# Overheard in Barnes & Noble **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 2, 2003, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070 "2003-09-02T04:09:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/21 "2003-09-03T00:34:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Incubus \* > \*\*Kind of off-topic, but disturbing nonetheless- Apparently after the Lord of the Rings films got their noterieity, some other movies Peter Jackson directed suddenly popped up in ads. > > One such movie was “Meet the Feebles”. Now, we had seen this traumatic movie before we watched LotR, but when we saw an ad for it, there was the phrase “Directed by Peter Jackson of LotR fame” or something similar. That’s horrible! People are going to buy this movie thinking “Meet the Feebles”=“Fellowship of the Ring”. Then they will be greatly traumatitized and bitch about Peter Jackson. Grr! :mad: \*\* Actually, I **prefer** _Meet the Feebles_ to _FOTR_. You should try hanging out in a record store where people come in and ask the staff, “Do you have that song that goes, ‘I love you’?” ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/22 "2003-09-03T00:50:03Z")
Could be worse. Recently – at Wal-Mart – I was looking at magazines when this guy walks up and begins thumbing through some paperbacks in a cardboard display, right? It’s worth noting that he’s a redneck. Well, maybe he’s not, but he sure had the “look” down. John Deere ballcap, sleeveless T-shirt, ratty jeans, and sneaks. His female companion is wearing a sort of shapeless dress thing, which worked for her since she was about four feet tall and shaped kind of like a sofa pillow. He then asks his female companion if they should get these books and this DVD for Laura Thurangs. It took me a minute to make the hookup. They weren’t buying books and a DVD for their friend, Laura Thurangs. “Laura Thurangs” was the NAME OF THE BOOK… ---
**Author:** ![Rhum\_Runner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rhum\_Runner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhum_Runner)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/23 "2003-09-03T03:29:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Wang-Ka \* > \*\*Could be worse. Recently – at Wal-Mart – I was looking at magazines when this guy walks up and begins thumbing through some paperbacks in a cardboard display, right? > > It’s worth noting that he’s a redneck. Well, maybe he’s not, but he sure had the “look” down. John Deere ballcap, sleeveless T-shirt, ratty jeans, and sneaks. His female companion is wearing a sort of shapeless dress thing, which worked for her since she was about four feet tall and shaped kind of like a sofa pillow. > > He then asks his female companion if they should get these books and this DVD for Laura Thurangs. > > It took me a minute to make the hookup. They weren’t buying books and a DVD for their friend, Laura Thurangs. “Laura Thurangs” was the NAME OF THE BOOK… \*\* Yes, could you please run that by me again, I seem to have completely missed your point there. Thanks much. ---
**Author:** ![Electronic\_Chaos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Electronic\_Chaos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Electronic_Chaos)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/24 "2003-09-03T04:13:31Z")
Rhum: Try pronouncing the name then think of a thick southern accent Or try pronouncing Lord of the Rings in a thick southern drawl ---
**Author:** ![leechbabe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7cd45c/32.png) [@leechbabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leechbabe)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/25 "2003-09-03T04:21:02Z")
A friend of mine recently saw FOTR for the first time and was very surprised because: The ring is Evil! ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Macphisto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b487fb/32.png) [@Ms\_Macphisto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Macphisto)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/26 "2003-09-03T04:25:11Z")
The pre-teen girls sitting behind me when I saw TTT in the theatre wanted to know what happened to Frodo and Sam’s shoes. ---
**Author:** ![Hometownboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5e9695/32.png) [@Hometownboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hometownboy)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/27 "2003-09-03T04:32:20Z")
The OP is too much like the following tidbit which I read in (IIRC) Ralph Gleason’s _San Francisco Chronicle_ column in circa 1973. Gleason wrote of being in a record shop and seeing a teenybopper flip through the cutout bins of album. Said kid holds up a Beatles album and says… Wait for it… “Hey look, McCartney was in a group before Wings!” More info on the incredible [Ralph Gleason](http://www.nyu.edu/education/music/gleason/bio.html) ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/28 "2003-09-03T04:46:33Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Hometownboy \* > \*\*“Hey look, McCartney was in a group before Wings!” \*\* :mad: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!!! ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/29 "2003-09-03T10:17:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Hometownboy \* > \*\* > “Hey look, McCartney was in a group before Wings!” > \*\* You mean the Quarrymen? Just kidding. That’s fucked up, man. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/30 "2003-09-03T11:36:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sternvogel \* > \*\*When my brother Mark was employed at Borders in 1992, the Daniel Day-Lewis film The Last of the Mohicans was released. Mark’s co-worker Bonnie noticed that the store had a display of several copies of James Fenimore Cooper’s 1826 novel and observed, “I see they’ve already made a book out of the movie.” \*\* We need to cull ourselves. Badly. Some people are just wasting our precious oxygen here! ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/31 "2003-09-03T12:00:04Z")
This is why I cringe when they make movies out of my favorite books! Everyone says, “Well, it’s not like the book doesn’t _exist_ anymore”, but then you have idiots in bookstores going “Look what they done made a book outta!” (Semi-related story) I heard one of the parents at my kids’ school the other day describing how she had read the short story “The Most Dangerous Game” from her child’s literature book. “It was _deep._ I had to read it twice!” ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/32 "2003-09-03T12:05:06Z")
More than once, I have thought back to that redneck at Wal-Mart… sitting on the ancient couch in his trailer home… the DVD playing… a paperback “Lord Of The Rings” in hand… trying to follow Prof. Tolkien’s delicate prose, and to reconcile it with what’s going on on the DVD player… Then again, I shouldn’t make fun of him. He’s tryin’, at least… ---
**Author:** ![Zoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/6de8d8/32.png) [@Zoff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoff)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/33 "2003-09-03T12:16:00Z")
Believe it or not, many people the world over have never read Tolkien or care to read Tolkien. This message board tends to skew towards people who read fantasy, in my opinion, but not knowing that the _Lord of the Rings_ was a book is not exactly a high crime or a reason to be stunned or evidence of ignorance. I was a ware that Tokien had written the trilogy and was vaguely aware of the plot outline (and had read _The Hobbit_) before I saw the movie. It’s not something that really interests me. And while it might be the giant of its genre, it’s a genre that many people don’t care about. ---
**Author:** ![Eats\_Crayons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@Eats\_Crayons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eats_Crayons)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/34 "2003-09-03T13:27:44Z")
But **Zoff** a substantial part of the promo for the movie went on and on about “Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkein’s books.” Even if you never heard of the book prior to the movie, it would be pretty hard to know the movie was in the theatres without hearing something about its source. There was coverage about how the book’s fans were responding. There was coverage about how they had to take some artistic license because the book was so long and detailed… and so on and so on. By the time the Oscar hooplah had come about, if you didn’t know that it was adapted from a book, it means you hadn’t picked up a newspaper. ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/35 "2003-09-03T13:50:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Zoff \* > Believe it or not, many people the world over have never read Tolkien or care to read Tolkien. This message board tends to skew towards people who read fantasy, in my opinion, but not knowing that the _Lord of the Rings_ was a book is not exactly a high crime or a reason to be stunned or evidence of ignorance. Well, I have never read the LOTR books either. Not for any particular reason; I just never really got into the fantasy genre. But I at least knew of their existence since I was a little kid, since they were often the subject of much conversation. I don’t expect everyone I know to have read Hamlet, but my jaw would hit the floor if you hadn’t heard of it or didn’t know who wrote it. ---
**Author:** ![garius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e19b73/32.png) [@garius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garius)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/36 "2003-09-03T13:59:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by friedo \* > I don’t expect everyone I know to have read Hamlet, but my jaw would hit the floor if you hadn’t heard of it or didn’t know who wrote it. That’s by J K Rowling isn’t it?? ---
**Author:** ![Zoff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/6de8d8/32.png) [@Zoff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoff)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/37 "2003-09-03T14:15:56Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by friedo_ > I don’t expect everyone I know to have read Hamlet, but my jaw would hit the floor if you hadn’t heard of it or didn’t know who wrote it. So would I, but Shakespeare is much more a part of our culture and literary history than Tolkien. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Eats\_Crayons_ > But Zoff a substantial part of the promo for the movie went on and on about “Jackson’s adaptation of Tolkein’s books.” Even if you never heard of the book prior to the movie, it would be pretty hard to know the movie was in the theatres without hearing something about its source. I don’t remember much about them hyping it as an adaptation. I’m not saying you’re not right, but it didn’t really register with me so it might not have registered with a lot of people. I understand that it might seem weird to some, but many people were first introduced to _Lord of the Rings_ from the movie. And a lot of people who saw it because it was a good movie, not because of any particular love of fantasy novels or movies. And I think people who like fantasy (or like any particular genre of literature) are amazed when the world doesn’t know about an element of their love. For instance, somebody has shown amazement that her friend didn’t know the ring was evil. Well, guilty as charged. I didn’t know much about the ring, nor would most people who don’t share a love of fantasy novels. ---
**Author:** ![Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@Bren\_Cameron\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bren_Cameron_1)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/38 "2003-09-03T14:23:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rockle \* > \*\*Just over the weekend, I heard two chippies arguing over whether the paperback edition of Bridget Jones’s Diary with Renée Zellweger on the cover was the “real” edition, or if the hardback large print edition was “real.” > > Their determination: The hardback version was “real” because it had, like, a hundred more pages, whereas the paperback version had a famous actress on the cover, so it must have been based on the movie. > > I had a migraine for the rest of the weekend. \*\* That isn’t quite as goofy as it sounds, I think. More than one movie made from a book has then been “novelized” so that both the novelization of the movie and the original book exist. _Little Women_ and _Planet of the Apes_ spring to mind. In any event, it’s true you’d think the name of the author would be a giveaway, but I can understand their wanting to get the “original.” ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/39 "2003-09-03T14:54:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by friedo \* > “Oh, look. They made a book out of _Lord of the Rings_.” > > :smack: SEE!?!? SEE!?!? THAT’S WHY I SAID THEY SHOULD NEVER HAVE MADE THE MOVIES!!! LOOK WHAT HAPPENED! THEY MADE A BOOK OUT OF IT!?!?!? THEY MADE A BOOK OUT OF IT!?!? WHAT KIND OF CRAZY, EVIL THING HAS PETER JACKSON WROUGHT, WHEN PEOPLE SEE LORD OF THE RINGS IN THE BOOKSTORE AND ARE SURPRISED THAT THEY MADE A BOOK OUT OF IT!?!?!?!? **takes a tranqualizer and colapses on the couch with a copy of the Silmarillion** ---
**Author:** ![emmaliminal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7bcc69/32.png) [@emmaliminal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emmaliminal)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2003, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070/40 "2003-09-03T15:22:24Z")
What gets me is the number of replicas of the One Ring that are sold on eBay and in catalogues for people to _wear_. There’s even a wedding ring based on the One Ring. How sick is that? [Personalized Tengwar Runes Band “One Lord to guide them and with these rings bind them”.](http://www.custom-wedding-rings.com/images/tolkinrunebnd.jpg) 'Long as I’m hijacking, I may as well brag… mr. emilyforce is the coolest ever and [he teaches an intro-to-linguistics class organized around Tolkien’s languages](http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2002/tolkien.html). He’s also the handsomest linguist in the whole entire world and universe but he’s MARRIED, so don’t y’all go getting any ideas. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overheard-in-barnes-noble/199070.md?page=3)