Watching Them as They Come in...

It's already started. Officially, "Rush" doesn't begin until tomorrow, but already the new and returning students are rushing into the lobby of the bookstore, on their way to the Textbooks Department, downstairs -- if they know the way. The buzz of young voices, the constant shuffle of the crowd, the sound of anticipation and nervousness, of newness and youth and the future, fills the bookstore. It's shockingly loud here, unlike a bookstore, or at least unlike the bookstore or any bookstore most days. I'm surprised, every year by the sound. So are our customers not associated with the University. I look up from the Used Books Desk to see the startled faces of the bookish, amidst all these bright new ones. It's nothing really to do with me, but it's exciting none the less.

I wonder, if and when they pause, if any of these bright young things will spot the nice used hardcover of Camus' Notebooks we just priced and put out, if any of them will recognize the title of Saramago's Blindness from the movie adaptation set soon to be released. Will one of them want the paperback Cannery Row (do they still read Steinbeck?) Will The Tale of Genji catch a young eye? Vargas Llosa? Pascal?

Putting out nice, used copies today, I felt as if we were setting traps...