Revenge of the Bookseller

[onemuseleft]

A customer came in today looking for a series of books called the Black Jewels Trilogy, which I honestly don't much care for. Anyway, I showed her to the section and handed her the first book and asked her if she was a fan of the author. Turns out she's not, she's just looking for something new to read and a friend had suggested the books to her.

I intervened. ^_^

Her: *grinning* Honestly, my friend just told me it had a lot of kinky sex.
Me: The sex scenes are mostly fade to black or poorly worded rape euphemisms.
Her: That doesn't sound very kinky.
Me: Would you like me to tell you about the poor characterization, the grammatical mistakes and the plot holes you could drive a semi through?

We ended up talking for a long time and going through the fantasy section talking about the books we'd read and whether or not hell will freeze over before George R. R. Martin puts out his next book. Turns out we had really similar tastes, so I made a few recommendations.

She ended up walking out the door with Hades' Daughter by Sara Douglass, Sunshine by Robin McKinley, The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells, The Rules of Ascension by David Coe and The Ruins of Ambrai by Melanie Rawn



It occurs to me that, what with the politicians paying off journalists and lobbyists buying off politicians and God Only Knows Who paying the lobbyists, there's an opportunity that's being missed.

Authors bribing booksellers.

No, no, wait. If we're going to be a country of paid-off suck-ups, then damnit, why shouldn't I get in on the game? I already pimp out my favorite writers all the time for free. Now with this new method, I could recommend books I've never read by writers I've never heard of and claim it's the greatest thing written and that the National Book Award committee were obviously biased against it and that by GOD it should win the Nobel prize for literature someday or I've lost faith in all humanity.

Not that I'm not perilously close to doing that anyway.

Oh well. If things ever do go that far, I'll still rec the writers I love and I'll do it for free.