This book is exactly what it says on the tin: a collection of odd remarks overheard in bookstores, numbering a little over a hundred pages. If you are familiar with the Overheard in New York / Overheard in the Office / etc series of webpages, it’s like that but entirely PG-rated. The overwhelming majority of the quotes are from British bookshops, with a few more from other Commonwealth countries and one or two from American stores. There’s not much to review here: it’s a very casual kind of book, the sort one picks up for a few laughs now and again, with no need to sit and focus on reading it. There are some consistencies in the books chosen: wholly irrational customers, people confuse the bookstore with a library or a garden shop or a cafe or anything other than a bookstore, and my favorite — authors who come into the bookstore to look for or market their books. Some of the humor is directly book related (customers who struggle with remembering titles/plots), some of it is the kind of insanity one encounters from customers in any public-facing job, and some it is just assorted human randomness/goofiness/weirdness