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Tag: The Hunger Games

“The trouble with books is that they marry and have children.”

The Book Keeper2 Comments on “The trouble with books is that they marry and have children.”

The books I am asked for every day represent the kind of reading that people are looking for right now in their life. The books don’t fit any category that I can see, except the category of The Reading That Is Needed Right Now.  

The readers who have requested books recently are aged between 7 and 82. They are locals, visitors, and travellers. Some are students, and most are young readers. A few are requesting books for others but most are collecting for themselves. Most older readers say, ‘I don’t really need any more books, but I’m getting them anyway.’ Young readers say, ‘I need more, but I’m only getting these today.’ The requests never end.

Book requests include:

Asterix in Switzerland

The Pioneers of the North-West of South Australia by Norman Richardson

Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford

Anything by Christopher Fowler

William Blake

Winnie the Pooh

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

The Odyssey

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King

Anything by Daniel Silva

All the Lucinda Riley Seven Sister books

The Hunger Games trilogy

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

Any books about Paris

Cat and Mouse by Gunter Grass

Book 3 of the Skulduggery series

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Any Wings of Fire books

Anything by Henry James

Dune by Frank Herbert

Possum Magic by Mem Fox

Absolutely anything by Pittacus Lore

Any atlas of the world – as modern as possible

Anything about Vikings

A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

The trouble with books is that they marry and have children.

Angela Thirkell (1890-1961)

The kids

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Came in to the bookshop all at once. Twenty five of them, or maybe six. I couldn’t count them. They talked so hard. They were never still, roaming and picking books up, tapping and turning, and squatting down, three of them, over one book as though it were a map of the evening’s plan. Were they one family or a group of friends?

They turned out to be both. Two families, all friends. Because later, the mothers came in and did the same thing. Than a husband – who could not enter the conversation of the mothers, and so returned to the bakery.

But the children. They had read everything. I caught the tail ends.

‘I might get that.’

‘That’s the second book.’

‘I know.’

‘Where’s the other book?’

‘There’s no what?’

‘I’m not gunna read it.’

‘Oh my god.’

‘Trilogy…The Hunger Games’

‘Oh my god.’

‘Ok. First book good, second book ok, third book I actually liked it.’

‘But it wasn’t a satisfying ending.’

‘I know.’

‘I got halfway.’

‘Yeah. Same. I’ve read that though. And that. But not that.’

‘It’s good.’

‘They should do another one.’

‘I know, right.’

‘He should write the next one.’

‘I wish there was more of them.

‘Have you ever read all night?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Same.’

‘Look what I’ve got. I’m getting it.’

‘Look at this.’

On and on they went. There were sudden silences when everybody was caught in something at the same time. Then on they surged.

‘Hey.’

‘Woah.’

‘Look.’

‘Wait.’

‘Hey crazy guys. Let’s just read everything here.’

‘Except the gardening books.’

‘Oh my god, yeah. Not them.’

Suddenly they began to leave. There was someone outside tapping on the window. He called though the door, ‘Where’s the rest of you?’

They answered, ‘The bakery’.

Image by Hajin Bae

The boys who piled their skateboards next to the bookshelf so they could go and look through the shop

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This young family came in carefully and steadily, out of the summer and containing neatly four young boys, brothers, and a young mother who warned everyone to take care. The boys then stacked their skateboards next to a bookcase. They stacked them precisely and gently, taking care.
They moved amongst the books, scanning, pointing, experienced. Soon one boy came to the counter and told me how his friend was reading all of the Cat Warrior books and that it was funny that I had those exact books in the window. Then he moved away again. Their mother was reading in the chair. Two of the boys were under the table reading The Eleventh Hour, which they had at their school. Another boy was high stepping neatly and soundlessly around everyone else, he was saying:
Strike one, strike two, pinto on the road…
The first boy returned to the counter to tell me about Inkheart. He said: Inkheart is really good.
His smaller brother is now over in Poetry and Plays, he holds the shelf and stands on one leg, he is still chanting: strike one, strike two, pinto on the road…he holds a copy of One Dragon’s Dream on his head.
The first boy tells me that Skulduggery is really good, and The Hunger Games might be good and Dragon Eternal is really good. A Wrinkle in Time is mental, it is so good.
Their mother reminds them to take care. More visitors came in, they tell me about the heat as they enter, they take off sunglasses and look down at the skateboards…
Strike one strike two, pinto on the road…
South of Darkness isn’t that good, His Dark Materials, ok maybe, Elidor is fantastic…
The boys under the table are making a stack of books to read, they haul them across the carpet, they glance at their mother and take care.
Beast Quest was good but not anymore…
…strike…strike….one for luck…
The boy at the counter is resting his head on his arms, drowsing as he thinks of all the books that must be listed, the shop is going to sleep, the hot day is going to sleep and the kindly chime in the front room ticks slowly onwards (strike seven, strike eight… no pinto on the gate…) he is taking care with it and he is taking us with it…