Cognitive dissonance

[hawkwing_lb]

Friends, Romans, fellow citizens:

We all here know the name of John Norman. We all, indeed, know what he is famous - or rather, infamous - for writing. Well does the internet know the name of Gor, and those parts of it I respect most recoil from it in a combination of disgust and hysterical laughter.

Thus, my consternation upon walking into Waterstones today. Not one Norman book alone did I see. Not two.

Behold, I saw an entire shelf of Gor, numbering books one to twenty-seven.

Some of them were there in multiple copies.

O internets, great was my dismay. This Waterstones must now hold a name of great shame. What bookshop of repute could possibly stock John Norman in great volume and neglect to stock so many more less odious authors?

It has damned itself in my eyes. Never more will I enter into Waterstones on Dawson St.; no, not even in the greatest need.

At least the other bookshop (the best bookshop) still serves my every need as a customer, while not insulting my genre or my intelligence or my person by putting John Norman in the same section as Ursula K. LeGuin and Octavia Butler.

(And unlike some people, they don't make funny faces when I walk in to order books. Take that, Waterstones.)

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

*blinks*

Unless they've found a source of (very) old stock, I'm fairly sure all Norman's books are print-on-demand these days. Which are non-returnable. They must be very sure of selling them. Or else it's some kind of obscure sabotage...

(Did you notice whether they had the different titles but all the same cover image? 'Cos those are the POD editions, he seems to have been too cheap to pay for more than one image...)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

They were shelved spine out. And I wasn't going to be caught with a Norman book in my hands on purpose!

But I think they have different covers. (I took a mobile phone picture, in case it was all a very bad, very twisted dream*, and looking at it now, the little bits of the covers that I can see look as though they have different colours.)

They looked new, too. Didn't Dark Horse Comics book imprint sign him up a while ago? I remember some big noise in the internets about that.


*Obligatory Farscape quote.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I remember the Dark Horse noise too, but I'm fairly sure they pulled out. On account of the noise.

I entirely appreciate your delicacy, and I certainly don't care enough to ask you to go back. I'm just curious. (A swift Amazon check seems to confirm that his current editions only sport one cover.)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I have ventured to Amazon. Those are the books, right down to the colour on the spines. *shudder*

That image? Is the most truly dreadful thing I have ever seen on a book cover. I cannot list the ways in which it offends me.

(No wonder they were all shelved spine out.)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

I'd post a new comment, but I'm too busy rolling on the floor laughing.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Don't hurt yourself down there. :P

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

It's even funnier because my dad bought several of those books, in the original series, then loaned them out and never got them back.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

...

Intentionally never got them back? Or did the borrowers just like them too much to ever let them go?

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

...I'm not sure I want to know the answer. Actually, I think he found the books amusing*, and the loss of them even more amusing. He could have gotten replacements long ago. ;-)




*And in the context of the 1970s, they were very amusing.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

*is glad to have missed the seventies, then*

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

*iz sorry she didn't miss the Seventies*