Time spent in a bookshop can be most enjoyable, whether you are a book-lover or merely there to buy a book as a present. You may even have entered the shop just to be kept from a sudden shower of rain. You are careless of your surroundings. The desire to pick up a book with an attractive dust-jacket ( 书的护封皮 ) is great, although you might end up with a rather dull book. This opportunity to escape the realities of everyday life is, I think, the main attraction of a bookshop. You can wander round such places to your heart’s content. If it is a good shop, no assistant will come to you with the “necessary” greeting: “Can I help you, Sir?” You needn’t buy anything you don’t want. In a bookshop an assistant should remain in the background until you have finished browsing ( 浏览 ). Then, and only then, are his services necessary. Of course, you may want to find out where a particular section is, but when he has led you there, the assistant goes away carefully and looks as if he is not interested in selling a single book. It is very easy to enter the shop looking for a book on ancient coins and to come out carrying a copy of the latest best-selling novel. Apart from running up a huge account, you can waste a great deal of time wandering from section to section.