Father's Day Faux Pas

Happy Father's Day everyone! As a dad and a reader, I completely understand books as a way to reward Dad for another year as provider, car-repair-advisor, and master barbecuer (if you don't mind a little stereotyping). Better than another tie or humorous t-shirt anyway. A book I wouldn't recommend is, well, anything to do with Josef Fritzl, the psycho parent who kept his daughter in his basement for 24 years and enjoyed …"intimate"… time with her. That's just my recommendations, however — over in the U.K., however, retail giant Tesco apparently didn't have a problem with daughters buying The Crimes of Josef Fritzl for this Father's Day, until it was brought to their attention and an apology was drafted. From first-hand accounts over at Fark, the book was on a specific Father's Day display in the stores — much to the dismay of sharp-eyed shoppers, but what about those shelf-stockers who put the books out? This didn't happen just at Tesco, but also at W.H. Smith, a large bookselling chain in the U.K. I can understand big-box retailer drones not watching what they're tossing on the shelves, but I'd expect more from a retailer who prides themselves on being a leading example of the book retail industry.

The Daily Mail shows the book on the display, bearing the same "half price" sticker as the rest of the books on the promotional displays, so it wasn't a case of "oops, wrong book on the shelves." Special displays are often paid spots, akin to advertising, where a publisher ensures their big promotions are on the endcap or the table at the entryway where they're likely to get more attention. I dug around to see if Smith's was the one in charge of Tesco's book section, like the K-Mart/Waldenbooks arrangement, but everything I found called the two retailers competitors. Now, I'd hope Harper Collins would be smart enough not to specifically recommend this book for Father's Day, but I find it very suspicious that two different retailers, without shared corporate control, would place the same inappropriate book in the Father's Day display. Somebody — publisher, distributor, retailer — got in their head that they needed a recent, hot-button, True Crime title in their dad's display, because dad's like true crime books, you see, so what have we got? Aw, the book is even about a dad, that works great!

Fidel The Library Cat

Library cats are, by far, the best animal in the world to own. Need to get some research done? Send the cat down to the library to look it up for you. Past-due books? Tie them to his back. Fidel, on the right, stops in to his public library daily after his owners let him out in the morning. They go to work, he goes to the library, and when his owners get home Fidel checks out his books, pushes in his chair, and goes home for the night. Here in the U.S., libraries have to buy their own kitties, sadly. Via.

Warehouse Abandoned: Free Books

A used bookseller in the UK, apparently hit by hard times, walked off and left their warehouse unlocked and available to anybody who walked by. People, of course, took advantage of this opportunity, and began running off with books by the armload. It doesn't appear to be illegal - the books were abandoned by the bookseller, and the owner of the warehouse has invited anybody to help in the cleanup by removing the books for free. Millions of book-lovers around the world are lamenting: "why can't this happen somewhere near me!?"