Thread: Bookshop Interview

Tomorrow I have an interview at a bookshop. Apparently they are rather keen on asking questions about which books people have read recently, and being as the last actual book I read was the autobiography of Anthony Keidis, I'm going to have to lie.

And I'd very much like your help.

So if you were in my position, what would you say, in order to impress the interviewer?

Say you're reading New Moon.

Which bookshop is it?

Waterstone's.

<braces self for tide of tide of statements against the mediocrity and mainstream middle of the road nature of such an establishment>

Right then, if you can, try and find out the manager's name. Then go on a covert mission to Waterstones and look around the shop for those litle cards they have where the staff members recommend a book. Then just say you've been reading whatever book the manager has recommended.

And well, Waterstones may not be a small bookshop run by a slightly eccentric ex-Oxford don who lets you smoke weed round the back but it's pretty much the only chance you have of working in a bookshop.

Originally Posted by Brewtality

Right then, if you can, try and find out the manager's name. Then go on a covert mission to Waterstones and look around the shop for those litle cards they have where the staff members recommend a book. Then just say you've been reading whatever book the manager has recommended.

And well, Waterstones may not be a small bookshop run by a slightly eccentric ex-Oxford don who lets you smoke weed round the back but it's pretty much the only chance you have of working in a bookshop.

I'm definitely going to play the Movember card, ("Sorry about the moustache, it's only until the end of the month, I'm doing it for prostate cancer,") which I think will land me in good stead. Apparently the girl interviewing me is quite nice, a bit mad, and will like someone like me, according to her friend.

'A bit mad' is a bit vague though, does that mean I go Naomi Klein or Stephanie Meyer? Maya Angelou or JK Rowling? I'm going to mention that I enjoy children's literature, maybe A Series of Unfortunate Events would be a good one to throw in.

There is actually another bookshop in town that's run by a stoner and has a distinctly Black Books vibe. I've applied there for work before, got an interview, and when I told the guy about what I do over the summer, he got a glazed look in his eye, and told me I absolutely must not waste my time working in his bookshop. That would be my dream job in my town, but he's almost never looking for staff.

Say you like it all. But not Stephanie Meyer. That stuff is filth made for hormonal ex-Harry potter readers. You have to seel all kinds of books and so if you have a knowledge of a wide-range of literature then you can make better-informed recommendations to people. Y'know, your time in university taught you to appreciate many different styles and genres of writing etc...

i'm reading james herriot's all creatures great and small... it's really fantastic and i don't know why i've never read it before.

buuut it's old. so i dunno. i recently read this book.. and i can't remember the title or author for the life of me... but it was about this journalist chick from chicago who goes to her hometown to investigate the disappearances and murders of little girls.
it was really fking good, funny, well written, dark and twisted... fuck if i could remember what it was called. i can even picture the cover, it's got a razor blade on it. the journalist was a cutter and cut all these words into her body. really, really interesting.
this is pissing me off and i loaned it to a friend so i can't just go look.

another good, newer book was the incident with the dog in the nighttime... another kindof murder mystery, but written from the perspective of a child w autism, trying to figure out who killed his neighbor's dog. that one was really cool. you should read it.

anyhoo this hasn't been very helpful. good luck on your interview!!!

Herriot is teh awesome! Good luck dude, don't have any classics to toss at ya tho.

hey you can amazon that shit and read a few pages of it at least... you know, so you've got a lil action kinda like cliff notes style.

this is irritating the hell outta me, cuz this cutter chick novel author came out with a new book recently, and i amazon'd it and read the first chapter or so before it cut me off... and i was all stoked about it. GRRR.

The Bell Jar and the Butterfly.

Say you like the classics: Brave New World, Tale of two cities, pride and prejudice, etc.

Also Confederacy of Dunces is pretty awesome. Its a comdey that won the purlitzer Prize.

Oh, and you should throw in some foreign literature. Some Dostoyevsky, some Baudelaire

sharp objects, gillian flynn.. was the name. you should check it out.

You're really well read and you have an obvious interest in literature for literature's sake, I think if you try too hard to be something you're not, you'll not come anywhere near showing the passion and knowledge you have for it.

good luck man

EDIT: sorry, that's not really much to do with the topic

The only problem with Dostoyevsky is that since The Office came out, his name is associated with blagging about reading books you don't know. Maybe not nationally but at least within the circles of friends I've had. That said, The Gambler is good. For a book like that you really do need to have lived the life.

So I just went to a stand up comedy show out of town, and one of the (crapper) comedians picked on a woman who, it turns out, works in the bookshop where I'm trying to get a job! So if I can somehow throw in that I was at that show, and that I thought he was a dick (Paul Tonkinson, used to present the Sunday Show?) and if she's well liked in the store, and I can do so while she's around, that's another knee under the proverbial table.

Oh networking. How useful art thou.

Some nice suggestions there though Skittles, if I go down my preferred route of dystopian literature (obviously avoiding 1984), then I can go Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and We (by a Russian dissident). So I've got children's literature, dystopian literature with a foreign twang, I might bring up Ginsberg with relation to my dissertation (not sure if Hunter S is a little obvious), Thoreau and Fitzgerald and possibly Pynchon to cover American, and then a nice little mention of Hardy (he's from my town, possibly a little obvious too but they'll love it) and Dickens, and I should be onto a winner.

I did say in my application that I like poetry, so... I guess Ginsberg, uhm... hm. TS Eliot and Edgar Allen Poe might be good to throw out there, and I'll have a joint and re-read Larkin's the Whitsun Weddings before bed tonight, if I've still got it.

A bit male, maybe. Hmm.

whats wrong with mein kampf?