Our store is located a block or so from the campus of the University of Maryland, so we get quite a few students and academic types passing through.
Despair:
Students overheard while buying books for classes: "Didn’t they make a movie of that (Toni Morrison’s Beloved)? Yeah, they did–I don’t need that one."
"Six books? Man, this is so not what I signed up for."
"I can’t even remember the last time I read a book."
"I’m not going to read them–I just need the professor to see me in class with them."
"It smells like books in here."
My eldest daughter is off to college next year, and one of the panelists interviewing her for a scholarship had this comment on reading: "I just don’t have the concentration to read an entire book. Sports Illustrated and Cosmo are all I can handle."
Hope:
The student who had to read Samuel Beckett (Nohow On) for a class and loved it so much he’s been back to buy two more copies to give as gifts. (I hope his friends appreciated it.)
The student who asked me for Tolstoy, Dickens, Pynchon and Philip Roth. When I asked if they were for a class (curious as to what class would be reading such a wide variety of books), he replied, "No, they’re just to read."
A group of parents who got together and decided that instead of giving the kids coming to their children’s birthday parties more useless knick knacks in a goody bag, they’d give them each a book.
"It smells like books in here."
Hmm. . .Despair currently outnumbers Hope 6 to 4.