Forget-A-Book
I'm still slightly bitter towards the manager at the bookstore because she didn't hire me, but I'm starting to love what she's done with the bookstore. She set up a nice big (3 sections of shelves) area of half-price books. Some of this stuff just came out last year!
[Side note: Manfred, Jr. is not pleased with the way she eliminated the True Crime section and integrated all those books into nonfiction.]
While perusing this section of the store, I made an excellent find Thursday evening: THE LIFE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN. It's a biography of sorts about 4 American Catholic writers in the mid-20th century: Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor. They all knew each other and corresponded, so the book has that as well. I've read Merton, Day and O'Connor, and I know who Percy is.
It's a nice thick hardcover, and the front cover still has a bit of creak when it's opened. I've gotten picky about that since I read a book called BOOK FINDS. I realized I'm not really a collector, but I did like the bit about listening for that book cover creak.
Best of all: The cover price for the book was originally twenty seven dollars. It rang up at their register for eleven dollars and thirty cents! I felt so wonderful, toting out a hefty book like that for less that fifteen dollars.
Of course the frugal part of me is telling the crazy book addict part of me that I should have taken that eleven dollars and thirty cents and put it towards the eventual purchase of THE SUM AND TOTAL OF NOW. I am still seriously jonesing about that book! When Manfred, Jr. asked me what I wanted for Mother's Day, that title was almost on it's way out of my mouth. I pulled it back though and mentioned PLAINSONG and GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING.
$122.00. I wish I knew why. Does this happen very often, that one of the books in a trilogy fetches an obscenely higher price than the others?
Part of me wants to give up and jump into that abyss that I think of as my Lost Weekend book shopping. I want to log on to abebooks, pull out my credit card, click and wake up the next morning, wondering how it all happened. I'm better than I was a few years ago. At Manfred, Jr.'s age, I would've said something to the equivalent of "to hell with the bills" and spent the money on the book, feeling, no knowing, that it was the better choice.
&&&
I have this blog, and I have a job-hunting blog. Yesterday, these two crucial parts of my life intersected.
Friday afternoon. Job interview at one-thirty pm. I'm sitting there, cooling my heels. At five till two, the interviewer emerges from her office to let me know she's running 20 minutes behind and can I wait a little longer? No problem, I said. I have a book in my car and I'll just read until you're ready for me.
I was 3-4 pages from the end of the book when she called me in to interview. I left my book in the waiting area. I didn't want to carry it into the interview because, well, I didn't really think it was her business what I'm reading. [It was DRY by Augusten Burroughs] I usually stuff paperbacks in my purse, but the purse was too crammed on this day to fit the book.
To make a long story a little shorter, I got the job. Problem is, I was so stunned (rejection feels more normal when you've been out of work nearly a year) that I walked right past the waiting area and past my book.
I'm going to peek in and see if it's still there today, but I have my doubts. The reading section in that waiting area was putrid: A Holy Bible (okay, that wasn't putrid) 2 magazines from October 2003 and 1 from December 2003. Putting myself in another's shoes, if I had to sit in a waiting area with that kind of reading selection, and I saw a nice paperback copy of a book in great condition with an interesting, slightly edgy cover, I'd be all over it like it was Godiva chocolate during PMS.
Maybe I should just let it go. I could read those last 3-4 pages quickly the next time I'm in a bookstore. But for some reason, it makes me a little crazy to part with a book so abruptly. I have to go back and look for it. I need closure.
Even if the book's not there, I'm going to bring in my latest issue of BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS [What am I doing with a subscription to BH&G? An 8th grader was selling subscriptions last year at school; I'm a notoriously soft touch.] and leave it for others to read. It inflames me that a business can have a waiting area and think they can get away with crap like 7 month old magazines! Do I really want to work there?
[Side note: Manfred, Jr. is not pleased with the way she eliminated the True Crime section and integrated all those books into nonfiction.]
While perusing this section of the store, I made an excellent find Thursday evening: THE LIFE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN. It's a biography of sorts about 4 American Catholic writers in the mid-20th century: Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor. They all knew each other and corresponded, so the book has that as well. I've read Merton, Day and O'Connor, and I know who Percy is.
It's a nice thick hardcover, and the front cover still has a bit of creak when it's opened. I've gotten picky about that since I read a book called BOOK FINDS. I realized I'm not really a collector, but I did like the bit about listening for that book cover creak.
Best of all: The cover price for the book was originally twenty seven dollars. It rang up at their register for eleven dollars and thirty cents! I felt so wonderful, toting out a hefty book like that for less that fifteen dollars.
Of course the frugal part of me is telling the crazy book addict part of me that I should have taken that eleven dollars and thirty cents and put it towards the eventual purchase of THE SUM AND TOTAL OF NOW. I am still seriously jonesing about that book! When Manfred, Jr. asked me what I wanted for Mother's Day, that title was almost on it's way out of my mouth. I pulled it back though and mentioned PLAINSONG and GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING.
$122.00. I wish I knew why. Does this happen very often, that one of the books in a trilogy fetches an obscenely higher price than the others?
Part of me wants to give up and jump into that abyss that I think of as my Lost Weekend book shopping. I want to log on to abebooks, pull out my credit card, click and wake up the next morning, wondering how it all happened. I'm better than I was a few years ago. At Manfred, Jr.'s age, I would've said something to the equivalent of "to hell with the bills" and spent the money on the book, feeling, no knowing, that it was the better choice.
&&&
I have this blog, and I have a job-hunting blog. Yesterday, these two crucial parts of my life intersected.
Friday afternoon. Job interview at one-thirty pm. I'm sitting there, cooling my heels. At five till two, the interviewer emerges from her office to let me know she's running 20 minutes behind and can I wait a little longer? No problem, I said. I have a book in my car and I'll just read until you're ready for me.
I was 3-4 pages from the end of the book when she called me in to interview. I left my book in the waiting area. I didn't want to carry it into the interview because, well, I didn't really think it was her business what I'm reading. [It was DRY by Augusten Burroughs] I usually stuff paperbacks in my purse, but the purse was too crammed on this day to fit the book.
To make a long story a little shorter, I got the job. Problem is, I was so stunned (rejection feels more normal when you've been out of work nearly a year) that I walked right past the waiting area and past my book.
I'm going to peek in and see if it's still there today, but I have my doubts. The reading section in that waiting area was putrid: A Holy Bible (okay, that wasn't putrid) 2 magazines from October 2003 and 1 from December 2003. Putting myself in another's shoes, if I had to sit in a waiting area with that kind of reading selection, and I saw a nice paperback copy of a book in great condition with an interesting, slightly edgy cover, I'd be all over it like it was Godiva chocolate during PMS.
Maybe I should just let it go. I could read those last 3-4 pages quickly the next time I'm in a bookstore. But for some reason, it makes me a little crazy to part with a book so abruptly. I have to go back and look for it. I need closure.
Even if the book's not there, I'm going to bring in my latest issue of BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS [What am I doing with a subscription to BH&G? An 8th grader was selling subscriptions last year at school; I'm a notoriously soft touch.] and leave it for others to read. It inflames me that a business can have a waiting area and think they can get away with crap like 7 month old magazines! Do I really want to work there?
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