Dichroic Reflections

bookshopping

At the local Borders yesterday: Bear 1, Scalzi 0. That is, they had a copy of Hammered but none of Old Man's War. Drat. (I was hoping to buy both.)

I escaped having spent about 250% of the amount of the gift card I'd gone to use in the first place and about 200% of the time I'd planned: the aforementioned Hammered, an Eva Cassidy CD, the Twisted Sisters Sock Workbook, and a ridiculously cheap nice hardcover of The Once and Future King. The sad thing is that they were offering "buy two get one free" on the bargain tables (oddly expressed as "buy three and the third is free" but I think they meant they'd charge for two) and I could only find two books I wanted. So I gave up on the one I wanted less, since I obviously wouoldn't be getting a freebee anyway.

The extra time the trip took was because of the sock book, the CD, and the Lord of the Rings I was considering. Decising between two different books doesn't take me long at all, though I confess my most common solution is to buy both if I can. It's deciding between similar things that takes me forever. Eva Cassidy made about 5 or 6 albums, and there are a lot of songs on more than one of them. Furthermore, though I love her singing, she covered a lot of tunes I'm thoroughly sick of (e.g. From a Distance), a few I don't mind (What a Wonderful World) and a few I'm eager to hear (An American Tune - I like both the Simon and Garfunkel original and the Indigo Girls' cover and am eager to hear Eva's - and Autumn Leaves). Every one of her albums contains songs in all three categories as well as some I don't know, so picking one is a balancing act and I finally ended up using a math formula where I added 1 for songs I want and subtracted 1 for songs I want to avoid. It occurs to me now that for artists like Eva who aren't too obscure it might be better to shop song by song over on iTunes.

Then I got to debate between the Sock Workbook, another book called Socks! and Elizabeth Simmerman's Knitting Without Tears. For socks specifically, the one I got seemed best, though it spends a lot of time on dying and spinning yarn, in which I'm not too interested at the moment. (Note: Natalie, if you read this, you need this book.) However, I like their "this is how to build a sock, so now you can figure out your own" approach. The EZ book does that too, but the directions seemed a bit trickier and the diagrams weren't as good. Still, EZ and KwT had such an impact on American knitting in general that I have a feeling the book has a place in a future buying spree.

Finally, Lord of the Rings. Please don't tell anyway but the horrid truth is I haven't ever read it. Skiffy-geek though I am, I haven't read the Foundation books, either; I have some slight allergy to reading things I'm supposed to read. (Also, I've skimmed the Foundation books, and don't think I'd like them, though I do like Asimov's Robot books -- right up until they intersect the Foundation history.) Still, I've always been fairly sure I'd like the Tolkien. I did enjoy the Hobbit and liked the LoTR movies well enough - I'm not a movie person and generally like books far better. So I've been meaning to get a set of Tolkien to dive into. The all-in-one editions, sets or matched books available at Borders yesterday ranged from $20 for a softcover single volume to $100 for a fancy leatherbound one. My favorite was an edition in separate volumes for $27 each - well laid out, nice paper - but that still seemed a little steep. The problem, amid that plethora of choice, was that I could get a cheap edition or I could get one that did NOT say "Now an epic motion picture," but not both. I didn't want to spend a fortune on books that are not yet favorites, but I also refuse to buy a classic in a movie-ized edition. So I spent way too much time debating the virtues of all these editions, but ended up not buying any of them. Maybe the thing to do, especially given the number of people that may have bought the books after the movies came out, is to check out the used book stores. (I don't mind profiting from the movie, I just don't want it to be the guiding principle of my edition.) Or maybe I should just mention in a few places that it's something I want. I do have a birthday coming up in a couple of months... (Hm, who do I know that's both related to me (and so has to buy a gift) and especially good at sniffing out used books? And sometimes reads this?)

I justified the book purchases at least partlky because I did *not* spend any miney at the big sale at my Local Yarn Store (LYS). I was there but had to be across town in forty minutes to go flying and the line stretched around the store. Besides, I was only getting 25% off (they had you take a chocolate bar with the amount you'd save, from 20-50%, printed inside the wrapper) and can probably do that well just buying online. Does it count as "saving" if it's because you're rushing off to go spend money to rent an airplane?

Sorry if the above entry is dull; it's entirely incredible how interesting I find it to talk about bookshopping, and for how long.

Posted by dichroic at January 10, 2005 12:35 PM