Well, I’m the one who hadn’t even considered the possibility using such a convenience. I probably would have saved myself some time with that method. I always ended up flipping back through the book when I got a little lost. So I guess I’ve kinda got a pot/kettle thing going on here. 
Fantastic book, though.
I took notes on Wuthering Heights! 
OK, to start off with Im a bit biased. My mom has an art degree, as do many of her friends, some paint professionally, I’m an art major, with my emphasis being in photography, and I paint as well, in addition to working in a museum.
Personally there is alot that is lost in a photograph, even a well done photo. For example, I went to a Wayne Thiebaud exhibit over the weekend, what you can’t see in a picture such as this is the bizzarre colors he chose to “outline” his subjects with. Nor can you see the thick, heavy brushstrokes he uses. One of the things that make Thiebaud such a master (in my opinion) is the fact that he uses such bizarre colors, and heavy lines, and yet makes everything look so smooth and graceful.
As for the Louvre, that’s possibly the most exasperating. Without actually visiting, and spending at least a couple hours there, you can’t appreciate the delapidated hunk of junk that the Mona Lisa is, it may have been beautiful at one time, but at this point, the old broad has been through alot. Nor can you circle the Winged Victory and marvel at the work that it took to create something so spectacular, in 190 BC no less. Yet in pictures it looks craptacular.
Besides, how can you seem like a real snob and pick up on those hot intellectual babes without going to the source?
Ok, I’ve been working on it for awhile now and here it is: The top ten worst things I overheard customers say while I worked at Barnes & Noble (worst things said by my coworkers would be an entirely different list):
“How do I get upstairs?” (said while standing next to the up escalator. This is tied with “How do I get downstairs?”)
“How do I get out of the store?” (how did you get IN?!)
“Don’t put those books away! That’s what those employees get paid for! Just leave them on the floor in a big pile.”
Kid: “Please buy me a book, Mommy. Just one!” Mother: “No way! I don’t know what’s wrong with you and all that reading. Don’t you know that won’t ever get you anywhere?”
“I’m looking for a book with a yellow color by a woman from Boston who was on Oprah last week. Do you have it? What do you mean you have no idea what I’m talking about? You must be stupid!”
“I got this book from the Reference section. Am I allowed to buy it?”
“Can I take this book outside with me before I buy it?”
“I’m looking for a book called ‘The Saurus’. My friend said I need it for school.” (After much confusion I found out they wanted a THESAURUS.)
“I demand a discount on this $3.75 magazine because it has FINGERPRINTS on it! Either get me a discount or order me a new copy entirely untouched by human hands!!!”
“I’d like to sign up for a library card, please.” (No amount of explaining would convince these people…and yes, there were more than one occurances of this…that we were not a library.)
There are many other crazy things I heard, and that’s not even counting the things I witnessed: the people…ADULTS…leaving big stinky poop piles on the bathroom floor; the used diaper draped like a flag over a shelf; the people changing their kids on the dirty carpet; the people copulating on the floor (always in the judaica section. Always!)
Yeah, those of you who are Queens Dopers…avoid the Austin St. (Forest Hills) B&N. Avoid it at all costs!
I didn’t use Cliff Notes in high school. Got through college without them. Kept my own index cards for anything “tough.”
I discovered the wonder of Cliff Notes sometime around my 30th birthday. I’m sure that they can be used to avoid reading the book for a class assignment. I find that they make getting through “less than fluff” literature easier. And although I love to read, and I love “enrichment” reading of the classics - I really don’t need to work that hard at it any more - and can use the Cliff Notes as my own little personal bookclub.
Angry customer to Blockbuster clerk:
When Grease was re-released a few years ago I took my Dad to see it. He was most surprised at how well John and Olivia had aged. Took me a little while to explain to him that they had NOT re-shot a new movie with exactly the same cast, just re-freshed the old one.
Also took Dad to see Aladdin (the Disney cartoon), he didn’t enjoy it on the grounds “It wasn’t realistic enough”. Had to explain - dad it’s a cartoon.
Finally we saw Romeo and Juliet together and my Dad was really surprised and upset by the ending! He had studied the play in highschool but forgot that it ends with the the star crossed lovers killing themselves.
…oh, now THAT is one scary-assed idea.
Y’think after that new Mel Gibson movie comes out… some goddamn maniac publisher out there is going to come out with Bibles… paperback… with Mel Gibson’s picture on the cover?
And the title will be THE PASSION
(Now a Major Motion Picture starring Mel Gibson!)
…
…
…
…and waaaay down at the bottom of the cover…
…
…
…
…in little tiny print…
…
…
…
…(Original title: HOLY BIBLE, New Testament)
…?
Not my customer, but one of my co-workers had this one. Thing is, our store was only one story, but this customer insisted we had a second floor very vehemently. Finally, my coworker said, “Oh, yea, the second floor, it’s just up the escalator” and let em wander around, looking for the escalator.
You must have been sitting by us. The woman behind us made the same comment. I just looked at her and said “welcome to big screen television”
I was once at this message board and everyone was like " How can they not have read THAT!?" and " I can’t believe they didn’t read the exact same books I read!" and my favorite " Hang the ignorant, uncultured masses!" It kinda reminded me of the SNL skit with the computer guy.
But seriously folks. Why get so upset over these things? Its really not that big of a deal. Tolkien and others don’t really have a mainstream following. Not to mention that the LOTR books have been associated with D&D playing, square glasses wearing, pocket protecting, Hobbit reading (har) geeks. So not only are these people not reading these books because they don’t know about them, they aren’t reading them because they do know about them.
Forgive me for my ignorance but I honestly didn’t know about the LOTR series until the movie was being promoted. I had heard of Tolkien because of The Hobbit. No one ever mentioned to me that he was actually famous because of the LOTR series. * Expecting* someone to know of the books is like expecting a diehard country music fan to know where Tupac was born.
I would be more concerned if I heard someone would ask “Who’s Dr. Seuss?”
Well, yeah. A story that has been told at Thanksgiving and Christmas for a couple years now is how my daughter, upon seeing FOTR, stood up when the credits rolled and shouted, “That’s IT? That’s IT? That’s where it ENDS?”
I’d kind of neglected to tell her the details. She’d heard of LOTR, but thought it was ONE BOOK.
Although, to her credit, she immediately demanded to see these books when we got home, and read them in the course of a few weeks…
**
I think the problem is that most of us would say that these classics are not just books, but part of our culture, and to be culturally literate, one must at least be able to identify a reference to them.
Not all books that have had an impact on our culture are “mainstream.” I don’t know that I would call authors like Orwell, Melville and Twain mainstream, but I would look strangely at a person who didn’t understand a reference to Big Brother, or had never heard of *Moby Dick, * or * Huckleberry Finn. *
It’s my opinion that everyone should at least have a general overview of the classics. I’m not keen to read *Dorian Grey * but I know the storyline. After all, without this knowledge, a full understanding of *Far Side * cartoons is impossible!
I agree with this one. I mean, I absolutely love art and art history, love going to museums, and would kill to go to the Louvre like right now, but if you’re not that into the whole thing, looking at the pictures in a book would be fine.
Heck, that’s better than I’d expect. How many average people even know any artworks outside of the Really Famous ones?
Well, y’know, simply because something is or is not “literature” or “art” doesn’t define whether or not it’s part of your culture.
I dunno as I’d say that LOTR is ingrained into our culture.
Not YET, anyway.
But, hell, Peanuts cartoons are ingrained into our culture. Is this great art? Literature? Hell, Ronald McDonald is ingrained into our friggin’ culture, and I’d bet anyone in the house that he’s none of the above.
:eek: I wanna take that class!! Is there the slightest chance it’ll be offered online? Or that he’d come be an adjunct prof at the university where I work? Pleeeeeease? Seattle’s a great city! And I wouldn’t even hit on him – I’m married, too. Pretty please? 
I found it ironic that the same people who were beating up and ignoring the nerds who were reading Tolkien are the same bandwagoners who’re running around reading the books and seeing the movies now.
Hee hee! We’d love to come back to Seattle – I lived there for almost a decade, and it’s where we met, and we hope to live there or thereabouts again someday, but sadly mr. emilyforce hasn’t got his PhD yet. And the way things are going, UTexas will never, ever let him stop teaching that damn class. It’s, uh, kinda popular.
He actually specializes in some of the more abstract elements of syntax and semantics theory, most often using examples from Arabic… he’s reaaally hoping he doesn’t get known as “that (snicker) Tolkien guy” in the world of linguists.
And sorry, but no, it’s not likely to be an online offering. Wanna move to Austin? 
[hijack]
U-Dub? My mom works there, if so (or even if not)! Just started. Hug her for me, will you? I miss her.
[/hijack]
No, not UW – Seattle Pacific. Great little school on Queen Anne that most of Seattle seems never to have heard of.
Rats. Austin, from what I know of it, is not my kind of town. (read: it’s too freakin’ hot there! I’d melt!)
Well, if you ever do decide to come back to Seattle, you know where to find me!
