Made a quick stop - that turned into a long visit - at Borders today on the way home from a meeting. To pre-order Harry Potter #7.
Yeah. I admit it. Pre-ordering Harry Potter. And I'm going to stand in line at midnight to get it too. Even though, the very next morning, I'll be hitching up with my girls to head for a triathlon, and last possible thing I should be doing at 1 am the night before is standing in line with 200 kids to buy a book. You got a problem wid dat?
But all I get out of it was a slip of paper representing a book I will own in 4 months. And that doesn't count. There is something in my DNA that won't let me leave a bookstore empty-handed. I've tried. Really. I have.
I get in there and... I just can't leave without taking one. little. peek. You know - a walkabout. Like doin' a lap to check out the scene, only without all that pesky beer and people pukin' in garbage cans. Sometimes I wander a bit aimlessly, overwhelmed by all that potential knowledge in one place. I might wallow in despair for just a moment that I'll never have time to read them all, never be able to take it all in and hear what all these voices had to say. I'm kind of that way with libraries - but bookstores are different because when you take the books home they're yours. Forever.
Whether or not I'm buying classics on a given day I always stop by the literature section to pay homage to the greats - the Jane Austens and Charles Dickenses of the world. Then I check in on my friends. Writers of contemporary fiction. Authors whose voices I've come to know so well they've set up shop in my head. People who write books I read and read and re-read, trying to learn from them. Trying to figure out just how the hell they do it so effortlessly. So brilliantly. Writers I envy and admire and aspire to sit beside on a bookshelf. Hoping someday my voice will be the one whispering inside someone's head, and my words will be the ones they can't leave the bookstore without.
I buy them all. Even the ones that don't necessarily get the best reviews. Because we forgive our friends for their flaws, and every day can't be their best. And because I can learn from their successes as well as their not-so-successes.
So that's my secret.
These are the voices that called out to me today...
4 comments:
Funny you should post this. I was in Walden Books today. I finished The Time Travelers Wife a couple days ago and needed (hmmm... is needed the correct verbage, probably not) I wanted another book. So today I bought: Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik, and In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant. I only went to the mall to get my free VS bra though. Hee hee
My brother feeds my Harry Potter addiction and pre-orders them as a gift for me via Amazon. Sometimes there is a book in my mailbox when I get back from my swim!
i have the same bookstore problem... usually i go in to freeload the magazines for a while, then just happen to run across a book or 2 that i "need" to read
That's really funny, because I was also in Waldenbooks yesterday. I was tempted to pre-order my copy, but last time I did that, I ended up on vacation the day the book came out. Oops.
Nevermind the fact that I need to finish Lolita by next week-- I bought Real Simple magazine. :)
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