How to step into a bookstore and ask for a book of autism?

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Is that a joke or a fact?

If it's a fact, where did you hear that at?

ahhh sorry. it was an attempt to explain that an online bookstore is aspie heaven and can go a long way to answering the original posters concerns about book store ettiquette.

people with As are credited with being computer savvy and socially awkward and the creation of online shopping is considered to be an aspie invention, we create the world to suit us, because we can and others follow.

an optimistic expression adn observation of AS endeavour , combined with a solution for the op observations.

sorry if i mislead you, i have no idea if what i said is a fact, but it is a truth.

I always start to chatter in a very NON-Asp way:

"Hi- um- my niece was just dxed with that disorder, Aspergers- do you have a book on it? I'm not sure what it is and she's coming to visit......is that how you pronounce it?"

Call me a traitor, but I hate the damn thing, I hate the way it's pronounced, "Oh, I have ASP-PER-GERS!" and I hate everything about it. And I hate hating it.

Step into a large bookstore with computers capable of finding the book you want (catalog thing, can't think of it's real name), and find the book from there. No human contact involved except for the cashier, who probably wouldn't care less either way...

Also, what's so humiliating about asking for the book on autism? Is it for you? Does the other person know this, or need to know this?

Sad- I went to a local bookstore on my lunch break and they didn't have anything on ASD much less Autism in general. Unfortunately, it's the same bookstore that doesn't have anything on sexuality but an entire aisle for religious propaganda.

Guess it's back to shopping on-line for books.

You never need to tell a clerk or anyone else in the bookstore why you want a certain book. In fact most don't want you to because they have to rush to the next customer.

The bookstore clerk sees lots of customers in a given day, asking about all kinds of strange stuff. I recently went in there with a request for a book on the great midwestern tornado outbreak of 1974 and another book on cloud photos. The clerk didn't say anything to me, just looked it up and pointed me toward the aisle where I could find the titles. There was another guy there looking for a book on antique/collectible buttons. Yours CAN'T be weirder than his.

If you're that worried, just buy one of those disposable credit cards for $50 and buy the book online at Amazon.com or whatever book site it is that has the title you're looking for. It will be shipped to you overnight if you want to pay extra for the postage.

I've noticed around here (Seattle, WA) the Barnes & Nobles, Border's and independent bookstores tend to put a lot of their books on autism in the Childcare or Child Behavior sections, even when it's a general book on Aspies of all ages like Tony Attwood's.

Clerk: "Hello, what can I help you with?"
Aspie: "Mumbles, Star trek string theory, mumbles."
Clerk: "What's that?"
Aspie: "Mumbles" (Look at shoes)
Clerk: "Oh, books on Asperger's Syndrome? They're in the Psychology section. Here, I'll show you."
Aspie: "Mumbles Tony Attwood."
Clerk: "You're welcome."

Catalog. Though the specific bookstore might give it its own cute name. (A library might, too. For years my public library's computer catalog was called "Maggie.")

Or just go to the public library. Their catalog will almost certainly be better, and it'll be easier to find a specific item because the stacks are organized to that end. Bookstores want you to look at stuff that you didn't have in mind, and set things up to be distracting (and overstimulating for some) because this makes most people buy more stuff. Library workers are trained about respecting people's privacy and won't even look at what you check out, much less comment about it.

If you don't want to use their catalog at all, you can probably just charge right past it and go to the shelves -- 150's (psychology) 360's (social services) 370's (education) and 610's (applied sciences: medicine) or in R (medicine) H (social sciences) or L (education) if it's Library of Congress system. Most of the books about autism in the academic library I use are RC553.somethings. But you'll miss all the cross-referenced stuff if you just go to the subject-heading numbers and don't look at the catalog. You can usually get your local library's catalog online and do it at home, though, and then you just walk in with your note-pad of call-numbers and go straight to the stacks.

To the OP - in all honesty, a person could want a book on AS for many legitimate reasons, most of which have nothing to do with the person themselves having AS - maybe they want to learn more about it because someone else they know has it, or for a school research project, or for probably many other reasons. So if the bookstore clerk or whomever decides that you have AS simply because you are interested in a book about it, then I respectfully suggest that they themselves have issues of personality or character at least as severe as AS

But if you are that concerned about it, try Amazon, or try your local library. At least the one here has self-checkout machines - you scan the barcode on your library card, then you scan the barcode on the book, and you're done. You don't have to interact with anyone and that's that.

1. Walk into store.
2. Ask for Autism book.
3. Browse for book.
4. Buy book.
5. Walk out of store somewhat satisfied for actually getting the book.

Yeah you can just go in, ask a clerk to help you find the book, buy the book and get out.
It's more fun to stay there a while, look at other books, buy something at the Starbucks inside, take a gander at the people around you, what they are doing, what they are reading ,who they are with, what they look like.
If you have a photographic memory you can read an entire book in half a day, memorize it, go home and retype the entire thing on MS Office and not have to buy it.

Get the ISBN number(s) and ask then if they have, if not if they could order it.

If you are too vague they are going to 'help' you

why do need to ask for book? go to health section,should be there.

ok