'Tis the Season: The "Things You Want But Can't Have" Edition

So, amongst all the gift requests for "I need a book about wolves for my fourth grade son" and "Where's the Oprah book?" we get requests to order books that are existentially challenged.  They are either in process, planned, or completely non-existent, but completely unavailable to me as a bookseller.

Welcome to a list of "Things you want but can't have":

• Entwined With You (available in May, sorry)
• The fourth Fifty Shades of Gray book (announced but likely unwritten as yet)
• A Dance With Dragons in paperback (maybe May, since the last release date got pushed back)
• The sixth A Song of Ice and Fire book (in progress, not finished yet - GRRM has a blog where he occasionally posts tidbits and updates)
• The new Robert Jordan book (A Memory of Light is not available until January 8 - save your gift cards)
• The new Patrick Rothfuss book (I'm not sure when The Doors of Stone will be available; I have heard May but the date hasn't been officially announced)
• The new Rick Riordan book (well, since your kid already read The Mark of Athena I don't have any newer than that)
• A new book by Christopher Paolini (sorry, no dice)
• Catching Fire and Mockingjay in paperback (unfortunately that format is not available for retail sale, blame Scholastic)
• Any Wimpy Kid books in paperback (again, blame Scholastic)
• The Twilight-from-Edward's-perspective book (likely never to be published since it got "leaked" years ago)
• The new Harry Potter (which was really a request for The Casual Vacancy, which the customer didn't want after learning it wasn't a Harry Potter book)

And in the line of regular, random, crazy-pants requests/incidents:

• A non-fiction novel (eh? And what he actually wanted was a local-yokel author's book of history)
• A book about Ohio State football (which we don't have on hand since we're in Iowa and the University of Iowa is down the road making OSU football anathema)
• Gabby Gifford's gymnastics book (er, do you mean Gabrielle Douglas?)
• A customer told me how much more he gets laid now that the Fifty Shades & Co. books are out.  (TMI, dude, beyond TMI.  Also, please bathe.  Ack.)
• Books on panning for gold (which have to be ordered since we don't really have a market for those here in a breadbasket state)
• I tried to hand-sell Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks to a woman who told me it sounded "weird" then turned around and bought Gaiman's Coraline (which is also a "weird" book, but whatever)

Only five more bookselling days until Christmas!

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