In this sketch, there’s a librarian holding a pile of books that she’s recommending. The books are (in order from the top of the pile) The Giver by Lois Lowry, a book that I don’t recognize, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Wicked by Gregory Maguire, and one of the Harry Potter books. What is the second book from the top and which Harry Potter book is that on the bottom?:
I think the HP book is “The Order of the Phoenix."
The Order of the Phoenix was a massive tome, by the green-blue shade and size, I think it is more likely to be #3 “The Prisoner of Azkaban”
The colors of the spine match TOOTP:
Although, I suppose it’s possible it’s The Sorcerer’s Stone.
I think I see the number 5 on the side of the book, so it’s The Order of the Phoenix.
You made me look at an enhanced screenshot, you guys are right, it looks more like a 5 (that number 3 in the tomes is weird and threw me off) so it is TOOTP, no clue on the other book with the black and white spine.
So what was that skit supposedly about? Who found it funny why? Thought this week had an especially high number of clunkers.
I can’t stop you from discussing the sketch itself, but could you at least try to answer my question first? I want to know because I find it interesting that they use science fiction and fantasy books to interest people in reading. I can imagine people anywhere in age from 12 to adult being interested in the books the librarian is holding. I want to know what that other book is. I know nothing about what point the sketch is making. I had never heard of Pico Rivera before, but by searching I find that it’s a city of 60,000 or so in Los Angeles County in California. I asked here about the book that I couldn’t identify because I assume that people on the SDMB are reasonably well read and might be able to recognize a book from a blurry view of it.
I agree (particularly the Cold Opening), but the bit with the women sending their boyfriends out ‘on their own" to pick up things at stores was freakin’ hilarious, especially because I’ve recently seen the Japanese show it was based on (where mothers send out toddlers on similar buying missions)
After looking, I agree that the Harry Potter book must be Order of the Phoenix and that I have no clue about the second book. (Can’t read the words, and the design isn’t familiar.)
I thought so too, but I don’t know whether they were objectively clunkers or just referencing things I wasn’t familiar with.
I wouldn’t try to read too much into a 4 minute comedy sketch they threw together in the past few days. The books were used as props and they probably grabbed whatever was available around the studio.
I think it’s unlikely that they grabbed whatever was available around the studio. Those books are pretty much what someone who was a science fiction and fantasy fan and a librarian would use to get kids (and maybe adults too) to keep them reading during the summer. I suspect that they did ask a librarian to make suggestions when they wrote the sketch.
The second book looks like an expensive hardcover edition, with a bookmark. That would indicate to me that it’s a book that’s achieved classic status, so not something very recent. I’ve seen an edition of The Hobbit that looks like it, but the author’s name isn’t the right length for J.R.R. Tolkien.
Could it be The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins? That has a slight fantasy element, but it’s mostly realistic. Those names might be the right length but I can’t really see it clearly enough.
I took a quick look and couldn’t recognize the mystery non-Potter book immediately, but I’ll take a closer look tomorrow
At 2:02, you get a very brief look at a little of the cover, and it appears to have a red/orange glow surrounded by black. Doesn’t help me at all, but maybe someone else will recognize it.
Re the mystery book – is that more likely to be a two-word author’s name and a three-word book title, or a two-word title and a three-word name?
TOOTP, of course – look at the amount of space between the lettering and the edge of the spine.
I’m piggybacking on this zombie to point out this is a classic case of someone discovering the downside to asking a question here. Wendell, you were basically looking for advice from a roomful of geniuses… with the attention span of kittens.
You’re lucky this didn’t immediately devolve into a debate over the quality of the paper used as book jackets in the UK vs the US, how many girls you’ve seen with that flannel-shirt-buttoned-only-at-the-top look, and how far they had to stretch the linguistics to portray an accent where “batman” and “bad man” are near-homophones.