Ruthie went into Hammicks yesterday for the first time in ages, and was bemused to see a “legal top ten seller” display located next to the cash desk. Mainstream bookshops install these displays, Ruthie assumes, to encourage impulse buys. But most people go into law bookshops to buy a specific volume, not to browse. Ruthie wonders about the hypothetical lawyer who goes in to buy a copy of Archbold and comes out in addition with “Contract law for Plumbers”. “ooh it must be a good read cos its number 3 in the chart, I’ll read it on the plane next week..”
I am, unfortunately, one of those people. Probably my single biggest expense every month, outside of the usual, is on books. I usually buy from Hammicks - they have excellent customer service.
Mind you, I don’t come out with “Contract Law for Plumbers” as my impulse purchase. It will either be a monograph on an aspect of private international law, a Land Law text, or one of those books that I always thought I really should have read (think Dworkin, Hart, etc).
Swot.
I read recently that lots of people buy books not to read but to put on their bookshelf just to look clever
Indeed…. but the truly clever….bend the books a bit to give the appearance of use.
Good grief woman, don’t give the game away!! I spent a fortune on “Quantum Electrodynamics - a Really Complicated Treatment for the Very Clever Indeed” - I don’t want that money wasted.
Except in Southern California, where clever is “out” and you rarely see books in homes or offices (it’s apparently part of some kind of celebration of the joy of shallow-ness), that’s happened 2 or 3 times in my country. At least that’s what I heard…I, however, have almost 5 books. Well, maybe 4. Okay, it’s just 3. And they’re all in Washington, DC.
Ruthie reads lots of books, mainly becuase TV is so shite. Dan: if you like HST may I also recommend Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, Chuck Palahniuk, and Ruthie’s particular favourite, Douglas Coupland.
Ruthie also has to confess to being a sad science fiction fan: Iain M. Banks Culture series, excellent stuff.
On the subject of which: new series of Dr. Who tonight. Is Ruthie the only person in the world who thought that Bille Piper couldnt act? Still I see we have a new assistant starting who Ruthie suspects is likely to be better, not least because she appears to have got the job on ability rather than merely contacts..
David Tennant is of course quite hot, but a bit small and skinny for Ruthies tastes. However if his agent is reading this Ruthie would be prepared to grant him an interview.
Years ago when they did the Yellow Pages commercial with the old codger looking round bookshops for “Fly Fishing - by J.R. Hartley” some enterprising published banged out just such a book and made a tidy sum I hear.
I am, therefore, now busy banging out “Contract Law for Plumbers - by Tony Cistern QC”. Now I can’t quite remember: ‘consideration’ is important here, but why? How Geeklawyer and Ruthie treat each other on the blog can’t matter?
I must risk mockery at the hands of Ruthie by confessing that I do this regularly. I love wandering round bookshops collecting crusty old editions; though law books are the rare exception for me when old is bad - “The Copyright Act 1911 - a student primer” would not be a huge benefit.
I have an entire shelf full of crap I’ll probably never read. And I don’t have what I do need.
it appears then to be Hammicks marketing department 1 Ruthie 0. I’m clearly the only person in the world who goes in for a book on criminal evidence and comes out with..a book on criminal evidence.
Surely the whole point of bookshops is browsing and impulse buying. If you know what you want, you get it cheaper from Amazon. If Amazon don’t have it, you phone your specialist bookseller and get them to post it to you.
Yeah, but I know that I want a book on criminal evidence, just not which one. So I browse to the extent I look at the selecton of books available on the topic I want. I know you can to this electronically on Amazon, its just not the same somehow.
Ruthie–I know Naked Lunch and Wild Bill, one of the leaders of the Beat Gen, but not the other authors mentioned–so thanks very much. (It’s a good thing we didn’t meet.) Will explore them when I am in Florida, where allegedly there are many books still around, next week protecting the Germans from the Spanish. Tell GL that WAC? is also off the juice and running like a big fast dog. I don’t like TV but do not like SF either. Should we wed anyway?
Dan,
nah don’t marry Ruthie. I’ll let you in on a secret: I let her seduce & marry rich lawyers. Then I bump them off and we split the proceeds of the estate while having sex over the departed husbands grave.
It’s kinky I agree, but kinda fun. And profitable. We both love you enough not to make you a victim - Martin ‘conflictoflaws’, however, deserves to die. We can’t say why on a public forum …
Dan:
Ruthie is old enough to know that relationships are basically all about compromise and complementary skills.
Ruthie has the reading-writing thing covered. You simply have to supply the beach front property and Porsche 911.
In fact the less you read the better: Ruthies lawyers will draw up the pre-nup.
P.S. Wedding dress on order.
Can LA Ellen & I be bridesmaids?
I feel very flattered by all of this attention. Just because I’m young, stupdendously good-looking and a bit of a genius doesn’t mean you have to feel inadequate, geeklawyer…
On second thoughts, maybe you do. Carry on.
No. It’s OK Martin I’m not an academic - so I do’t feel inadequate
OK readers, Ruthie is selling tickets for the Martin v GL fight. Dare I suggest that GL is rather better at giving it out than taking it?
Or maybe Dan could fight Martin for me
Dan fight Martin?: that sounds as likely as two jews fighting over a pork sandwich.
Not that I am suggesting that you are in any way way porcine, or grotesquely fat, or blubbery or double chinned and riddled with cellulite, or that you have a beer gut to rival a darts player.
No. Some of us like a bit of pork scratching with a beer or two…
I’d rather fight Minor Junior, but would it be cruel to batter a [Minor Junior’s nationality] with a justifisble inferiority complex?