The Times’ Elsa McLaren reports that shoppers can discover a true bargain among the bookshelves today after 300 copies of a new novel have been hidden among the titles of unsuspecting bookshops across London. THE IDIOCY OF IDEARS by an unnamed author has been planted in the fiction, poetry, art, philosophy and travel sections of Waterstones, Borders, Foyles and Blackwells in Central London. Deemed a “brilliant expose of an education system that has now all but disappeared” by its publishers, they wanted to spread the word by engaging in “the opposite of shoplifting.”
Will it work? “We don’t think Waterstone’s will say that because it’s been left in their shop therefore it belongs to them,” said Steve Lowe, director of The Aquarium. “I think the ones in the fiction and travel sections will be discovered first, but the ones in the poetry and philosophy sections will probably hang around a lot longer.” No comment as yet from Waterstone’s, and something tells me they will keep mum on this for a while longer…