Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Why I love owning a bookstore

One of my favorite customers is a physicist who always orders obscure out-of-print technical books. I'm his go-to person, and he discusses his books with me as if I were as conversant in the topics as he is. I nod, smile, occasionally furrow my brow, and murmur, "Really?" at appropriate intervals.

The cool thing is that he doesn't order the books for work. He gets them for his personal library and reads them the way you or I would read a best-seller. Today he requested Atmospheric science and power production, which is described as follows.
Comprehensive reference text presents data and fundamentals of air-quality monitoring and meteorological instrumentation, including detailed coverage of atmospheric physics and boundary-layer processes; plume rise and buoyancy effects; atmospheric chemistry and removal processes; field experiments; diffusion modeling; toxicological effects of nonnuclear pollutants; radioactive-cloud dose calculations; atmospheric effects of energy generation; alternative energy resources; precipitation scavenging; etc. Separate analytics have been prepared for each chapter. 850 pgs.He wants it because his old copy is ratty.

Got technical books?

4 comments:

Shoe said...

The geeks shall inherit the earth (or should it be atmosphere?)

Chuckbert said...

It sounds like he's a customer that a Bookseller (or maybe two) should go out for a drink with.

RetroMag said...

I do so hope your nods, smiles, and "realy?"s are at appropriate times. (I'd probably blow my cover by smiling broadly when he was explaining how the chemtrails in our atmosphere are poisoning the population.)

BobbieS53 said...

I KNEW there were people out there like this! YIKES! I am such a slug that I only read current fiction and murder mysteries at that!