Help me, summer reading table. You're my only hope.

Last night I was doing some therapeutic shopping -- therapeutic in the sense that I found myself wanting to bash in people's heads with rocks, and wandering around the bookstore curbed that desire. Somewhat. So I wandered around the bookstore, looking with no real purpose at all manner of books, never minding, of course, that I have a great stack of them at home that I haven't even touched yet. (On a related note, I have resolved that tonight, I *will* create the Bookstack -- upon which more later.)

After haunting the aisles like some misplaced Tudor queen with a jones for a good summer read, I stopped at the "Summer Reads" table. I was struck by how many books there were the books that would have been there 20 years ago. My Name is Asher Lev. Anna Karenina. The Bell Jar. (Who reads Plath for summer fun?) Tempting as they were, I still felt like I wanted to go someplace new, rather than return somewhere I'd been. After deciding I didn't want to read I Never Promised You A Rose Garden (someone at the Sunset Valley B&N has major angst, I think), I decided to snag a copy of this book I'd been hearing about, The Jane Austen Book Club.

Small problem: I didn't know the author's name. Cruising the new fiction section was no help, so I ended up at the information booth, where a small queue was forming. It seemed a gentleman wanted a particular Mapsco book that B&N did not seem to have, and the gentleman working at the information booth was determined to find it. No luck, no luck, no luck. Minutes go by. Other shoppers queue up. Backup information staff is called. Finally, it's my turn, and I get the Mapsco man. I tell him I'm looking for The Jane Austen Book Club, but I don't know the author. He types it into the terminal, and starts looking. And looking. And looking.

Seconds turn into minutes. Other people get helped and go away. Visions of baseball bats begin to dance in my head. I am this close to saying, "You're spelling it 'A-u-s-t-e-n,' right?" but decide that's too much. Don't be a pedant, Suki. Finally, Mr. Mapsco turns and asks one of the other staffers at the infodesk and she looks over her shoulder at her screen. "e-n," she says. "A-u-s-t-e-n." Oh. And look. There it is. And it's sold out.

I know I'm a big elitist and a pedant besides, but, don't you have to know how to spell Jane Austen's name to work in a bookstore? Isn't that like, a rule, kind of like W-o-o-l-f, Virginia? Now I have a suspicion why that man may not have been able to find the county he was looking for. (In Texas, "B-e-x-a-r" spells "BAY-har.")

In the end, I didn't go mad, I didn't beat anyone with sticks, and I found my copy of the book. At Borders, right in the front. So I didn't have to ask anyone how to find it. And now, I can add it to my l-i-s-z-t.

Posted on May 26, 2004 to fussbudget

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