Saturday, May 12, 2012

Specification

image credit

Once upon a time,
in my secondhand bookshop (not the one pictured),
I was asked a question:
Do you have anything by C.S Lewis?
To which I replied,

Something in particular?
The Narnia Chronicles?
Or his fiction for older readers?
Non-fiction?
The Screwtape Letters?
To which they repeated,
Anything by C.S. Lewis.
On that particular day I had some of all of the above. So I gathered together a selection from each category's bookshelf; a dozen books ranging from pristine paperbacks to older collectible treasures  to nondescript dust jacket-less hardbacks.

After the briefest glance at the C.S. Lewis array, the customer said,
What I am really looking for
is an antiquey looking hardback edition
of The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe
...an illustrated one.
To which I responded,
I am so sorry to have wasted your time.

The Moral of the Story
If you ask for what you want - you may or may not get it
but you will definitely save yourself some time.

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