I love bookstores. Seriously; is there any other place simply brimming with such a variety of ideas? Well, maybe a library, and they’re good, too, but the whole feel is different. Maybe it’s the idea that you could actually own some of these ideas, instead of just borrowing them for a while. Or, maybe it’s because spending money can be so much fun; that’s probably closer to the truth.
Anyway, I stepped in to a Borders store yesterday. My sister works there, and I was dropping her off from lunch. I didn’t particularly have anything I definitely intended to buy, and certainly nothing I needed. But I was still there an hour later, with a couple of things in my hands—holiday gift finds, what joy! And, twenty minutes or so after that, I realized there wasn’t really time to get all the way home and then back to the school to pick up my son, so I figured I might as well browse a little more just to kill the time. And, oh, the things I saw.
Dr. Phil has another bestseller; no surprise there, I suppose. And, it appears I am woefully out of touch with the current Sudoku craze, but there must have been at least a dozen books, and a dedicated end cap. There was an intriguing title called A Short History of Nearly Everything. Oh, and there was this book, five hundred pages if it was one, containing nothing but names. Names of every origin you could imagine. It was a reference for writers to help choose character names. Wow.
So, when it was finally time to leave, two hours after I walked in needing nothing, I had maybe six things in my hands, and a whole list of things to look into more closely next time around. Of course, I’m proud of myself; the things I bought were gifts. Well, except maybe for this one collection of short stories that sounds pretty interesting; it might end up being a present to myself. I’d never heard of it until yesterday; I found it in my browsing, but sometimes the best things come to your attention unexpectedly. That’s what I love about bookstores.
