"What was your last book about?" Hopper asks. Maybe he's never been much of a reader and had always done his best to avoid doing his homework in high school, but he thinks if someone he knows has written a book, he might go out of his way to read that. Whether or not it's actually available in a place like this is another question entirely, but he figures he'll worry about that later.

Once he works out if he'll actually be able to sit down and read it or not. Because if she's written about astrophysics, he's probably pretty screwed in that regard.

Then again, he has the spare time now, like he's just said. He's not working, doesn't know if he's going to be able to go back in the way people expect, and that does leave him with a lot of time to just think. Thinking, in his case, tends to lead to drinking and he knows drinking leads to pills. That's not what he wants here.