Monday, November 26, 2012

Special order

In my ongoing search for light reading not related to church, I've started collecting the Agatha Christie mysteries.  I've noted that the author very often mentions things related to the C of E (Church of England for those who aren't churchy friends or family -- though I suspect that no one reading this post fits into any such category).  These words were part of the first two novels: vicar, parson, parsonage, acolyte.  (Acolyte!!)

Wanting to read the very first of her mysteries, I stepped into our local independent book store.  I found not a single book by Agatha Christie, so asked for help.  "Oh, we stopped carrying them.  No one reads those except high school students."

Really? (And where are they to shop, then?) I was terribly tempted to say that in fact I was a doctoral student in literature, writing a dissertation on the numerous Anglican references in the Christie mysteries.  (I didn't.)  But I had to special order "The Murder in the Vicarage."

The book arrived, and I went to pick it up after church yesterday.  The woman at the desk looked intently at me, looked at the book, and looked back at me.  What?  Oh...yes.  Perhaps she found it weird that a person wearing a clerical collar bought a book with this title. 

1 Comments:

Blogger Castanea_d said...

I am writing this from the Coralville library, so I checked their catalog: One hundred twenty-nine titles under "Christie, Agatha." A great many of these are audio-books, but they have a good selection of the printed books. And they are not housed with the juvenile fiction, as they would be were their readers mostly high school students.

11:21 AM  

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