What the?

Oh well, I suppose I’d better explain myself. Book-selling (as with any form of retailing) is a rather stressful trade, and this site grew out of a list our manager started a few months back, where we all were encouraged to write down the odd/inane/daft questions we were asked over the course of a single weekend. By close of business on Sunday the list covered three A4 pages and we knew we were on to something. Not only had our stress levels gone down, but we’d actually enjoyed serving people that we’d normally have gotten rather frustrated with, and we had great stories for all our friends – who also had stories for us. I flippantly suggested starting a website and rather than letting it drop, I have been unmercifully nagged into creating it. Here you go folks!

Oh and for those of you wondering about the title, it comes from one of the most frequent (and bizarre) questions we get asked, something along the lines of “Do you have the book I’m looking for? It’s cream and written by a woman, I think. I’m not sure….” Now this type of question is uniquely frustrating because the person asking it generally has no clue what the book is even *about* and so all efforts to help them recall something useful like a title or author’s name will be a waste of energy and a cause for increasing frustration for all parties concerned. They won’t know where they heard of the book, or how it caught their attention, they just have the vaguest idea about the cover colour, or possibly the spine colour. It’s hard to tell.

Given that our books database doesn’t list books by cover colour, or authors by gender and therefore has no facility for cross-referencing the two…it’s a losing proposition. Oh and a LOT of books are cream, and many of them are written by women.

There will be a day when I point some hapless soul off to a corner with the phrase “Oh, really? Well we keep all our cream books over there.” I just haven’t quite gotten there yet.