Day 134 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and random people I talk to in the bookstore are sailing on into summer with their summer reading.A lovely man with a British accent was in yesterday, buying a stack of Patrick O'Brian novels in the Aubrey/Maturin historical naval series, including The Commodore and The Mauritius Command.
His wife had a stack, too, and was hoping for a cheaper copy of the S. E. Hinton book, Hawkes Harbor. We have a signed first edition at Babbitt's, and I think she just wanted to sit in the sun somewhere and read it, and it's often best not to spill beverages and sunscreen on signed first editions. I didn't even know Hinton had written this horror novel for adults--I see we have it in general fiction at Babbitt's, not in horror, but hey. And I see that Elizabeth Hand, who reviewed it for the Washington Post, did not like it much and compares it to an Ed Wood movie.
But Hand admired Hinton's young adult novels, and I did love The Outsiders, Rumblefish, Tex, etc., which would all be good poolside reading.
And there is a mass of 5 or 6 handsome young men--hard to tell how many as they move, well, en masse--that come into the bookstore regularly, and chat in various aisles--lots of time in the literary fiction aisle, lots of time in the science aisle. Yesterday I noticed tans, black shorts, red shirts; they smiled, etc. I was not the one at the register when they bought their summer reading selections, so I can't tell you what they are reading, but it always quietly thrills me how much these guys like books.
I promise that reading is the source of the quiet thrill.
