On old reviews

A woman came in with a page cut out from the Wall Street Journal. She had saved a review and was now asking for the book. I thought we might have it, the book was familiar to me, but a quick glance at the Bio/Memoir shelf proved we didn’t. I looked it up in the system and saw we’d had in the fall of last year when it came out in hardcover. The paperback comes out September 30 - just a bit too far away. But it made me curious. Was the paper writing about it in advance of the paperback? It seemed too far away. Had they somehow just discovered it, or were they covering it for a specific reason I’d missed? 

I said we could get her the hardcover and before I could explain further, she said that’s what she wanted. I had the newspaper in my hand in order to look at the title so I discreetly turned it over to look at the date. September 2024. Has the newspaper been sitting in her house for a year and she’s just now gotten around to looking at it? Or has she been saving this review all these months and is just finally making her way to us?

Just another one of the many unsolved mysteries from working in a bookstore.