Badly written & not well regarded
This is a novel way for shops to go about things.
Bookstores deciding which books are well written and thus to be sold and which are not and thus to be unavailable to customers. What a fantastic customer service! Apparently they read all the books themselves to save the buying public time.
We bought book tokens for each of the grandchildren this year, but not for any big chain. They are for the local independent bookshop. I’m really glad that the pandemic has kept us from going to the city; I don’t have to feel guilty for supporting a misogynist chain. I’ve only been in three shops since March last year; three in September (one of those was the bookshop), and the bookshop again last week.
That is awful! I would like to think I’d say, “Thanks for your unrequested opinion about a book I am going to read regardless of your views. I will now go purchase it elsewhere, I will avoid this store, and I will suggest to my friends and family that they should also avoid this store. They do care about my opinion, unlike yours.”
I purchased a copy of Katha Pollitt’s excellent abortion book, Pro, at a low-key Christian-affiliated bookstore. I couldn’t find the book, and asked the woman at the service desk. She found it, seemed flustered, and assured me several times that it was the only copy they had, as if I cared. At least she found it and gave it to me, rather than pretending that they didn’t have it.
Re small bookstores, I have not personally used but I have heard good things about bookshop.org, which is a way to purchase books online from a network of independent bookstores in the US (they also have sites for the UK and for Spain). For grins, I looked up Material Girls, and it’s listed as being on backorder (I can easily imagine that the demand is much higher than the supply for this book). I was amused to see the note “TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK”. Yep, it’s Stock that you’re temporarily out of.
I got radio silence from my local when I tried to order Woke Racism for my stepfather… So I bought it from Amazon… I try to shop local but…
I used to shop local and I have little doubt our small independent bookseller would order me the book…if she hadn’t closed to retire. We have no local bookstores anymore, and the only small independent I could order from now is in Lincoln and would probably respond the same way Waterstone’s did. Last time I was in there, they had removed all feminist books and their gender section was all trans. It used to be mostly lesbian and trans with scattered feminist works, but even the lesbians disappeared. I haven’t been back.
I miss our bookstores. I miss our department stores. I miss our grocery stores. I gotta get outta here.
I used to recommend Bookshop.org, and ethically they’re still much better than Amazon, but apparently even they have started removing books for ideological reasons.
I’ve heard positive things about https://blackwells.co.uk — they’re in the UK but do free shipping to the US.
I’ve read Trans and it’s absurd to call it poorly written. The problem they have with it is that it’s all too well written and persuasive. They know that a lot of people are reading these books and that they’re having an impact.
That’s too bad about Bookshop.org. They do indeed have no listing for Irreversible Damage. I’ve bookmarked Blackwell’s. They have Material Girls in stock, apparently, and a pre-order for the paperback.
I think it’s worth pointing out that although Waterstones is a chain, its individual shops are managed quite independently. That’s often cited as one of the reasons it has survived as a physical book shop; individual managers make the decisions about stock, shelf and window displays, supposedly reacting to local demand and with the successful shops remaining afloat.
Whether or not this is true, individual Waterstones branches have different polices. My local branch, for example, has a whole big shelf display dedicated to JKR books. Unfortunately, it also has a David Walliams shelf, but you can’t have everything. I didn’t see Trans (etc) in the non-fiction section when I was there, but I was defeated by stairs and didn’t have time to ask about it.
I hadn’t realized that Blackwells is online now!
I have been there a couple times in person, at their original location on Broad Street in Oxford. It was always a treat to visit there. (But my latest visit there was maybe 30 years ago. How time flies!)
I wonder how much shelf-yardage this store devotes to astrology, channeling, etc.?
Latsot: although Waterstones is a chain, its individual shops are managed quite independently
I’d be really surprised if what Mollusc’s son encountered was a chain-wide policy. It sounds more like something a turbo-woke local manager or even the individual employee he talked to might have come up with. The chain’s upper management might well not be too happy about a customer being treated like that.