Well, the Hunter S.Thompson ones make sense.

I'd like to see this list from booksellers across the country. Namely places in the midwest. Bible belt, etc. I'd love to see how it'd vary.

I'd like to see the numbers behind this list.

If they put out six copies of New York Trilogy that month and two were stolen is that the same as another book that had two copies put out and both copies stolen?

Nice comment on that blog entry: "And then both employees began to talk about the music on their iPods, 98% of which neither had ever paid for."

The Barnes & Noble in downtown Seattle has a bunch of books that you have to ask for because they are stolen so often. I know that all the Chuck Palahniuk books are off the shelves. There are several more, but I can't remember which ones.

I'm surprised at Gatsby because it is boring. I'm trying to imagine a world where there are underworld book hawkers, selling copies of Gatsby on the cheap to down and out high schoolers.

When I worked at a bookstore, we never seemed to have anything related to nursing left on the shelf. Particularly the more expensive dictionaries and the like.

back in my rough and rowdy days. I stole 3 of the books on that list.

@7 if memory serves, there weren't any murakami novels on the shelves at the downtown barnes and noble for quite some time. i always chalked this up to poor taste, but maybe they were favorites of local shoplifters too?

So people steal the least expensive books?

@11 Yeah that was my thought. Most of these books seem like school assignments.

#11 makes an excellent point. The fact that they would risk stealing a book that is available online for free suggests that they have a teacher expecting them to show up in class with an actual print copy.