After the British Army burned the Congressional Library in 1814, Thomas Jefferson donated his library — 6,700 volumes — to the U.S. government to start a new one. Not only is that an impressive number of books for one person to own today, but especially for not quite two hundred years ago.

In her book The Man Who Loved Books Too Much (more on that in a future posting), author Allison Hoover Bartlett writes, “Jefferson proposed a classification scheme … in which books were organized within the broad categories of Memory, Reason, and Imagination, poetic divisions I’d like to see bookstores adopt today. It might take longer to find what you’re looking for, but in browsing, who knows what you’d find.”

That’s all good in theory, but as a bookseller, I have a hard enough time finding books when they’re supposed to be categorized in our rather extensive series of sections, sub-sections, and sub-sub-sections. Part of this is because sometimes management hires people who don’t know their alphabet, and hence, cannot properly shelve. Part of this is because certain individuals will grab a book from one section, wander through the store until they’re not interested in it anymore, and put it in the first section they come to. This might explain why I found a copy of the Photographically-illustrated Kama Sutra in our Children’s Picture Books sub-section the other day.*

Also, and just as likely, is that a Bookseller, at the end of a very long day — and most of us who work evenings work full-time day jobs, or are full-time students, so at 9pm when we’re ushering people out the doors, we’ve been awake and working since pretty damn early** — has a stack of books to put back before he or she can head out the front door, is just as likely not to care if the Einstein biography gets shelved after the Eisenhower biography or before. I mean, as long as the “Ei”s are together, how the fuck hard can it be to find the book?

Once, my least favorite customer to beat over the head with an oversized coffee book once screamed at me that I asked me “display a basic level of competence with the English alphabet when reshelving” to reshelve a book that was off by, like, seriously, one letter. Urgh. Murderdeathkill. This really has nothing to do with this post, I’m just still of murderdeathkill about it, y’know? Anyway:

With allofthat said, sometimes, our categorization sucks. Have you ever read Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon? If you’re a fan of The Wire, this is a must read. But are you aware that the book is categorized in two completely different sections, depending on which edition you’re looking for? The Mass Market is in True Crime, the photo-illustrated QP is in Law & Labor. I don’t understand it either, all I’ll say is that whoever is in charge of categorizing books smokes crack. We also have an alternate history of the Battle of Gettysburg in our history section. An alternate history, in our real history section. Crazy.***

I’m getting completely off point, and the point is this: sometimes, for a good cause (well, for a funny cause), I am willing to deliberately mis-shelve a book into an appropriate section. Hence:

Yes, I shelved two copies of Sarah Palin’s autobiography into our Fiction/Literature section. Some may claim this is too highbrow for the likes of Palin, some may claim this is denigrating, so I will just say this: the book defends the act of cannibalism. Don’t believe me? How about this quote from her book: “If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come He made them out of meat?” Well, Sarah, how about this: “If God had not intended for us to eat people, how come He made us out of meat?” Now, go re-read this post’s title again.

Levity aside, I yanked the books from section after taking that photo. There’s having fun, and then there’s deliberately shelving books where they don’t belong. I can bend my book selling ethics (I do every time I say something nice about a James Patterson novel), but I just can’t break them.

*A much more likely explanation is that someone was pleasuring himself in our Children’s Section, which is relatively isolated, and a pretty good reason why, even in a bookstore like ours, you should keep an eye on your offspring. Also be wary of the men’s restroom, people strip naked and use the sink to bathe. Wish I was kidding.

**My alarm goes off at 5:15am and I am usually at my day job from 6:30am until 3pm. I don’t drink coffee, and when I smile and ask, “Can I help you find anything today?” yes, I am more than happy to assist you and I am cheery. But at closing time? Get the fuck out. I’m tired and I want bed.

***And, no, we can’t just reshelve it in sci-fi, because we’ve got category stickers on each book and we can’t change categories at a store level. So even if we did take it down to sci-fi, it would only stay there until someone browsed through it and left it lying around, and then when someone grabs it off the reshelve cart, they’ll look at the category sticker and put it back in history. So the only thing to do, when people ask for it, is to take them back to history. Then they look at me like I’m an idiot, “This is not a real history book.” “Yes, I’m aware of that, however the moron in Ann Arbor who categorizes our book is not.”

****Just as a total aside, if you’re wondering why our elevator is broken, it’s not: after a long standing dispute of about a year between the DC fire marshal and the Bookstore’s HQ, regarding not unreasonable (but expensive) upgrades to the elevator, the marshal shut the elevator down. With a key. This has been a tremendous pain in the ass and I hope HQ shells out cash, because it’s really no fun carrying stacks of books up a flight of stairs.