Alvin Orloff, manager, Dog Eared Books
[Today’s been] the same as always: buy books, sell books, shelve books, price books, rearrange books, look at books, recommend books, help people find books.
The minute I was shown books, I preferred them to reality instantly. I’m absolutely introverted. People who like books are the easiest people to be around. Most of the people coming here are very civil in a way that I have not discovered people to be elsewhere.
I’ve been in the food industry, I’ve been in sales, I was an exotic dancer, I worked a forklift in a candle warehouse–all sorts of things.
The Mission is full of very serious literary people, so they’re often looking for obscure Austro Hungarian authors, and people whose name I can barely pronounce. Thankfully, we have a staff here that’s into that. We can often accommodate them. Not always, but often.
I just finished An Elemental Thing by Eliot Weinberger. It’s all based on things that were recorded as fact but not necessarily recently. So it’s Cold War, and scientific misinformation from years past, and these things are written up as little essays that sometimes veer into poetry. It’s very genre bending. It’s a great book.
One carries the book one is reading around throughout the day. It provides commentary on what’s happening.