Reading Habits

JP has a post about the dumbing down of US reading habits.

Not that I want to comment on this. Heaven knows, in this country, reading isn't common fare, much less reading for fun. And those who read go for The Da Vinci Code or Harry Potter.

Eh.

However, JP's last comment reminded me of his previous exhortation to his countrymen SFF readers (don't ask me how my brain got this connection; it just did) :

This brings me to something that's often bothered me: going by the fact that most
bookstores in town have a reasonable sf/f section, and that I'm not buying every
single book that they stock, there must be someone out there buying genre
fiction too. But they never seem to go shopping at the same time as me -
everytime I'm at a bookstore, I'm usually the only person at the sf/f shelves
(apart from the odd Tolkien-seeker). So if any of you are the other people out
here who buy and read this sort of stuff, stand up and be counted, damnit.

This in turn made me remember this one time a week ago when I asked this small bookshop in Katipunan Avenue (Aeon Bookstore in Quezon City) why they never got me my request for Jeff Ford's The Physiognomy after I let it slip through my fingers in that same shop.

They said that they once brought in three copies of the book-- and a couple of days later, some guy bought all three copies.

What the fuck?!? Who would buy three copies of Ford's books and why would he do that?!?

Who-- and where-- are all these people?!? And-- paranoia striking here-- have there been books out there that I would have wanted but I never found out because they got it first?

Damn it, now I'm scared-- and mad.