Beyond colors and borders: an encounter with The Book Doctor.

Today, I met Alex, the Book Doctor. Alex supplies books for us for the libraries in our schools, and he orders them in bulk from international sources so that we don't have to pay excessive amounts to stock our libraries. He informed me that he is, in fact, "the Book Doctor," on sporadic occasions when he had just revealed random obscure facts about books and publishers. Quite personable for a Book Doctor, Alex gestured expressively as he spoke clear English with an accent I recognized as being Singaporean. Despite his articulate command of the language, he would occasionally feel the need to start over explaining some intricacy of our children's library order, and would emphatically wipe his hands back and forth through the air and across the empty table top as though cleaning away his previous descriptions.

While we were going through the list of subjects covered on our book list, Alex interrupted abruptly to inform us that we were not allowed to buy Geography books from him.

"Do you sell geography books?" we asked. "Of course I do" came the reply, "but you must not buy them from me." We all paused, not sure how to respond. "It's the maps." he explained. Apparently, sometimes maps in imported books will depict Taiwan and China in different colors, and this, he pauses for emphasis, is unacceptable to the government. He gestures to the table and places a napkin and a paper clip in the appropriate geographical places, "this is red and this is green. Or this is blue and this is pink!" he exclaims. He wipes the invisible context of the map from the air and places his hand diagonally across the napkin. "And sometimes" - another pause for emphasis - "they print the border for India HERE!" It is clear from his tone that the China/India border is definitely NOT Alex's hand.

My Chinese co-worked nods while my boss and I are visibly taken aback by this newly acquired knowledge. "So they stop all of the atlases and geography books at the border to read them." Alex nods and sighs, the sigh of someone who long ago resigned to bear the burden of this kind of extensive knowledge of books. "Well. Yes." He says, wiping the air again. "I am the Book Doctor."