92 things booksellers said about our new fall books this month

Paul Ingram, Prairie Lights Iowa City (one of a dozen bookseller contributors to my sales call notes below)

Would she come to Milwaukee?

Love it but wish it were shorter.

Love it but wish it were cheaper.

Perfect.

Fantastic cover.

I hate that cover.

Why is he spending his time doing blurbs instead of finishing the third book in his trilogy I’ve been waiting for?

It’s a big year for Letters.

People just eat this kind of thing up.

My Science bookseller is salivating already over this.

Wow, I’d love to eavesdrop on their dinner conversation.

This guy is a workhorse.

“The Alexander Hamilton of China,” I love that.

This would be tough.

That explanation is really complicated and I don’t have time to use it on a customer.

Special Needs, Family/Parenting or Memoir/Biography?

This seems like just stating the obvious.

Looks more like a Nature book than Fiction.

Whoever’s idea that was to do these as flapped paperbacks, thank you!

Great package, great price, I can’t not take it.

So the kid’s name is Henry Adams?

The best cheat-proofing idea ever is the oral exam.

Anything about Nietzsche really works

Grim.

That author was just in the store last week!

These color catalog pages are really hard to write on.

Harvard should reprint that Foucault biography.

Kathryn Bigelow?  The Director? Really?

These sell really well when we face them out.

Huh!  Interesting…..

I’m mystified.  What should I do with this?

“Responsibility to one’s future self,” what an intriguing idea.

There’s no limit to the number of Proust translations we can handle.

God, another Proust translation?

Where would a book on the Danube go geographically?  Eastern or Western Europe section?

This could be huge!

A shame that’s such a bad discount.

That man is a good customer and a sweetheart.

That has front page New York Times Book Review written all over it.

We have monthly chamber music concerts in the shop.  This is perfect.

I already have too many picture books about penguins.

By November nobody will be talking about anything else.

Oh good, do you know Evil Men?

I just don’t think we have a customer for this [sigh]

I know the perfect customer for this.

Too historical.

Maybe Yale can break him out better than Cambridge could.

Clinicians just aren’t that interested in memoirs.

All the shrinks know their Shakespeare.

I just bought 1600 books on checkers from a collector!

Achebe, he’s a hero.

When a book works, it really works.

This is our kind of book.

We never really know what people are going to want.

Great subject but too bad about “American” in the subtitle.

That sounds a little like Rebecca Solnit.

Such an important argument, glad someone’s making it.

This just seems insanely wonderful.

I heard he had a falling out with Dennis Cooper!

I actually kind of like that cover.

Graffiti is so hot right now.

Gross!

I wish we had more interest in abstract expressionism.

Yes it’s a kimono but it has a bold, twenties, hip retro feel.

We can’t sell Matisse anymore, I don’t know why.

Good book design never hurts.

Oh I just hate to return a good book.

Last year was horrible, this year is great.

It’s a Bo Bardi year!

The more hardcore, the better for us.

Economics with an Asian flavor does really well.

Zizek is our most stolen philosopher.

Sounds quirky, we like that.

The tourists seem more interested in Starbucks than in buying a book.

I fear there’s less than meets the eye to this book.

$35 for 174 pages?

This cover doesn’t look like a book you’d want to read.

I love that the people he’s criticizing are our customers.

Excellent!  Marilynne Robinson is one!

Isn’t it a little premature to say the Surge worked?

He died so young!