
Bookseller: …
Customer: Some of these books are dusty. Can’t you vacuum them?
Customer: Do you have any old copies of Dickens?
Bookseller: We’ve got a copy of David Copperfield from 1850 for $150.
Customer: Why is it so expensive if it’s that old?
Customer: This book has a couple of tears to some of the pages.
Bookseller: Yes, unfortunately some of the older books haven’t had as much love as they should have done from previous owners.
Customer: So, will you lower the price? It says here it’s $20.
Bookseller: I’m sorry but we take into account the condition of the books when we price them; if that book was in a better condition, it would be worth a lot more than $20.
Customer: Well, you can’t have taken this tear here into account (points to page) or this one here (points to another page), because my son did those two minutes ago.
Bookseller: So, the book is now more damaged than it was before, because of your son?
Customer: Yes. Exactly. So will you lower the price?
Customer: (Drops an old, expensive book on the floor by accident): Great shot!
Bookseller: (glares)
Customer: I mean… sorry.
Customer: Do you have a copy of Bella Swan’s favorite book? You know, from Twilight?
(Bookseller sighs and pulls a copy of Wuthering Heights off the shelf)
Customer: Do you have the one with the cover that looks like Twilight?
Bookseller: No. This is an antiquarian bookstore, so this is an old edition of the book.
Customer: But it’s still the one with that girl Cathy and the dangerous guy, right?
Bookseller: Yes, it’s still the story by Emily Brontë.
Customer: Right. Do you think they’ll make it into a film?
Bookseller: They’ve made several films of it. The one where Ralph Fiennes plays Heathcliff is very good.
Customer: What? Voldemort plays Heathcliff?
Bookseller: Well…
Customer: But that’s Edward’s role.
Bookseller: Wuthering Heights was written well before both Harry Potter and Twilight.
Customer: Yeah, but Voldemort killed Cedric, who’s played by Robert Pattinson, and now Voldemort’s playing Edward’s role in Wuthering Heights, because Edward’s character is Heathcliff. I think that Emily Brontë’s trying to say something about vampires.
Bookseller: … that’s $10.
Customer: For what?
Bookseller: For the book.
Customer: Oh, no, it’s ok, I’m going to go and try and find the Voldemort DVD version.
Bookseller: Right.
Customer: Thanks for all your help!
(Phone rings)
Bookseller: Hello?
Customer: Hello, I’ve got some books I’d like to sell.
Bookseller: Sure. What kinds of books do you have?
Customer: Oh, boxes and boxes of stuff. I’ve got some children’s books, some comics, some old magazines and newspapers, an exercise bike, a couple of art books and some cookbooks, too.
Bookseller: What was the one in the middle?
Customer: Erm. Old magazines.
Bookseller: No, the one after that.
Customer: An exercise bike.
Bookseller: Yes… we won’t be wanting the exercise bike.
Bookseller: Hi, can I help?
Customer: Yes. I’ve got a copy of The Secrets of Houdini that I’d like to sell. It’s very rare. And it’s signed by Houdini himself.
Bookseller: Actually signed by Houdini?
Customer: Yes. (hands book over)
Bookseller: Ah (upon noticing signature to frontispiece), I’m pretty sure that this signature is actually part of the printing.
Customer: Why?
Bookseller: Because the date next to the signature is 1924.
Customer: So?
Bookseller: Well, this book was printed in 1932.
Customer: Perhaps the date on the signature actually reads 1934.
Bookseller: In that case, the signature is fake.
Customer: Why?
Bookseller: Because Houdini died in 1926.
Customer: But if you feel the signature, you can tell that it’s ridged. It doesn’t feel like the rest of the page.
Bookseller: Yes, I see what you mean; it’s almost like someone’s gone over it with a pencil, isn’t it?
Customer (frowning): That is a genuine Houdini signature.
Bookseller: I assure you; it’s part of the printing.
Customer: He signed the book himself.
Bookseller: And dated it 1924? In a book published in 1932? Six years after he died?
Customer: … Perhaps it was his last unsolvable act of magic.
Bookseller: Unfortunately I don’t think that Houdini’s last cryptic trick was to come back from the dead, sign your book, and make you a whole lot of money.
Customer: …
Customer: I’ve got some books I’d like to sell (plonks them on the desk). I’d like twenty-five dollars for the lot.
Bookseller: Didn’t you buy these from us last week?
Customer: Yes.
Bookseller: I see they’ve still got our prices in.
Customer: Uh-huh.
Bookseller: … You didn’t even pay twenty-five dollars for these in the first place.
Customer: Yes, but they’re older now than they were last week, see. So they must be worth more.
Customer: I’ve got some books to sell.
Bookseller: Hi, thanks. I’m just helping some customers at the moment. Could you join the back of the line?
Customer: Er, I’m selling you books; I’m here for your benefit.
Bookseller: These other people are here to buy books, they are also here for the store’s benefit.
Customer: You’ve got thirty seconds to buy them, or I’m leaving. You need to learn to prioritize.
Customer: Do you have any second-hand crosswords?
Bookseller: You mean crosswords that have already been filled in?
Customer: Yes. I love crosswords, but they’re ever so difficult.
Customer (holding up a copy of Ulysses): Why is this book so long? Isn’t it supposed to be set in a single day? How can this many pages of things happen to one person in one day? I mean, I get up, have breakfast, go to work, come home… sometimes I might go out for a drink, and that’s it! And, I mean, that doesn’t fill a book, does it?
Customer: Do you… um… pay, like, more for signed books?
Bookseller: For some books, yes, a signed copy would certainly be worth more.
Customer: What would you give me for… um… like, a signed copy of, like… The Diary of Anne Frank?
Bookseller: I would give you something like a billion dollars for that.
Customer: Oh, awesome!
Anonymous
Customer: Do you have Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust?
Bookseller: No, I don’t think a publication date has even been set for that book yet.
Customer: I know, it’s just I thought you might already have a copy, considering you’re an antiquarian bookstore.
Bookseller: … Antiquarian means old. We don’t have books, you know, from the future.
Customer: Ah.
Customer: Do you have any old knitting patterns?
Bookseller: We do, as it happens, yes. They’re over here.
Customer: And do you sell knitting needles?
Bookseller: No, I’m afraid not.
Customer: But I’ll need those when using the old knitting patterns.
Bookseller: Well…
Customer: And do you sell wool?
Bookseller: No, just the knitting patterns and magazines.
Customer: You haven’t thought this through properly, have you? How am I supposed to knit a scarf without knitting needles and wool?
Bookseller: You’re going to have to buy those things from another store, I’m afraid.
Customer: It would be much better for me if I could buy everything in one place.
Bookseller: Unfortunately we can’t stock everything relevant to the books we have, otherwise we’d be full of gardening tools, sewing machines, cooking ingredients and paint brushes.
Customer: What are you talking about? I don’t need any of those things. I only need wool and knitting needles. I’m not going to knit with a paintbrush!
Customer: I’ve always wondered how one writes a book.
Bookseller: How do you mean?
Customer: I mean, how did authors do it before computers were invented?
Bookseller: Well, there were typewriters and, before that, they wrote by hand.
Customer: You would have thought they could have invented computers faster to make writers’ lives easier.
Bookseller: … Yes.
Customer: And then, now that they have computers, is there a program that they use?
Bookseller: A program?
Customer: A computer program that you know, puts everything in the right order. Tells you what to name your characters and things.
Bookseller: No, I don’t think so. Well, I’m sure that there are programs with guidelines but I don’t think people tend to use them. They just write.
Customer: They just write?
Bookseller: Yes, they just write the story they want to tell.
Customer: So they just use something like Word?
Bookseller: Yes, I guess so.
Customer: But, you see, that’s what I really don’t understand.
Bookseller: What?
Customer: Well Word documents are 8½ × 11 and a book is never that big. It’s a lot smaller.
Bookseller: …
Customer: So, how on earth do they get it all to fit?
Bookseller: …