I'm right in the bible belt, and this has some particular annoyances. One of these annoyances is trying to find a damn book. I wanted to go buy "The Selfish Gene" by richard dawkins, a book on evolution. I've read through it a bit, but I wanted to have the book and read it cover to cover. It took me four bookstores to find this book. Now you might say "well, it's not like every book story has to have the particular book." and you'd be right, but let me explain.
Bookstore #1 a large big box style book store, goes by the name "bargain books" has a large section on classic for good prices that I visit for on occasion. They have an entire wall of their store (the long wall, this being a rectangular box store) dedicated to christian inspiration, christian fiction, and bibles, with a couple of seperate shelves just for some of the big preachers like Rick Warren. I look and I look, and I can't find a biology section, or even a science section. I ask the lady up front where their sciences section is, she says "oh, right this way", and leads me to the back corner of the store, where they have, not even a shelf, just the bottom of a shelf dedicated to all of known science. And predictably, not a single book on evolution. They had a couple of Stephen Hawking's books, and then some books about birds. That's it.
Bookstore #2, Books A million, surely this large retail chain would carry it, right? See the scene above. A quarter of the store is dedicated to christian reading, science doesn't even have a section. Asking the lady she leads me to their "nature section" which is mostly encyclopedia style books on animals and trees, and again Stephen Hawking makes an appearence. No books on Evolution, but there were christian themed books on enjoying nature.
I don't even need to mention #3, you know the story already.
#4, Barnes and Noble the only bastion of science literature in my city of 100,000 citizens. They had it, along with plenty of other material on every other science. Thank you B&N, screw the rest of the bookstores in the south.
I feel sorry, not just for the atheists, but for any religious person not a christian that lives in the bible belt. Out of curiousity I asked one of the books stores if they had any books on Islam. It was relegated to the one shelf labeled "new age", and there was only one book about it. Here, science and islam are no different than bird watching and healing yourself with crystals.
You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.
