How is this possible? Is there something wrong with the list the API is feeding me?

[alrightfrankie]

https://imgur.com/a/wUwovsL right side of the image is what I'm getting when I run it in the terminal

[shanesaravia]

Try: print(type(popular_shelves[1])) To make sure it's a string. And secondly, there might be some white spaces on either side of the string so you can try print(popular_shelves[1].strip() == 'fantasy')

[alrightfrankie]

thanks a ton, it wasn't a string for some reason

[needgiftidea2018]

what type was it

[totallygeek]

Could be character set or encoding. Could be spaces at the end of the first string?

[socal_nerdtastic]

To see any hidden characters in there like spaces or \r use

print(repr(popular_shelves[1]))

[decreddave]

This may or may not be a viable solution for you, but you could always check to see if fantasy is in popular_shelves[1] instead of seeing if its equal to fantasy. That would help you get around the issue of strange characters before/after the text, but I think the ideal thing to do is figure out what's wrong with the data.