I went to the bookstore yesterday looking for a book written by Philip Roth, recently published in Swedish. I had forgotten the title, naturally cause I hadn´t written it down, but I thought once I spot it I would recognize it. I´d read about Philp Roth on a blog discussing all kinds of cultural events and occurrences, the blog-guy just got hold of this book and informed the readers about the genius author that he himself had failed to appreciate. He caught my interest, thus I took a chance when we visited the bookstore to buy the third part of the Twilight books for my daughter, even thought I hadn´t made any mental note of the title.
I randomly searched the bookshelves, without luck, there was no title what so ever to find on Philip Roth. I don´t consider myself a bad searcher when it comes to books, after all I worked at the library once arranging all kinds of books in all kinds of languages in alphabetical order, so I felt a bit confused here (or was it the store had an illlogical muddle in their shelves :-)). My daughter instantly found her book, but I turned to the salesman for help. He looked up and found some titles but not the one I looked for, now I´d only read the title in question in Swedish, the English titles just made no impression at all on my person and I had no idea wich one to chose, but by this time I really had the intention of buying one of them and, in other words, I had to make up my mind.
I finally chose the title Ghost Exit and we headed for the cashier, the salesman greeted us and seemed pleased about my choice. Once we had payed for the books he looked in the catalouge once more and to his surprise he found a title in Swedish publised only last month, the title was Våldnaden Försvinner same as The Ghost Disappears but in Swedish , (of course :-)) ... Ghost Exit. I had chosen the right book, totally unaware.
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How fabulous :)
ReplyDeleteAfter working in libraries for 7 years, I find bookstores incredibly confusing and frustrating. It doesn't seem that they have any organization whatsoever, even though I know they do. I had that problem when I was looking for an interior design book. I only knew part of the author's name, and would have been able to find the book just fine if the bookstore was arranged like a library (Dewey or LC call numbers, either way), but it wasn't. And the lady wasn't any help because I didn't have the title or author's full name. Their sense of organization baffles me!