Of course, this customer would get Casino Royale home and be like, WTF is all this World War II crap doing in here!

Cause, as faithful as the movie might be (and I'm pretty sure it's not), it sure doesn't look period. The description of the villain, on like page 3, depends strongly on a WWII context. Which I thought was really cool -- it's hard to come up with a scenario where a guy could have no name and no nationality. WWII displaced persons camps are about the only scenario I can think of in the modern era.

The stupid burns. I should be happy that people at least are in a bookstore, but when I worked at Barnes & Noble, people used to come up to me and ask for the blue book.

The same thing used to happen at Border5s. All.the.time. "It was blue, and it was on your front table a month ago. How could you not know what book I'm talking about?...No, I don't know the title or the author."

It's always blue. I don't know why.

It's always blue. I don't know why.

It is. I think blue is still statistically the favorite color of the majority of people in the US, or at least that was the way I explained it to myself.

They may not be that stupid--my mom, who had her own bookstore for 25 years and can name any book by any author, can NOT remember movie titles to save her life. When I order stuff for her on Netflix, it's always a guessing game.

"I'd like to see that movie again, 'The Big Knife.' "
"I don't know that one."
"Yes, it has Paul Newman. Your father and I saw it on our anniversary when you were younger"
"Are you sure that's the title?"
"You know, it's set in the '30s. Robert Redford is in it".
"The Sting?"
"Yes, that's the one."

I get "It was the green one, over there before you rearranged the shelves two years ago" at the library desk all the time. Often from librarians. Sometimes I actually know what they're talking about!

I once found a kid an online study he'd been looking at earlier based on the subject matter and "the page was aqua."

Yeah, I suppose "stupid" isn't the term I want to use, and it's not quite willful ignorance, either. Hmm.

I just can't fathom walking into a bookstore to look for a book by its cover, without any other identifying information. Then again, I probably don't consume media like most Americans.

"Yeah, I'm looking for that manga? With the boys? The pretty ones?"

I just can't fathom walking into a bookstore to look for a book by its cover, without any other identifying information.

This was my problem. If you don't know the title, the author, or even really what a book is about why do you expect someone to be able to find it for you.

We are visual creatures. I bet 96% of you could recognize pages from a Harry Potter book, even if the actual words had been replaced with nonsense.

My favorite gaffe of this ilk was the considerable complaining when a novel came out, The Little Black Book of [memfault], and neither the hardcover nor the paperback was black. (They were both brown.)