A man came into the shop and told me that he is reading Henry Miller as an experiment. That he was documenting his own reading as a history of his own reading and so far it was amazingly erratic.
His little girl said: ohhhhh is Henry here?
A young man said: I am going to read the Harvard Classics. The whole lot, all 51 books, I saw them in a list and they are all very important: He was pushing a pram with an infant daughter beaming from inside, watching as he found a copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress and Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species.
He was hoping to get His Autobiography by Abraham Lincoln as this is the first one in the list but was content with the others instead. He angled the pram out expertly, his books stacked on the top along with a copy of Possum Magic, the first volume of Baby’s Harvard Classics.
An old lady came in with her friend and saw me drinking from a water bottle. One of them asked me if it was a gin and tonic.
But I had to tell her that it was just water.
She said that the river in The Wind and the Willows was just water too…
It is September but visitors are already thinking about Christmas, they argue over books, intending to gift them to that family member or this family member. One boy said: dad, don’t get it, that book is shit. He won’t want it.
A lady bought two Asterix books, one for each grandchild. She was laughing and laughing, she said that Asterix is just so funny.
Another old lady tells me that motorcycles should not be allowed in Strathalbyn anymore.
The steam train comes in, the bakery is busy, the street is warm, three young boys pass the window with skate boards on their heads. There is an altercation between small dogs tied up outside and the owner comes in and tells me that he wished he had not brought the bloody dogs down the street, but his wife makes him. And have I got a copy of Spartan Gold by Clive Cussler?
The Book Keeper Book Shop 