I have a weakness for books. I have slowly developed a resistance to the siren call of web-shopping, keeping my purchases on Amazon.com low-ish and infrequent-ish. However, when I get into a bookstore, an honest-to-goodness, in the flesh bookstore, my spine shatteres to bits and pieces. It wasn't so bad at first. First trip to shop for books this semester was at the campus bookstore, which is badly run and ill-stocked and over-priced. Resistance was easy. Next stop, however, my spine splintered within five minutes. I went to a local independent bookstore called Book House. It's a nifty store, the kind I like to wander in just to see what-all's on the shelves.
Lots was on the shelves. There's a little hallway between the grown-up bookstore and the kids bookstore (called The Little Book House) with really great cards for new babies and birthdays and random mailing. And there were displays. I broke first at the display for Neil Gaiman. I already had Coraline, which is super-good, yet I felt compelled to pick up a copy of Wolves in the Walls.
It's just one book, I told myself. One extra book won't kill me.
Thing is, this is like a disease. Like an addiciton. It starts with one book, yes, but quickly becomes seven more. This is me being restrained, though, as it could easily have been seventeen more, including the Pengiun edition of Alexander Dumas's The Black Tulip, which I even picked up, looked at, then placed back on the shelf. No, Sugar Kat. Baaad Sugar Kat, I told myself. (This was before the breakdown at the Gaiman display.)
Here is what I bought.
Lots was on the shelves. There's a little hallway between the grown-up bookstore and the kids bookstore (called The Little Book House) with really great cards for new babies and birthdays and random mailing. And there were displays. I broke first at the display for Neil Gaiman. I already had Coraline, which is super-good, yet I felt compelled to pick up a copy of Wolves in the Walls.
It's just one book, I told myself. One extra book won't kill me.
Thing is, this is like a disease. Like an addiciton. It starts with one book, yes, but quickly becomes seven more. This is me being restrained, though, as it could easily have been seventeen more, including the Pengiun edition of Alexander Dumas's The Black Tulip, which I even picked up, looked at, then placed back on the shelf. No, Sugar Kat. Baaad Sugar Kat, I told myself. (This was before the breakdown at the Gaiman display.)
Here is what I bought.
- Wolves in the Walls, Neil Gaiman
illustrated by Dave McKean, natch - Lullaby, Chuch Palahniuk
- Civil War Stories, Ambrose Bierce
one of the books for another class which was just lying there in the campus bookstore this afternoon, costing only $1.50 and softly calling my name - How To Be Good, Nick Hornby
- Notes From Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky
(translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol. 1), Alan Moore, et al
- The Night in Question, Tobias Wolff
one of the authors we're reading then meeting this semester in my Contemporary Writers at Work class; I bought this because we read one of his short stories from this collection in the first class and I really, really liked it - Why We Can't Wait, Martin Luther King, Jr.
this was one of the "recommended" books listed in my History of the Civil Rights Movement course syllabus
