Yesterday I needed a book for a quick (belated) Solstice present. My local bookstore didn’t carry it, so I went to Barnes and Noble. I went to the info desk and asked if they carried an annotated version of Treasure Island. She asked her co-worker, who said yes they did and she would take me to it. I followed her upstairs to the children’s section. She pointed to a table and said, “there are many other abridged versions of books on there.” I told her I was looking for an annotated Treasure Island, not an abridged version. She said, “uh huh,” and kept walking. We got to a bookshelf in the children’s section that contained abridged classics (or as they are labelled, “retold”). Anyway, she pointed out an abridged version of Treasure Island. I said, “no, I need annotated.” She said, “oh.” Then she took me over to the table we had just passed (with the abridged books) and picked up a copy of Sherlock Holmes tales and handed it to me. I said, “um, I’m looking for Treasure Island, you know, by Robert Louis Stevenson? And I need annotated, not abridged.” She kind of got a glazed look in her eyes and said, “well, all the books we have like that are on this table” and then walked away to “help” someone else.
Wow, a bookstore employee who doesn’t know the difference between abridged and annotated? And who thinks that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Treasure Island? To make things worse, I got the feeling that she is under the impression that Sherlock Holmes wrote Treasure Island. You know, in between writing about the true crime adventures he had.
