I Can't Remember the Title But the Cover Is Blue by Elias Greig

Elias Grieg worked at a bookstore in Australia - he doesn't say exactly which one, but it's on Sydney's North Shore - for a few years while working on his PhD. He'd hoped to find that bookstore customers were different than those at previous retail establishments where he'd worked, that they would be smarter, more thoughtful, just better.

Reader, you know he was wrong.

I Can't Remember the Title But the Cover Is Blue collects a hundred and eleven interactions Grieg had with customers in that unnamed shop - several times he seems to answer the phone with a name starting "North Shore," but that may be fictionalized - and his customers were just as weird, arbitrary, confused, bizarre, and annoying as those shopping for shoes. Additionally, someone's tastes in books can tell you things about them - Grieg mentions divorce and alludes to political issues; depending on the store the clerk might also find out more than he wants to know about someone's sexual proclivities or medical problems - that you would prefer not to learn.

This is a 2018 book published by Allen & Unwin; it looks like the Australian edition has made its way around the world without needing to be republished in other territories. I read it digitally, but the physical book is available for purchase in the USA, and my guess is also in the rest of the English-speaking world.

Grieg puts each of his vignettes in a script form, with dialogue and stage directions, and he's the kind of word-loving smart person who is good at providing telling details - though his cultural references, obviously, are Australian, and may be opaque to many readers (me, much of the time, for example).

Some examples of his customers:

• Righteous magpie lady and her drooping, sweetly bespectacled son
• Cheerful British chappie whom I've suspected as a Neo-Nazi since he ordered Mein Kampf last year
• Superbusy ninja mum who really doesn't need any extra frippery just quick service, thanks
• The saddest woman in the whole world, apropos of nothing at all
• Designer stubble in suit and tie (cologne strength = real estate agent)
• Rumpledmum and Fleecedaughter
• Elegantly dressed woman with an air of baroque, Continental gloom

Greig also comments on the interactions; I see some Amazon reviewers dislike that and wish he'd just written down what other people say and kept himself out of his own book. (Those people are wrong-headed, of course: viewpoint is always important.)

This is amusing and fun; I wished it was longer, which is a good sign for any kind of book. It will be most immediately loved by bookstore clerks, librarians, and other retail workers, but anyone who likes quirky thoughtful descriptions and overheard dialogue will find a lot to enjoy here.