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Slowly growing old
2003-07-28 - 5:18 p.m. Okay -- here's the news: I went out for a while to get my glasses fixed (no luck-closed Mondays) and to sell some books. I got to the bookstore with my modest grocery bag full of books to find two people with boxes and boxes full of books to sell ahead of me in line. "Oy," I thought, but it went better than I thought. He pawed through the first guys books, rejecting Angela's Ashes and Ackerley's My Dog Tulip, which I thought odd. Hmm. But he seemed good humored about it. The next in line, a middle-aged Asian woman, had a bunch of computer books which he rejected out of hand, but he ended up giving her fifty bucks worth of credit, so. I got fifty-two. He took everything except a hardcover Dennis Lehane and two Rosamunde Pilchers. Odd how they won't take hardcovers, no matter that you paid paperback price for them. Odd that he rejected poor Rosamunde. Okay, she's not great, but she's better than the paperback Dennis Lehanes that he did take. Anyway, and he took the Magic Circle, written by some woman named Katherine who also wrote a book called the Eight. "This as good as the Eight?" he asked. I felt honored that he even spoke to me, and confessed that I hadn't liked it at all. Sort of insane historical-timetravelling thriller stuff, way too complicated, sort of staring at you with goggling eyes asking you to admire its plot. I asked him how the Eight was, and he said it was good, but probably a hard act to follow. So -- that was successful, I think. I am free of a bagful of books, and I have discovered that the good bookbuyer works Monday afternoons. Then, I went to Longs to fill a prescription, and stopped in and Barnes and Noble to get a frappacino. I wonder if I could make a go of it as a person who hangs out at Barnes and Noble with a laptop writing something all day. I'm not sure I could -- Hmmm. Here's another thing I found fascinating, although I'm not sure why -- I don't know who any of these people are. It's all about some tempest at a writing workshop. I went to look for this guy's books at Barnes and Noble, but decided I should try to find them at the library. I don't think I'd want to keep them, and I don't think my local bookstore takes SF/Fantasy, although I should check that out. You know, another book I though was sort of "eh" when I read it, but which I now think must have been pretty good because I think about it all the time is Connie Willis' Doomsday Book. I think she's a pretty stolid writer, so as you're reading along it doesn't seem like much at all -- but her ideas are pretty good, and her depiction of life in 10th century England was strangely memorable. I just wish something different had happened, I guess. Not sure. Okay -- well, it is now officially time for me to go home. Bah. Bye then.
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