Today, at a local outpost of a large chain bookstore, the sprogs and I endeavored to spend some gift cards. Since this is a chain which does not make book-locator terminals available to browsing customers, we were waiting at the customer service desk.
Patron ahead of us in line: I’m looking for The Prince by Machiavelli.
Bookstore employee at the customer service desk: Can you tell me what kind of book that is?
Patron ahead of us in line: What do you mean?
Bookstore employee at the customer service desk: What genre? Is it fiction? Non-fiction? Children’s?
Patron ahead of us in line: Children’s?!
Me: You might try philosophy or political science.
Bookstore employee at the customer service desk: There it is, under philosophy, and we have a copy in stock. (Goes off to show the patron ahead of us in line where it is, then returns.) Can I help you?
Me: We’re looking for some children’s titles, but I wanted to see in which subsection they’d be located. The first one on our list is The Borrowers.
Bookstore employee at the customer service desk: That was a great movie!
Me: (with some restraint) The book is even better.
Bookstore employee at the customer service desk: Well, I’ll have to read it some day.
There was a Borrowers movie?
*checks IMDB*
Well, I’ll be gosh-darned.
On a broader note, given how many out-of-work librarians I know doing time in bookstores, I confess I’m a little surprised. Maybe that’s just around here.
It is a great book and one that I finally read for the first time at 33 years old, and I wasn’t even reading it to my kids. I haven’t seen the movie.
the terminals are why i prefer B to B&N
why the hell do they make us talk to these people when they have the technology???
I’ve just read John Wilkin’s latest post on the development of a child’s conceptual world. So, the idea of The Prince as a children’s book concerns me: the little blighters will all be turned into cynical politicians.
Anyone want to volunteer to do the drawings for the cartoon version, for the younger kids?
Bob
Actually the film kinda put me off reading the book for a long while. Very twee.
Well, it’s part and parcel of the current way of doing things. If you know something, you cost the store more as an employee. I had a music store clerk tell me they didn’t have “a Magic Flute by Mozart” but they did have “one by Bernstein”.
Until recently there were only two kinds of bookshop in my city. The chains with a low choice of titles, sometimes run by helpful franchise owners, sometimes by ignorant hired-hands. The other was quality, booklovers’ stores, with a medium range of titles, knowlegable staff, less glitz and more atmosphere. But now we have a new kind – a big international book store, so I was keen to have a look.
Report: more airport lounge than bookshop. Rows of terminals for “checking out” manned by androids. Booths for information empty, and shelves in alphabetical disorder. A Gloria Jeans cafe focal point in the otherwise bland space (sadly, only paper cups and pre-grilled ham&cheese sandwiches – microwave ready). I was somewhat surprised I could take a book off the shelf (unpurchased) and sample it alongside a Mocha Mudslide. However, on the plus side, many more books available and often four or so editions of each.
I don’t know if this is any better than internet purchasing. Nice to be able to turn pages and hold the books, but felt like textual prostitution.
One more reason to scour the countryside for an independent bookstore where you can talk to the person who orders the books, or at least talke to someone who talks to the person who orders the books. And possibly even reads them.
I’ll play the contrarian here. Machiavelli isn’t a common book anymore, and now the clerk knows it – they have got to learn sometime. The next person asking for the Prince will get a more informed answer. I don’t see the problem. Last time I asked a clerk at a bookstore, it was about whether they had Basin and Range, by McPhee. A lost cause, until they went through all the books by McPhee and realized that it was in a combined edition. The clerk didn’t know at first but was helpful in digging around. That was the kind of help I expected, why is this a decline in Bookstore? The fact that the universe of common knowledge is fragmented more is no secret – there is just more stuff around.
I’ve just read John Wilkin’s latest post on the development of a child’s conceptual world. So, the idea of The Prince as a children’s book concerns me: the little blighters will all be turned into cynical politicians.
Anyone want to volunteer to do the drawings for the cartoon version, for the younger kids?
It’s already been done, and it’s a great book. See
A Child’s Machiavelli: A Primer on Power.
Someone did do Machiavelli’s The Little Prince! I’ve been joking about that for years. Now we just need James and the Giant Clockwork Orange…
Yikes! I’m not sure I’d encourage my kids to read James and the Giant Clockwork Orange, but I might be willing to buy tickets and take them to see Soul on Ice on ice.
Thanks, jw. It’s even on the web. My faith in humanity is restored. I think.
Bob
I agree with Markk that the employee should be given a bit of slack — as a newly-minted employee of a Big Chain Bookstore myself –I’m young and need the money– and having spent most of my adult life in various retail jobs (I’m 26), it’s really not all at surprising that the bookstore employee didn’t know the book. Most of my co-workers are either lifetime retail employees of different stripes (who may have moved into the book industry not out of love of knowledge, but for reasons having to do with location and/or salary) or short-termers who are just in for the paycheck. These are usually either retirees looking for some part-time work that isn’t too strenuous to help pay the bills, or highschool/college students looking for a way to pay tuition (like me). And let me tell you that for what I’m making, I’m not going to be putting any special effort into memorizing the details of book sections that I’m not already interested in.
Most persons asking for my assistance are looking for easy-read paperbacks, or recent bestsellers. While we also get students looking for reading-list books, “The Prince” has a vague enough name that it might fit into a lot of categories, and most people who haven’t gone to college probably haven’t actually read it.
In other words: the bookseller was probably a poorly-paid employee who may or may not have cared about what he/she was selling beyond picking up that biweekly paycheck. And that’s pretty much true of anyone working a register or behind a counter anywhere. I doubt it would be significantly different even at a tiny bookstore — the pressures against having well-paid employees in that kind of environment are just too great.
I am EXTREMELY fortunate to have one of the last great indy bookstores right in the town where I work in southern Vermont. Truly knowledgeable booksellers on staff, all are readers, many are writers. I don’t know how they do it, since nearly every other indy bookstore I have known closed over a decade ago. Maybe it’s all the tourists who get a taste and foreverafter buy books from them online; maybe because, in three decades, locals have literally grown up with them. But it is a marvelous bookstore, recently had a huge expansion and is a favorite stop on author tours, so we are spoiled.
I buy there to support the locals, and because the booksellers KNOW me, and so can recommend things to my taste and to widen my horizons.
Also, they only have science books in the science section. This SHOULD be normal, but in the Big Chains I have found astrology and Rupert Sheldrake under Science! Such books are in my bookstore, too, of course, but under the new-agey category, (in a lovely nook with a comfy window seat).
We are not a college town, have no mall, depend on high-end tourism (skiing, golfing and such), retail outlets, second homes, private schools and nouveau riches, which, as anyone in such a town knows, means many insecure retail jobs and high rents.
It’s nice to have a place with nooks and crannies and used books and sofas, the feel of an old bookstore with the tech and neatness of a new one, and events several times a week.
Lots of writers live in Vermont, of course, and lots visit or teach here (Breadloaf, Bennington, etc). Salman Rushdie sometimes appeared among the shelves during those dark days he was in hiding. The storeowners have also been leaders in fighting the USA PATRIOT Act, and, along with the local schools and libraries, make much of the anti-censorship Banned Books Week.
And I noticed they carry SEED magazine.
Great bookshop Skeptyk. I hope your townsfolk continue to support it. The department stores are my pet hate (Target etc). These flog only the fastest moving titles (latest Harry Potter or Booker prize) at cut prices, or even below cost. This denies bookshops their windfalls from bestsellers – that subsidize the extra variety on their shelves, including slower moving titles. Eventually bookshops close and the public suffers. If only people could resist the “bargain” to safeguard access to books.
More disturbing than the clerks at bookstores (which I agree is an abysmal glimpse into the state of reading in this country) is the peek we get into the psyche of people who review books on Amazon.com. On the page for The Borrowers, second in the list of main reviews is this gem:
Talk about not getting it at all.
I’m scared for this country.