Bookstorian

It's been a bit of a nutter of a week at Bookstore Central. The biggest thing is that our Magaziney cousin store has just closed down so we've got all our usual things to deal with, plus all the folks dashing in or calling in anxiously inquiring about the fate of their subscriptions, and store credits and the like. In addition we are inheriting much of Magazine Central's shelving units, replacing those of ours which are on their last limbs. Overlord, in his infinite wisdom decided that these shelving moves would be much better accomplished while the store was still open, so it's been a madhouse of shuffling going on. Later on there will also be a major switcheroo of shelving too, so things will be torn apart again. All in all, it was perfectly chaotic, which beats out in everyone's books, those very few days when the store is so quiet that we run out of things to do.

Thankfully our long lost British shipment chose this particular week to arrive so that we can unpack boxes at the same time. The most overjoyed for certain were those anxiously awaiting the Mills and Boons shipment which had been severely delayed. We had folks popping in every day on the look out for them. Tomorrow will be an early day as it's StitcherAngel's day off, and Fearless Leader will be babysitting our computer system as it moves house. So it will be just BatBoy and myself in the store for most of the day. Since Batboy will be on hauling duty, I'll be in charge of the front desk. I'll resist the urge tonight to go all Star Trek on you all and refer to it as the helm or the bridge, though in some ways it is. It's a big rectangular thing that's about 3/4 my height, so it's almost a separate room really, filled with books, and what can only be refered to collectively as miscellaneous.

The funniest part of the week for me started off as a joke. Still hyped from reading "The Gruffalo" one too many times (its bad that I can now nearly recite the book from memory too) I sat down at my computer playing with something Julia Donaldson said about the lot of us being right out of a book ourselves. So I sat down and wrote (in very rough form) the beginnings of a book about the store, full of literary embellishments of course, and fired it off to StitcherAngel thinking we'd have a laugh about it later. She then fired it off to FearlessLeader, who mailed it off to all and sundry and demanded to know what happened next. So I finished it, but not in great enough length, so we've all verbally expanded upon it all week long. The past few days we've all been working up diabolical plots for our nefarious villains and ways for our heroes to defeat them. So, my prank may in fact be its own book. We have mentioned to Rindeseyu that should it come about we plan to badger her into illustrating it, especially since the first book she's illustrated has just this evening rolled off the presses looking fabulous.

So, readers, should you stumble upon any nefarious plot ideas you'd like to share feel free to post them. The free sharing of ideas is definitely one of the things that I like best about working in a bookstore. You really get to see the things that are important to people, and you get to explore yourself in the process. Not a day goes by that I don't find my share of laughter, and I think that that may be the best part of all.