Some friends and I on a bookstore owner list were playing with classic titles, rewriting them to reflect the realities of running a bookshop. Here are a few we came up with:
Oh the Places You’ll Dust
Farewell my Harlequins (please!)
The Old Man and the C Shelf
Bonfire of the Vanity Presses
The Optimist’s Slaughter
Go Set a Watch (for those unfamiliar, timing the moment your front door can close so you can go to a party/go to bed early is one of the big joys of small business ownership)
How to Make Friends and Influence People’s Reading Habits
And we actually found a few titles that needed no alteration:
The Hunger Games
The Friendly Persuasion
Odd Hours
Yeah, you kind of have to be a literary snob, or worked retail, to get some of them. Please add your titles in comments. It’s kind of addictive once you get started….
Think and Grow Poor
The Thorn Books (those by authors whose star has faded; think about it)
The Cuckoo Flew Over One’s Nest (because you do kinda have to be crazy to do this)
To Kill a Mocking Teen
The Devil Wears Too Much Perfume (for all who’ve ever been choked by a customer)
Along Came a Spiderweb
Two Years before I went Bankrupt
The Battle of the Bookshelf Labyrinth
A Farewell to Free Time
A Prayer for All the Meanies (if you’ve ever worked retail….)
Come on, you know you want to make up a few…
Hey, how about A Tale of Two Kitties (or more when it comes to your book store!)
Good one!
After folks finish A Tale of Two Kitties, you might offer them The Pound and the Furry. Any bookstore that deals in “classics” surely must stock The Myriad and The Oddities. In the drama section they’ll need Pamphlet, Midsummer Night’s Ream and, depending on community standards, Much Ado about Cussing. Then there’s the collectors’ edition of that secondary school classic: $19.84. We’re talking vellum end papers and full color photos and interviews of the entire cast of The Talk, people! Finally, we have those perennial favorites of bookstore and library staff: Grime and Punishment and Mess of the J’Uveniles.
You win the Internet for today!
: D
– Tales from the Book Sales Grim (I’m sorry. But I know sales slumps happen)
– The Hounding of the Book-sale Bills (“The Hound of the Baskervilles”…Ever have someone say your cheapest books on sale are too expensive?)
– A Midsummer’s Dream (ever daydream about getting a vacation from the work???)
– The Scarlet Letters, in Crayon, on the Covers of New Books
– Bookula (“The store is sucking the life out of me!”)
– Harry Plotter and the Sourcerer’s Stone or
– Harry Plotter and the Philosopher’s Story
– The Winter’s Tale (Subtitle: everything you need to know about running a small bookstore in the middle of winter)
– Love’s Labour Lost (Create any explanation you want for this one)
BWAHAHAHHAAAA! I’m sending my friend Ann, in Philly, the Midsummer’s Dream. She worked three years to get a vacation!