Book Worm

Spent Sunday mid-afternoon in a local (albeit chain) bookstore. I suppose "chain" blots out "local." The point being, though, that we didn't have to stray too far from home to spend the afternoon book-browsing.

Having read a recent post by a dear desert-dwelling friend, who'd recently received a stash of new pages from Amazon, I was inspired. You'll find me in the "literature" section, usually checking to see if there's anything new by some of my favorite authors: Ellen Gilchrist (I saw her read once at the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, and now whenever I read her books I hear her slow, Southern lilt in my head - a bonus); Marge Piercy (I read Braided Lives in approximately 1990, and thought I would never be the same. Maybe I'm not); Alice Hoffman (OK. I admit. I, too, have a hard time swallowing the "slightly but cleverly paranormal" aspects in some contemporary fiction, but I just can't help myself in the case of Alice Hoffman); Joyce Carol Oates (I first read Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart in late high school/early college, simply because of the title. I was a bit punk rock and thought the title was pure genius. I kept reading because she's a great writer. Now, if only she weren't so painfully thin). Usually there isn't anything new (I mean, apart from the utterly prolific Ms. Oates, how often does a new book by one's favorite author actually appear? Once every two years or so, at best) but that doesn't stop me from looking.

Today I came home with the following: Big Island of Hawaii (Moon Handbook); Intuition by Allegra Goodman (I read everything I can find from her, but nothing so far has surpassed the fabulous Kaaterskill Falls. I keep hoping.); Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy (I read a review of this a while back, but don't believe I've ever read anything she's written before); The Night Watch by Sara Waters (this despite the bad reviews I've seen - after all, Fingersmith! Tipping the Velvet! Affinity! How can she go wrong now?); A Taxonomy of Barnacles by Galt Niederhoffer (I am intrigued by the comparisons between this fictional family and the historical Mitfords, as well as the more timely Minots); and, last but certainly not least, The Illustrated Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, illustrated graphic novel-style by Dame Darcy (I simply could not pass up this version of one of my all-time favorite novels). Only last night I finished Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian (a truth about me: I cannot pass up any story set in a New England summer home. Pathetic, but very true).

One complaint about the big-box chain bookstore... Wait. First, I must admit that this place employed me the summer between college and that crappy first year of law school, back when the big-box bookstore was a brand new entity, and the fact that so many books were, suddenly, instantaneously available even in the suburbs far outweighed the fact that the mammoth chain store would systematically put ma and pop type bookstores across the country out of business.

Back to the complaint...when I worked for this company, the bookstores boasted, and were known for, comfy chairs which encouraged browsers to sit and stay a while. It was kind of a big thing, the library/salon feel the company went for and, in some remote fashion, achieved. People came and picked up a pile of books, then settled in one of the padded, comfy chairs and decided which of the stack to purchase. Today, I went in search of one of those chairs, and this is what I found:

What the hell? I tried to post a photo of two luxurious, buttery leather reading chairs, roped off by those bastards at the big box bookstore. But it won't upload! Damn!

It would have been good.