h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

By the way, should have said, I love your portfolio. Read it a while back, and it inspired me to try to do something a little more creative with mine.

Yang

Is working in a bookshop as romantic an occupation for an aspiring writer as it sounds???

Yang

'Tis the Yang again!

In reply to your question - NO.

Great workmates, fair discount, shite boss. Some good, some bad and somewhat rather mental customers but it does fury a few wonderful moments. Actually, I get more inspiration from working in a library! A collage of quirky charcaters of all shapes, sizes, ages and questions. 'Tis an interesting balance between the two - like working inside out and back to front, if you catch my drift.
And yes, I am aware what sells, in popular demand, be it to beg, borrow, steal or buy. I fall to the charms of all four on a regular basis yet lazy to create anything seriously of my own. You can't beat the swell-smell of a new book, the unbroken spine and the crisp white of page. The shiny exterior and the bubblewrap. THAT in itself a real perk.

Don't get me started really - How the small independents are being crushed by the chains and supermarkets, by the internet for book sales etc. (We ourselves list all our stock on Amazon, plus on own website). The whole aura of the little comforting bookshop on the corner has last it's shine and dog-earred in this modern hell of instant and fashionable economy. Lord of the fecking Rings and Barry Trotter, they sell, but so much more gets smothered and lost because of them... BET you wish you'd never asked me now!

ANYWAY, the answer is still NO.

Although, being a romantic and an aspiring writer-of-sorts, I only wish it was as you suggest...

To end with George Bernard Shaw in 'The Author', 1903:

"What we want above all things is not more books, not more publishers, not more education, not more literary genius, but simply and more prosaically more shops."

So we gotta write what will sell, scribe!
Hang with it, Yang!

Jen

Yangtze,

Bet you're up to your eyes, ears and elbows with moving house! Found any long lost items of interest? I tend to find money, (bronze coins only), half eaten bars of choc, odd socks, letters and bits of jewellry when on a sort of move.

Anyway, just found this message and thought I'd touch base again. Hope all is well and that you are gleaming lots of stuff to write about!

Jen

Hi PenJen

Good to hear from you.

Absolutely snowed under with moving-type jobs at the moment. Realising how much crap I've accumulated, and how much of it I can't bear to part with...

Still needing to sell my house and find a job by September, but it'll all in time I'm sure.

What you up to over the summer???

Yang

Hello there stranger!!

Summer? What's that?! So really busy with work & stuff will be lucky if I can step-dance out the door and into the ballroom of pleasure!
No honestly, I am 'hoping' to go to Baltimore/New York in Aug-Sept for a few weeks. Have a brother & good mates there. Looks a bit shady at mo but we'll see. Mind you, could do with a week spent indoors to do some domestic godly stuff and a sweep of a sping-fling clean!!

Good luck with the sale of house and acquiring new job. Double the trouble it seems. And you'll KNOW the gems from the crap!! Speak again soon.

Take care,

Jen