Are we that gullible? Yes. Yes we are.

About 30 years ago, David Bowie put out an album called Lodger. Pretty good album, some good songs on it. One song got on the radio that I didn't think much of and stayed on the radio far longer than it deserved. It was called "DJ," and had lines like

I am a D.J.,

I am what I play

I got believers believing me

Like so much of Bowie, it sounds way better than it reads. In any event, by sucking up to the people who put the music over the air, he got a lot more mileage off his album. That, I believe, was what was going on with The Dewey Decimal System of Love, by Josephine Carr. In our case, it totally worked. We bought the Large Print edition when it came out and kept it on the shelf year after year, even as it did not circulate. But then I came along with my belief that books have to earn their keep in order to stay on the shelves, so The Dewey Decimal System of Love goes the way of actual card catalogs and quiet in the library.