John Y’s Musings from the Middle: How Bookstores Can Save the World

Idea for bookstores to save the world.

Yesterday in Barnes & Noble book store I browsed three different sections.

Politics section. It seemed like every book title was about blaming somebody or some group or some thing for all of our problems.

Self-help section. All the titles seemed in this section seemed to be about taking responsibility for yourself and not blaming others and making the most of your life.

Humor section. Just fun and frivolous titles that make a mockery of our day-to-day world and help lighten my day and restore my perspective.

So, here’s my big idea to save the world.

Take the Self-help books and place them in the Political section. That way we will help end the blame game and start thinking about what we each can do to make things better.

Take all the books in the Humor section and place them in the Self-Help section. Frankly, having a good laugh or two each day is better than buying and reading an entire new book we won’t act on anyway.

And, finally, place all the books from the Political section in the Humor Section. Those books will then be properly categorized and are frankly a lot funnier than most the books in that section anyway when you take them at face value. And they will stop being confused for books that teach or inform us—and finally serve some useful purpose.