# Commonly misclassified works **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 13, 2022, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192 "2022-10-13T15:18:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192/21 "2022-10-14T14:41:34Z")
I saw Harry Turtledove’s “Guns of the South” in the History section of a bookstore. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192/22 "2022-10-14T15:23:40Z")
For years, Barnes and Nobles put Morely’s book (text book?) on reading Mayan dates in the New Age section. ---
**Author:** ![Bonum\_Legatum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bonum_legatum/32/6183_2.png) [@Bonum\_Legatum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bonum_Legatum)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192/23 "2022-10-14T15:39:15Z")
Gulliver’s Travels is commonly though of as a children’s story (usually in bowdlerized versions), helped along by the Max Fleischer cartoon based upon in. But the original novel is very much adult - biting satire. Also, many of Grimm’s fairy tales. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192/24 "2022-10-14T15:41:17Z")
I found a copy of The Basic Cookbook, a book about the computer language BASIC in the cookbook section of a stall at a flea market. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192/25 "2022-10-14T16:07:15Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > > [@Chronos](#): > > > > All of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books are labeled as “humor”. And yeah, most of them are pretty funny, but that’s not really the core of the books. > > Conversely, humor _is_ the core of _Alice’s Adventure’s In Wonderland_. Somehow some people seem to miss that. It’s most commonly classified as fantasy, which it is, but in rather the same sense as _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_. They’re both an excuse for a series of comedy sketches. _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_ may have used humor but it was to disguise it’s pseudoscientific argument about the absurdity of _i_. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was an accomplished mathematician who made impressive advances in fields like Linear Algebra, however, he didn’t truck in this new nonsense some of his colleagues were calling Imaginary Numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192/26 "2022-10-14T16:12:49Z")
Any [Peep Show](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWSSD8_sAF4) fans here or am I the only one? ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192/27 "2022-10-14T17:28:47Z")
Hollywood has a long history of comedy trailers for non-comedy movies. One that stands out to me is _American Ultra_. Marketed exclusively as “funny Jesse Eisenberg as stoner is secretly Jason Borne,” the trailer squeezes every possible laugh from the films first ten minutes. The actual movie can’t even pull off a bait-and-switch, descending immediately into a depressing in-from-the-cold espionage tragedy. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2022, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192/28 "2022-10-14T18:12:22Z")
Bicentenial Man was marketed as a wacky comedy. Instead it’s a long meditation on what it means to be human. Nightbreed was marketed as a slasher film. Instead, it’s a fairy tale for adults about a broken misfit who finds belonging and becomes a hero. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2022, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192/29 "2022-10-15T19:55:55Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/lCdM6ss5slo/hqdefault.jpg "The Simpsons - Naked Lunch") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCdM6ss5slo) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2022, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192/30 "2022-10-15T20:20:13Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > I’m sure we all remember when _Apollo 13_ was in the Science Fiction section at Blockbuster. Heck, the coverage of the Apollo 11 mission won a Hugo Award. The Hugos have traditionally been somewhat flexible in what works qualify. > [@Sitnam](#): > > _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_ may have used humor but it was to disguise it’s pseudoscientific argument about the absurdity of _i_. This, I need to hear more about. I’m a staunch defender of rights for rotational numbers (“imaginary” is pejorative), but I didn’t pick up on any of that in Alice. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/commonly-misclassified-works/973192.md?page=1)