George S. Leibson, an owner of Coliseum Books in Manhattan, cites cookbooks and expensive art books, as well as books ab
out sex. (“Some people are just too embarrassed to buy those.”) Paul Ingram, the buyer for Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City, observes that while science fiction is often said to vanish (“a lot of people who like it are 13 and have no money”), the sections with the most shrinkage in his store are simply those farthest from the cash register.
At a major independent bookstore in Seattle, the senior buyer said graphic novels, as well as books about the Beats and tattoos, disappear pretty often. He added, interestingly, that the enigmatic novels of the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami have begun to disappear at a fast clip. His explanation: “In his own way, Murakami is a subversive writer with an outlaw sensibility. His characters have this Everyman thing going on, but they are also working against the grain.”
Funny: there's no mention here of "the most shoplifted novelist in New York."
--Marshal Zeringue
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