About six months ago alert reader Tom went to his local Barnes and Nobel bookstore in New York, and found that all the religious books were in a section labeled as follows (an iPhone photo; click to enlarge):
A few weeks later, Tom went back and found that the books were the same, but the name of the section had been changed:
Either an atheist was responsible for the first section (note that the books aren’t all “fiction” in the literary sense, since one of them is Rick Warren’s odious Purpose-Driven Life), or there was simply a mistake.
I wonder if someone complained.
I’d bet good money someone complained if they truly did have signs up saying “Religious Fiction.” I find that really hard to believe but will support B&N even more than I already do if it proves to be for real. I like to ask Creationists what section of the book store they’re finding the “science” they’re using to buttress their particular brand of crazy. For some reason, they never respond after I suggest it wasn’t the science section.
I recall seeing the ‘inspiration’ shelf title in other B&Ns in the past, so I doubt the first shelving was intended as a statement. My guess is one of their workers just used the wrong signs. Could’ve been accidental. Or maybe an intentional joke. Heck, it could’ve just been something like: the store didn’t have the right signage, so they put up what they figured was the next best thing.
In any event, its momentarily amusing but probably not noteworthy.
I love how there is a “Catholicism for Dummies.”
A typo I think: the title ought to be “Catholicism is for Dummies.”
I always find it a sad commentary that the section for religious books is so much bigger than the section for science books.
To be honest, I’d have to go and inspect a bookshop to see if that’s true.
I am, of course, assuming that there is a section for religious books. I’ve never felt a reason to go and look for one until now.
Oh, sorry; telly has a short lecture on Saxon pottery styles. Far more interesting than religion.
Those Christians sure need a lot of inspiration.
😀
Come on, guys.
Go ask!
The answer should be very entertaining.
Many years ago, while travelling around South-West England, I looked for books about the history of science in second-hand book stores. But in one of these used book stores, when I asked for books about the history of science, I was led to a shelf called “Lives of Saints.”
Wow….a slight glimpse into the future
Like Christian music, maybe there’s a Christian fiction genre. The sign would be appropriate for that and also as a useful heads-up for the rest of us.
In one of Dawkins’ books, he mentions seeing a bookshop section entitled “Religion and UFOs.”
If you want to experience bookshop depression though, try visiting Indonesia. Their Indonesian-language bookshops have gigantic arrays of religious books, mostly Muslim. You have to search hard for anything on science, and what’s there is mostly science books for children, including the highly reliable (?) set of books by Harun Yahya.
The English-language bookshop Periplus (often with branches at airports) is usually interesting however, and sometimes has quite surprising things. I even found Dawkins’ “God Delusion” there, quite startling for an anti-atheist country like Indonesia.
This probably goes a long way towards explaining Indonesia’s economic situation.
There usually is a “Christian Fiction” section in Barnes & Nobles (they also have it on their website). Unfortunately they don’t usually file bibles and theology there; just like with music, Xians have a whole separate parallel universe of romances, thrillers and mysteries with a jesus focus. They do have some weird sub-genres that don’t have a secular parallel though: there is a whole slew of books about the Amish for some reason.
I just visualised Jesus slash fiction… the mind boggles. : )
In Stratford-upon-Avon, there is a second-hand bookshop with a ‘Local Authors’ section: it’s all Shakespeare! Class.
“Religious Fiction?” Isn’t that phrase redundant?
+1
Surely ‘redundant’ is too generous? Literally ‘an overflowing’. Or too much of the same thing.
Isn’t ‘tautology’ more accurate and acute? Despite being more obviously classical and less Anglo-Saxonically visceral. Etymologically and currently, ain’t ‘Christian fiction’ a ‘representation of the same thing’?
Then again, who cares about such pedantry? I suggest as a section header, ‘Christian bo*&o^ks’: ‘Crucifixion Fiction’; ‘Urgings of the Virgin’s Urchins’; ‘The Empty Shelf of Post-Hobbesian Major Theist Philosophers’; that should cover it.
How about labeling the section “P.T. Barnum fan club selection”?
Well, I went to Half Price Books today in Overland Park, Ks looking for something interesting and found that Behe’s books were, as always, shelved amongst the science and evolution books. NObody ever takes my complaints seriously enough to move them, since apparently there is not pseudo-science section. I did walk out with what appears to be an 1896 edition of Oscar Schmidt’s 1873 “The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism”. I’d never heard of him but I laughed when I saw this:
“The cheap jest, produced with so much glee, of inquiring why we do not behold the interesting spectacle of the transformation of a chimpanzee into a man, or conversely, of a man by retrogression into an orang, merely testifies the crudest ignorance of the doctrine of Descent”
hehe, well, speaking of Michael Behe…
As a Barnes and Noble employee I know our store at least is in the process of going through inventory and changeover. While a lot of books gets moved, we don’t always remember to change the signs after a 9 hour overnight shift. The Religious Fiction and Religion/Inspiration sections probably switched and the signs just didn’t get moved.
My, now closed, local B$N had a religious fiction section. Every time I paid a visit I would grab a couple of bibles and place them in said section. They were always returned to their correct(?) section by my next visit.
My BN has a Religious Fiction section. It’s right next to the giant bible section. And slightly adjacent to the one shelf science section. Makes me think the kind of shelves they have is dependent on the demographics of people in the area.
Yes. That is the case in the Syracuse-area B&N where I took the two images (above). I have a third picture where the “Bible” section is shown farther along the book row.
The signage is not a local thing, but comes from corporate.
Another possibility: Perhaps Muslim/Hindu/etc. customers were looking through the Religious Fiction section, and complained that there were only Christian books.
Or perhaps someone “power-pouted”.
I’m skeptical that these are even photos of the same shelves. I don’t see any books or patterns of spine-color in common. Maybe the first photo shows the end of the Inspiration section (if alphabetical, ending just after Warren, i.e. top 2 shelves) and the begining of the Religious Fiction section (lower 3 shelves), which continues to the right as shown in the second photo.
Dear skeptical:
Others have commented above about the two section signages and the changes in their stores as well. Also, signs like these are not made locally, but come from B&N corporate. And last, I took the pictures.
This topical section is quite large (sadly) — maybe 10 or more bookcase segments and while some topics seem to stay put, as B&N shrinks its physical bookstores, it also regularly seems to move sections to emphasize/enlarge some sections. That would explain why I was in the same aisle, but not looking at exactly the same titles, alphabetically.
IMHO, religion is NOT fiction. religion exists : people pray, build buildings, study scriptures, draw conclusions, preach towards unbelievers, hold massive meetings, etc…. All this seems real to me.
Of course, the lord sending hordes of zombis in the streets of Jerusalem(MAT. 27 51-53) is a more likely candidate to the “fiction” title.
But the real point is probably made by reading7mandy : reorganization.