A book, I’m sure many dopers have read SHOP GIRL by Steve Martin is being pulled from our shelves for inappropriate content…
OK fine I work for a childrens book distributor…I can handle that.
but we do stock a small section of popular adult fiction, which is where this book is stocked.
So we are pulling product only intended for presentation to adults due to inappropriate content??
I am so glad I am leaving this place…
What’s supposedly inappropriate about its content?
Raised? Or lowered? Is the idiocy test a limbo dance, or a high jump?
Niether. They keep it at about eye-level, just to see who walks into it.
Sometime back around March of 2002 it transitioned from “high jump” to “pole vault.”
I’m sure I read it, but I don’t remember it very well…something about gloves. What’s the problem with it?
Uh-oh.
/Nervously looks at his signup date.
Meh. Here is what Amazon.com has to say about the book. On second thought, here is a link (worried about what is fair use/etc).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0786885688/102-8077349-7360936?v=glance
Raised, as in if you can walk under this we don’t think you’re an idiot even if you are.
I think I saw them adjusting it with a forklift from 7’ to 10’
A few years ago, I was working in a bookstore, and one day, I was reshelving books when a woman approached me holding a copy of Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by her fingertips, as if it were a used diaper. “This was in the children’s section.”
“…Okay…”
“Where children could see it.”
“Well, it is young adult…”
“It’s not something I want my children to see.”
“Well, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Angus is the cat, and ‘snogging’, if you didn’t know, just means ‘kissing’—”
“Please put it where it belongs.”
:rolleyes: It was where it belonged, bitch; it was in the hardcover YA section, which could theoretically be called “children’s”, but someone other than me decided it belonged next to Harry Potter and The Princess Diaries. It was a no-win situation for me, because as I’ve mentioned before, I think the Confessions of Georgia Knickers are complete and utter crap, but there’s nothing in there that’s inappropriate for the reading level. The worst thing that happens, aesthetically, is that Rennison apparently has a quota of underpants jokes she has to fill. To me, the real danger to kids reading this tripe is that they’ll think it’s okay for a teenage girl to think she’s worthless if she doesn’t have a boyfriend, and that it’s cool to be extremely rude to everyone except potential boyfriends, as the main character is. But Her Ladyship didn’t want to weigh the pros and cons; she just wanted me to put the dirty book on a high shelf. WTFever.
Since the novelization of the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre keeps ending up in the Non-Fiction section of my library, no matter how often I bring it to the froint desk, and since the local grocery chain insists on placing what i call the “Bucket O’ Knives,” steak knives in slide-off sleeves, at kiddie height, no matter how often I ask at the service desk to speak to somebody with toddlers, I have completely given up on America.
Maybe there’s one sex scene? I can’t think of anything, although I read the book when it was new. Is it because it’s an older man in a relationship with a younger woman? It’s not like he’s ancient or there’s anything even close to illegal…
I read the book a few months ago, and I don’t remember anything objectionable in it.
To be fair, I don’t really remember too much of anything in the book. Not a bad read, but not particularly memorable.
I hear there’s a movie coming out soon. Steve Martin plays Ray Porter… but he didn’t direct it. That’s got to be weird- acting in a movie adaptation of a book you wrote, but not directing it.
Yeah, I have always found that weird 
[highjack] Too bad we have to cheerfully stock and promote books with idiotic content, though.* This pile of poo is currently number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller List.
Some thoughts from Quackwatch.org
So this won’t be a total hijack, I’m going to go into work tomorrow, drachillix, snag me a stack of Shop Girl and display them prominently in your honor. Maybe some ying yang that comes into the store to buy a copy of Natural Cures That’ll Probably Kill You If You Take Them Instead of the Blood Pressure Meds that your Doctor Prescribed, will buy it instead and you will have saved a life. 
[/hijack]
*Yeah, yeah, I know, I wouldn’t ban the thing. I’d just paste a disclaimer on 'em and stick it 'em “Philosophy” or some other section where no one ever goes. 