Notes on book buying

My elder daughter has been working for a bookseller over Christmas before going off to Montpellier for three months on a language scholarship. Unfortunately, it has not turned out to be quite the literary dawdle she thought it would be. For a start she’s on her feet all day and, like a shipwrecked sailor, surrounded by water that she cannot drink – though drowning in tempting books, she is not allowed to read. Even when the store is deserted, which it invariably is on these slow, cold, January days, she has to look alert and interested in the spacious, but empty, shop floor, waiting longingly for a customer to drift in.

And then, she says, ‘eventually, someone does come in, and with dreary monotony they walk up to the counter and say: “Yeah, like I’m looking for a book?”’ and then wait, expectantly for her response which isn’t (because she needs the money) ‘dude, it’s a freaking book shop, what else would you be looking for?’ but instead is an encouraging ‘yes?’ while they continue to look at her balefully, like a Golden Retriever waiting for a tennis ball to be thrown.

'Yes, a book?' she prompts, virtual ball bouncing down the aisles....

Then almost inevitably they say: ‘It’s something called The Secret? Have you heard of it?’

‘Indeed, yes. Would that be the same The Secret that we have three shelves off in a special display box with THE SECRET printed out above it?’ She cries inwardly, while silently pointing to said display in a prominent position right beside the till and several towering ziggurats of volumes all emblazoned by the words: The Secret. Yep, sorry, it isn't actually that much of a secret any more. It's very, very popular self-help book.

‘But who would buy that? Let alone walk into a bookstore and basically confess, I am a saddo – I need help?’ asks my youngest child - oh she, brimming with empathy and milk of human kindness (luckily she wasn't the one who served the callow youth who came in last week and unflinchingly bought a book on Oral Sex).

‘Erm, I have a copy. Eva gave it to me.’ I confess in a very small small voice.

‘Well it’s not doing you much good, then is it?’ she counters. Coincidentally given all this talk of literacy, I’ve just been to see The Reader, and whilst I'm not exactly breaking into Kate Winslet-like acceptance speech sobs, neither am I doing bounding about doing backfilps and Mick Jagger handclaps.

‘I haven’t actually opened it yet,’ I say in my defence.

She rolls her eyes in her default expression of disgust. A saddo who doesn’t even read the saddo self-help book – obviously beyond the pale.

‘But wait, that’s not the worst of it.' Elder daughter tugs the conversation back - this is supposed to be about her, not me. 'Then you get the others who walk up to the counter and say again: “Yeah I’m wondering if you have a book?” (she mimes gesturing around her to the shelves, laden with such items) and then they go, "I don’t know what it’s called, and I don’t know who it’s by, but it’s about this big (makes book sized shape with hands) and I think it’s green. Or maybe purple. It's something about the countryside?” For God’s sake, how am I supposed to look that up on the computer?' She wails.

‘The other day there was this woman who came in and asked for The Hairdresser of Baghdad and got really upset when I couldn't find it in the catalogue - she called the shop manager and everything - yelling about how "disgusting" it was that we didn't stock it. She said it was a Radio 4 book of the week but only after she’d shouted at everyone, did it occur to me that that what she wanted was The Kabul Beauty School.’

However, the worst most-requested book whose title shall remained yet another secret, is for men who want to get laid in which the author offers pervy advice on how to pick up women. Apparently the other sales assistants have a vendetta going against customers who buy this and issue an alert whenever someone walks into the store and picks it up. Recently a call went round the shop that an eagle had landed in the self-help section. Embarrassingly, the customer turned out to be a young man who had asked my daughter out on a previous visit to the bookstore.

‘Your rejection has sent him over to the dark side.’ Her colleagues berated her. So now she’s been flicking through it herself, just to be forewarned of the pick-up techniques. 'Watch out if anyone tries to stroke your wrist with the line: "You must be a fire sign, your body's responding to my heat."' she says. 'He's obviously read the book.'

'What to mum?' scoffs the youngest, 'That's hardly likely.Who's going to try and pick her up?'

The girl has a point. My last enthusiastic admirer was encountered in Salvador.

And he was 74 and a bit unsteady on his pins.

And gay.