Shopping Offline
Dec. 27th, 2004 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowFor a non-driver in a smallish town, shopping online is a godsend, but it has its limitations. The basic problem is this: you can't find what you're not looking for. Some of the best books in my library were impulse buys, things my eye happened to fall on while browsing - and you can't, at least at the current level of technology, browse online.
It happens that my father lives a short distance from a Barnes & Noble. Every year, during my holiday visit, I make a raid on B&N. This year's spree was last Monday, and I made a fairly good haul. I was disappointed, though, to find that a few books I particularly wanted - the third volume of Barnes' "Thousand Cultures" series, the next Spencer-Fleming, a paperback of Paladin of Souls (for my sister E, who prefers paperback to hardbound) - weren't there. I also paused long over the Wheel of Time and Dark Tower series, before deciding I'd lost interest in both of them.
Without further ado, the list:
- some old favorites, missing for some reason from my library: Glory Road, The Languages of Pao, The Jungle Books;
- new-to-me books from favored authors: The Paths of the Dead and The Lord of Castle Black by Brust, Laurell K. Hamilton's Cerulean Sins, Powder and Patch by Heyer, Patricia McKillip's Ombria in Shadow and In the Forests of Serre (how did she slip two books past me?), and Honor of the Queen (yes, I'm testing out the attractions of W*b*r);
- a few books and authors others have recommended to me: Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, Charlie Stross' Singularity Sky, James White's Double Contact;
- and some impulse buys (which were, after all, the point of the exercise): a book on Chinese legend and myth, the third volume of a translation of the Thousand Nights and a Night, de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and What If? #2, speculative essays on history by historians and historical novelists. (I already had the first volume of that, and the first two volumes of the 1001 Nights translation.)
I've devoured five of these already.
Yesterday I also raided Sam Goody, and came away with nine CDs: The Band ("The Weight"! Finally!), America, the Beatles (Help, my first recording of theirs in any format), Al Green, Janis Joplin, Don McLean (his lesser-known works do not deserve their obscurity), Peter, Paul & Mary, Elvis again, and an Air Supply album. (Spare me the brickbats. I know they're lightweight, but I have an unreasoning fondness for "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All".) There were three or four others that received serious consideration - Bob Marley, Yes, Jimi Hendrix - but I restrained myself. (They didn't have the Bee Gees Idea album, which I still want.)
It happens that my father lives a short distance from a Barnes & Noble. Every year, during my holiday visit, I make a raid on B&N. This year's spree was last Monday, and I made a fairly good haul. I was disappointed, though, to find that a few books I particularly wanted - the third volume of Barnes' "Thousand Cultures" series, the next Spencer-Fleming, a paperback of Paladin of Souls (for my sister E, who prefers paperback to hardbound) - weren't there. I also paused long over the Wheel of Time and Dark Tower series, before deciding I'd lost interest in both of them.
Without further ado, the list:
- some old favorites, missing for some reason from my library: Glory Road, The Languages of Pao, The Jungle Books;
- new-to-me books from favored authors: The Paths of the Dead and The Lord of Castle Black by Brust, Laurell K. Hamilton's Cerulean Sins, Powder and Patch by Heyer, Patricia McKillip's Ombria in Shadow and In the Forests of Serre (how did she slip two books past me?), and Honor of the Queen (yes, I'm testing out the attractions of W*b*r);
- a few books and authors others have recommended to me: Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, Charlie Stross' Singularity Sky, James White's Double Contact;
- and some impulse buys (which were, after all, the point of the exercise): a book on Chinese legend and myth, the third volume of a translation of the Thousand Nights and a Night, de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, and What If? #2, speculative essays on history by historians and historical novelists. (I already had the first volume of that, and the first two volumes of the 1001 Nights translation.)
I've devoured five of these already.
Yesterday I also raided Sam Goody, and came away with nine CDs: The Band ("The Weight"! Finally!), America, the Beatles (Help, my first recording of theirs in any format), Al Green, Janis Joplin, Don McLean (his lesser-known works do not deserve their obscurity), Peter, Paul & Mary, Elvis again, and an Air Supply album. (Spare me the brickbats. I know they're lightweight, but I have an unreasoning fondness for "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All".) There were three or four others that received serious consideration - Bob Marley, Yes, Jimi Hendrix - but I restrained myself. (They didn't have the Bee Gees Idea album, which I still want.)
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Date: 2004-12-27 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-27 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-31 05:15 pm (UTC)Still, great haul, dude! If there're other Heyers you're looking for, let me know; sometimes I wind up with duplicates or spot them at library book sales. _Powder & Patch_ was the first Heyer I ever read, and a major clincher in the decision to take French in high school.