Yeah, because that stuff didn't really happen

Ummmm..."I Know why the Caged Bird Sings" is also non-fiction. It's Maya Angelou's autobiography. "The Da Vinci Code" and that short stories books look like the only ones that ARE fiction.

Holocaust denial at Barnes & Noble? And, uh, denial of really fat twins on motorcycles?

@Donathius: Maya Angelou's autobiography is probably fiction.

Those damn Albanians!!!

I have a friend that takes all the bibles she finds in their stores and move them to the fictional section of the stores. I know of at least 5 stores she is officially banned from.

@BustangBetty: Your friend sounds like an idiot.

@Donathius: But, of course, if you acknowledge that, you take fire out of the holocaust denial argument. Obviously it was a simple shelving error, hence the two other clearly non-fiction books shelved under fiction. Hopefully people can temper their self-righteousness and gently point out the error, along with the other two books instead of getting up in arms.

Funny response though, as long as the error was promptly fixed.

@HiPwr: Extreme anti-Christian/atheist or whatnot perhaps, but I'm curious, how does that make one an idiot?

I deny the existence of men with long fingernails and those that can stick 100 cigarettes in their mouths!

@BustangBetty: I like how your friend thinks.

@TheDayIsMine: Extreme anti-Christian/atheist/Jesusfreak/etc. or not, you have to admit pulling that kind of stuff is annoying to the store workers, to say the least.
Obnoxious and childish at the worst.

@BustangBetty: LMAO -- I am going to start doing the same thing

@BustangBetty: I wonder if your friend does that with the Koran, too. It's not as fashionable to be hateful towards and strive to piss off Muslims, is it?

What's to be gained by this behavior? I say that anyone that goes out of their way to anger people who's only offense against you is that they have different views on spiritiality is moronic.

I'm not a Christian myself, but I do practice the concept of "live and let live".

@HiPwr: Silly, mischievous, anti-religion, agnosstic/atheist, historically accurate (depending on your interpretation of the stories in the Bible), maybe. But an idiot? Really?

@TheDayIsMine: She's an idiot because the only thing she accomplishes by moving the Bibles is pissing off the poor minimum wage employees who have to move them back to the right spot. It's just as bad as the pedos who leave sex books and porn in the children's picture book section of the store.

There are more productive ways of protesting organized religion that aren't childish and petty.

@TheDayIsMine: Being an extreme anti-Christian/atheist is fine, but I hope she has ways of showing it that aren't completely obnoxious and stupid. Does she think that the poor bookstore worker who has to waste time reshelving the books is going to suddenly realize "Wow, my religion and faith is a lie! Thank you, anonymous book re-shelver!"

Barnes and Nobel is very good at miscategorizing books. They put "The Celestine Prophecy" under fiction, for example. While it is fiction, it probably would have fit better under "eastern spirituality". Apparently they got a lot of questions about it, when I asked she knew exactly where it was.

I don't think it really matters in the long run, though. Some people just take offense at too much.

@TheDayIsMine: I think the point was ignorance, not Holocaust denial.

@HooFoot: Really?! Moving a religious text to the fiction section where adults may be inconvenienced is the same as intentionally exposing young children to pornography against their wills? Really?!

@Dafrety: You've clearly never been the one who's had to clean up after assclowns like this at a bookstore.

@zippygaelle: I'm imagining your tantrum when you find that somebody's moved a Hitchens or Dawkins book into "fiction".

It's not funny or clever, it's just idiotic. All she's accomplishing is feeling like Miss Witty at the expense of the bookstore employees who have to reshelve everything.

@TheDayIsMine: Atheist doesn't always equal anti-Christian. I'm as non-believing as they come, but myself and most of the other atheists I know are pretty sensitive to other people's beliefs. I know we have a bad rap for a reason and I apologize on behalf of the intolerant atheists out there, but we're not all bad. Promise!

@HiPwr: christians have actively negatively affected my life in many ways.

A little Googling does reveal some US court cases involving copyright battles over the authorship (and thus authenticity), of 'the Diary of Anne Frank.'

There also seem to have been a court case (in Germany around 1980 area) when Otto Frank sued folks saying the diary was a fake. This resulted in the finding that 'significant' portions of the diary were written with a ballpoint pen - which is a bit of a problem, given that Anne Frank died in 1945, and the ballpoint pen only appeared in 1951 :P

Der Spiegel and others covered this issue quite extensively, but the mythology continues.
Perhaps coz its an interesting story that began with a kernel of truth - and over time, it appears to have been embellished, tarted up, and added to.

Isn't it possible that the sign says:

Non
Fiction

The picture could be cropped, hence why all the books are non-fictions (except the Da Vinci Code).

Darned Albanian also put The Guinness Book of World Records under fiction.

@Russell Miller:

i would agree that for a lot of things, it doesn't matter too much, but this is really insulting to millions of people.

@bubbledumpster: Muslims killed 3,000 of my countrymen, but I don't denegrate the beliefs of all of them because of the minority of nut cases.

Same goes for Christians. Hell, Barack Obama is a Christian and I don't hold Christians accountable for him.

@utensil42: In both instances, you're forcing your beliefs on unsuspecting people who did nothing to provoke it. The pedo example is more extreme of the two, but it's the same odious concept.

@BustangBetty: some barnes n noble / borders do this already anyway

Anti-holocaust conspiracy or a sign in the wrong place? I vote for the former, since certainly no one would post two blog posts in one day about misplaced signs in the store.

There's consumer advocacy and then there's this. Whatever this is.

It says "Diary of a Young Girl".

Aren't there two versions of it? Is one fictional?

@Ian Fraser: A little Googling reveals that you are wrong.

[www.annefrank.org]

@HiPwr: Not really. Who's the one who believes in invisible men in the sky again?

@mythago: Good thing Hitchens and Dawkins are modern scientists with peer-reviewed publishings. Can't really say the same for something written by middle-eastern shepherds 2000 years ago.

@lannister80: Our President. Is that the answer you're looking for?

For a while, the local Hastings (book/movie/videogame/music store) had "The Holy Bible" under fiction.

What probably happened is that they had a large amount of overstock for those titles and a lack of stock for the titles that were supposed to go in the display. We used to do this at Borders all the time (though we kept the genres the same).

@sir_eccles: No offense (I believe the diary is just what it says) but you could've found a less potentially biased source.

@BustangBetty: This isn't amusing, it's childish and makes your friend no better than the intolerant religious extremists. Atheists are already one of the most mistrusted groups in the US: [abcnews.go.com]

However, this is pretty common among most any religious group. A small minority of extremists are typically the most outspoken/active and make the remaining majority of generally moderate, reasonable members of the group look bad.

@ngoandy: You and your logic have no place at a site like the Consumerist!

@ngoandy: Knowing how Barnes and Noble signs are, no, not really.

The sign would say "Non-fiction" all on one line, like it should. At worst it would be unhyphenated, but not on two lines.

This is just like the Obama endcap... a prank, either by a jerk customer, or a jerk/disgruntled employee.

You know who else's bookstore put the Diary of Anne Frank in the fiction section?

Remember the Obama window display?

Moving books around in a bookstore as a joke is not a new trick.

@iceicemaybe: I would say "obnoxious and childish at best", because I really can't think of any more honorable excuse for doing such a thing. At worst, it's hateful and passive-aggressive.

It displays an intolerance of the beliefs of others which is rather hypocritical for any person who expects tolerance out of others. I can't imagine this girl taking it very well were she to see a Christian moving some science books over to the Religion section of the store...

@BustangBetty: Presumably the Bibles are categorized under "Religion" to begin with, before your bigoted friend moves them. It's not like they're in some special "Absolute Truth" section or something - they're lumped in with texts from every other religion out there. It's up to people to choose whether or not they want to accept a particular religion's teachings as the truth.

When did behavior like this become something to brag about or defend, in America?

@Donathius: I'm guessing they either ran out of shelving space or left someone on their own.

Hand to god, true story. I was working out with a friend who taught 7th grade reading. The working out portion is important because imagine having to maintain yourself on a treadmill during this conversation:

"Teacher" - You took a lot of lit in college, right?

Me - Yeah, why?

"Teacher" - Did you read Tom Sawyer?

Me - uh, a long time ago...

"Teacher" - Was that fiction or non-fiction

Me - fiction

"Teacher" - that's what I thought, but it's tricky to remember. They really should call nonfiction something else.

My brain really just concentrated on standing upright and not strangling her at this point.

Moral?

Don't give people this much credit. Don't assume that working with books gives them special powers over fiction v. nonfiction detection. I bet if you went in and said, "could you give me the epistolary version of Anne Frank?" you could get a least three associate head explosions...

@BustangBetty: If the clientele at Barnes & Noble weren't what it was, I would wonder why she'd ever be in a bookstore to begin with. I wonder what the last book she actually read was, versus say, the last five books listed on her Facebook or MySpace.