They were stuck in the back room waiting for a shelf tag.

As I think I've already mentioned here about a thousand times I heart Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse. I wanted to use the chapbook in my po-po class, but it has been a two-month-long saga to get those chapbooks. First I had to explain the fact that they did not have isbns to three different people on three different occasions. Then they did not order the chapbooks because they did not have isbns. Then when I hounded them I had to explain to a new set of people about the lack of isbns. I had to give them Scott Pierce's email address multiple times. Then last week the books finally came in. I got a phone call & two emails from people announcing their arrival. I was stopped in the halls by the absolutely wonderful woman who works in the English department office handling book orders & other things, she told me with a wide, joyful smile, that the books were in. So today, preparing to prep my students for reading it, i though I'd go check on the chapbooks. They were not on my shelf at the bookstore. The extremely patient woman who handles orders & I wandered around the bookstore to see if they'd been mis-shelved, while the speakers played Bon Jovi's "Shot Through the Heart." Three people there attested to having seen them arrive, had seen the actual books with their actual eyes, but the chapbooks had mysteriously disappeared. I went to my class & switched our schedule around so that we're reading Laura Sims next instead. After class I got two emails & a phone call saying that the chapbooks are on the shelf. I have not yet verified this. I write this out of joy that they are supposedly here & available. I write this out of fear that they might have again disappeared. I write this because I wonder how often people's books get caught up in this kind of adventure.