the peoples taste

since working in a book shop, i have learned alot about what new fiction is out there. everyday i get to shelve all kinds of books, read the back covers, and my knowledge of the genre is expanding rapidly. pity i just dont have the time to actually read all the books i get to shelve. there is a lot of good stuff out there, and as soon as i get my discount, i will be buying book with every last penny i have got. however, i have also learned a lot about what english people read. twoof the three big selling and over-producing authors i hadnt even heard of until i started working. the one i had heard of is Georgette heyer. i knew of her as my mother (who has dodgy literary taste) reads her books. they are awful: basically they are bodice-rippers dressed up as historical romances, so respectable middle aged women can buy them without feeling they are doing something "dirty." one of the other big selling authors, phillipa gregory, is exactly the same. but these middle age types buy both writers' works up in mass quantities. i have to reshelve both several times a day. what i find especially odd though, is that these novels, set in England during the time of the empire, (think jane austin period) are bought in particularly large numbers by black women. i really am a bit puzzled by this point, as neither the gregory nor the heyer books seem to make any effort to appeal to such and audiance: the world the aim to depict seems pretty white and, frankly, exclusionist to me.
then there is bernard cornwall. i suppose he must be the most successful, since middle aged men buy his stuff too (in addition to women). his Sharpe series fly off the shelf, even in hardback edition.
utter insanity.
the other thing i have learned is what kind of people buy pornobooks.
i am not talking here about soft porn, i mean the hard core nasty stuff. (the bookshop where i work as a section hidden in a corner selling the stuff, and we dont even bother to reshelve it correctly in alphabetical order, as it would be immpossible to maintain, people take books of the shelves and, in their shame to be caught, shove them back in any place they find)
so anyway, hard core porn is purchased predominantly by two types of people:
1. respectable looking business men wearing expensive suits and ties, of all races and backgrounds, aged 35 and over
2.equally respectable middle age women, generally over the age of 45 or so.
this job has clearly been a truely illuminating experience.