SETTING: My "liberry" as a female patron approaches the circ-desk from the direction of our nonfiction section.
PATRON— Hi. I'm looking for Jane Eyre.
ME— Ah. That will be over in our fiction section, under Brontë.
PATRON— No, I need the biography of her. About her life.
(Pause)
ME— Um... (Pauses again to consider how best to politely break the news to her. Realizes there is no good way. Proceeds...) Jane Eyre is a fictional character in a book written by Charlotte Brontë.
PATRON— (Long pause) Oh. (Long pause) I must have misunderstood.
11 comments:
Like when the student asked me for the biography of Art Nouveau. It's those little bits of humor that one likes to recall . . .
Is there any chance she meant Lady Jane Grey? (benefit of the doubt)
Or Jane Austen?
I had one of these a few weeks ago, except it was a biography of Robinson Crusoe. "Are you looking for the book, *Robinson Crusoe*, or a biography of Daniel Defoe?" (It was the book.) Laugh, cry... a toss-up, really.
I had a patron say to me, with great excitment I might add, "Hey, you do know that Harry Potter is writing another book after this one? I heard about last week!"
My response..."Good for him!"
htw
I'm guessing Jane Austen. She's kinda trendy right now.
i have had that exact conversation!
Sure, the facts of Juice's story are great, but look at the way it's told: those pauses are the poetry of it.
Oooh, Jane Austen. That didn't occur to me. Might have been what she meant.
(Course, knowing the quality of the kids who turn up looking for stuff around here, she very likely could have meant Jane Eyre anyway.)
I love the crestfallen looks on patrons faces when you have to break this kind of news.
I love when people get upset because we don't have any videos of George Washington.
Video technology not so much around in those days, kids!
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