"Oh, you don't read...?"

[dragonimp]

The other day, a woman asked me what was good on the new book shelf, and I said I wasn't familiar with the new books. And then, absently, as she was turning to the shelf, she said "Oh, you don't read..?"

This sort of floored me for a moment. It makes so many assumptions on so little information. It's possible that that was only the first half of her thought, which could have been "you don't read the new books," but I doubt it.

I felt like saying "Look, I'm in grad school, taking online courses, sometimes the only thing I do all day is read!" But 1)it's really not her business, and 2)I'm sure she doesn't care.

I really shouldn't let offhand comments from random people get to me, but meh. I think part of why it annoyed me so much is that I really do hurt for pleasure reading during school. I just don't have the flipping time.

(But even if I did, I still wouldn't be familiar with the new book shelf, because most of those simply aren't on my way-too-long-already reading list.)

Comments

[rainjoyous.livejournal.com]

It says more about the person who made the assumption than it does about the person being 'judged'. Like that idiot woman who was being snotty at me about her 'specialist' magazine while I was thinking, 'If you're interested in the real specialist science of this, why don't you read academic journals instead of magazines?' And because she was a bitch to me, 'Do you just like looking at the pictures?'

*cough* Sometimes people make us mad. It is fine to be mad when that happens ;)

Also, yeah, new fiction? I haven't a clue, because I don't do hardbacks. Ask me about *recent* fiction and I'm okay, but *new* fiction? Wouldn't have a clue ^^;

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it does, really. This lady always comes across as somewhat arrogant or condescending, at least she seems so to me. (Doesn't help that she always seems to feel her phone is more important than the person standing in front of her - she might be using the phone for work, but business calls while running errands doesn't seem very professional.)