The Compendium Illusion

    There is a phenomenon in the bookseller world that occurs that I like to call the Compendium Illusion. The basis is simple: We as booksellers should know everything about every book everywhere twice. That's how we get questions like,"So I'm looking for a book. I saw it on an airplane and it had a red flower on the cover, or maybe the cover was just red, but it looked like it could be a flower. Do you have that?" (It ended up being "Devil May Care" by Sebastian Faulks).
    So while I am standing there, dumbfounded, trying to mentally search all books I can think of that either have flowers on them or are red, or possibly both, and coming up with both 100s of options as well as none at all, the customer is frustrated that it's taking longer than the 3 seconds it would take to refresh an Instagram page they want to be looking at. After that, I do some fancy searching on my handy dandy inventory system, and poof, book. While there are very few instances in which a book is not identified as being on this plain of existence I would like to iterate one thing...
    Don't believe in the Compendium Illusion.
    As much as I would like to think that I can recall with perfect accuracy the large number of books I have read, the sad truth is I can't remember the authors of a large majority of them. Another section of the ones I can remember, I can't pronounce anyways.Example: I was nearly slapped by a fellow employee because I said Proust as 'Pra-ow-st' and Camus as 'Cam-us' (which actually makes sense except... you know... french.)
   It also isn't as thought we don't know any books at all. Sometimes we just have no idea what you're talking about. At the same time, we can suggest 12 different books that you might not have ever heard of and very soon could never live without. Power.
    The point being is that I  love it when you educate me as well. I love hearing what readers are saying, what they like, what they hated, what they wished had changed, and what changed them. I love hearing about that one time you tried reading a YA novel on a dare and now own the whole series in autographed hard cover.
    I don't have all the answers, though am trying really, really, really hard to get to point that I do.
    Now I have realized that the beginning of this post really seems like I'm just complaining that people want me to be the best at my job. I will point out that while it is a bit frustrating that all someone can give me is that there is the letter "A" at the beginning of one of the words in the title and it sounded really cool, I also welcome the challenge.
   But again...
   Don't believe in the Compendium Illusion.