GUIDES FOR IDIOTS AND DUMMIES POPULAR

The books "For Dummies" series covers the basics of everything from home buying to sex. Compact discs for beginners of various music are also available.

What makes you feel like a complete idiot? Wine? Classical music? The Internet?

Odds are, your local bookstore has just the right reference to guide you back to the land of the coherent on any of those -- and many other -- subjects.

"The Complete Idiot's Guide" and the "For Dummies" series of reference books are all big sellers at Waldenbooks, Barnes and Noble Booksellers and Hastings Book, Music and Videos in Cape Girardeau.

Hastings, located in Town Plaza, has "a whole fixture of just Dummies books" on computer information, said manager Deborah Jung.

Steve Turner, the manager of Waldenbooks at West Park Mall, said he's used the computer references himself.

"I prefer the `Idiot's' books, though. They seem to go through more thorough steps than `Dummies' do," Turner said. "But that's just my personal preference."

Both series are user-friendly guides to technology for people who just want to make the computer do what it's supposed to do without wading through pages and pages of byte-speak.

Jung called the two series "a really good, basic series for the beginner."

"They're designed for the person who is not proficient, who doesn't need that in-depth knowledge before they can do what they need to do," she said.

The books use lots of pictures and graphics -- not unlike grade school textbooks -- to keep a tight rein on Generation X's elusive attention span.

IDG Books Worldwide started the process when it published the first Dummies book, "DOS for Dummies," in 1991.

The book, which explains the operating systems that run many computers, remains a bestseller.

MacMillan Publishing followed suit soon after with "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Making Money on Wall Street."

And a trend was born.

With more and more people commuting the Information Superhighway, "Internet for Dummies" is a big seller right now, said Ken Young, the manager of Barnes and Noble Booksellers.

The computer guides are the best-known of both series, but dummies and idiots can find guidance on just about every subject.

There's even a "Complete Idiot's Guide to the Perfect Marriage."

"They're pretty much all over the store," Jung said. "Practical finance, cooking, wine, and there's also `Classical Music for Dummies,' which kind of teaches you the basics of classical music."

The non-computer books aren't selling as well in either series as the titles about computers, Jung and Turner said.

"Probably the others, like wine and beer-making, they're still a bit new," Turner said. "They'll probably be big next Christmas. I think people just aren't realizing they're out yet."

Jung agreed, adding that her store has only been displaying the non-computer books "for about two weeks."

And so far, she said, none of her customers have seemed the least bit embarrassed to ask for the books by name.

"Maybe the ones that really feel like dummies aren't asking," she said.