The Quest for a book

Although Internet shopping is getting more and more popular, I still prefer to walk into a book shop, browse around a bit and buy something if I find what I want. In my view, book shops are superior over Amazon and the like. And of course book shops can only survive if they have regular clients like us. Cluny has a book shop which has served us well in the past, and since I needed 3 sequels in a series of books, I orderded them in Cluny. The books would arrive on Friday; if there were any problems, I would be phoned. I told them I would pick the books up on Saturday. That Saturday, under a beautiful blue sky, I got onto my bicycle, cycled the 8 miles to Cluny only to hear that the delivery was delayed. Not very happy I cycled back, to find a message on the answering machine that the books had arrived in the mean time. After lunch I got on my bike again, returned to Cluny, and heard in the bookshop, that volume 2 was not available. Would I mind to take volumes 1, 3 and 6 (!) in stead? Yes, I did mind, and returned with volumes 1 and 3. I had also made up my mind never to order anything from that shop again. The next stop was Amazon.fr. The book seemed to be available, although not through Amazon themselves, but through a third party. Not long after I had placed my order, emails started coming in from Amazon as well as from the third party. The book was in reprint, hence not available; no money would be taken out of my account, and that was the end of my order. The following option was Fnac, a French competitor of Amazon.fr. And they had a number of copies in store! After a session of literally hours (the Fnac site is top heavy, and works at snail speed through our narrow broadband connection), creating an account, ordering the book and paying via credit card, I found out that something under way had gone dramatically wrong. I had not created an account, not ordered the book, and (luckily) not paid. A few weeks later we had to go to Mâcon for something different, when we passed by a good bookshop called Univers du livre. Out of habit we walked in, and out of curiosity we looked for part 2 on the shelves. And lo and behold, part 2 was available, and on special offer, so our quest for this book ended happily after all!

The website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle