What happened this week? Not much, apart from watching about ten million Doctor Who episodes with some friends of mine, who are probably better known as the “Who Crew”. I started reading Sherlock Holmes… I did a little more work on Bad Novel (you don’t want to know)… and I ordered some books.
As always, I put a Barnes & Noble’s gift certificate on my Christmas list this year. And, as always, I got several of them, because it seems relatives tend not to know what college students like. Which is just fine with me, because, you know, I like books!
This year, however, several problems were caused by the giving of gift-certificates. The first one (and the worst by far), is the problem of Barnes & Noble’s simply not having books anymore. I wrote about that a while ago, when I was doing a bit of complaining about the kinds of books that Barnes and Noble’s does have (ooh, I sound a little snooty there, I’d better watch my tongue), but the fact remains that when I go there looking for something specific, I can hardly ever find it anymore. It’s sad. It just makes me sad. 😦
(If you do want a bookstore that generally has cool stuff, check out Kramerbooks in Dupont Circle, Washington DC. They’re absolutely wonderful — oh, and they have really good brownie sundaes, too.)
So, in the past couple years, I’ve turned to the Internet. Barnes & Noble’s has this lovely thing where they sell used books as well as new ones, usually for lower prices (though you do have to pay extra for shipping), and that means a $50 gift certificate can actually be stretched further than you’d think. So that was all well and good and it would have all been fine, except…
Well. Perhaps first I should explain something.
I loathe e-books. I really, really, really hate them. I hate them because they’ve pushed Borders out of business, and because there’s always the threat they’ll get rid of real books for good, and because I just don’t like reading on a screen when I could be flipping through pages instead. I can’t understand why anyone would prefer a little electronic gadget that runs out of batteries and can’t be taken into the bathtub to a real book. I understand I’m probably fighting a losing battle, and I don’t begrudge anyone who does have and love e-books — just, you know, don’t try to convert me. I’m an extremely stubborn person and I will. Not. Budge.
My gift certificates, both given to me by relatives I absolutely adore, were just a little bit worrying, then. One of them simply said “NOOK” on the front and explained you could buy Nook products, articles and magazines with it. Another was an “e-certificate”, meaning you were supposed to spend it online (something I would have done anyway, of course.) But the thing was, I didn’t know if you could actually spend them on anything other than e-books. They didn’t say.
So we had to ask Barnes & Noble’s, and they told us not to worry, yes you can spend them on real books, and it was all fine. It’s just — if I had trouble figuring it out, didn’t other people? Is the not-explaining-properly-on-the-front-of-the-gift-certificate a way to kind of sway people to buy e-books instead of real ones? To me they’ve been showing signs of not caring much about the paper books they sell for months, pushing customers in favor of electronic ones. It just makes me unhappy. I don’t know what the future of the book-selling industry is going to be, or the publishing one, for that matter, but I’d really like them to show that they do care about us paper-preferential customers.
But whatever. I’ve got an enormous bunch of books coming to me over the course of the next couple of weeks, and that trumps all my woes about how I got them. Shall I finish this blog post with a really really excited list of the ones I’m most excited about?
White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi. I absolutely LOVE Helen Oyeyemi. Everyone should read her; she’s a genius and nobody realizes it and it makes me rather sad.
The Ledge, by Blanaid McKinney. I have no idea what this book is about, but Blanaid McKinney wrote my favorite short story ever, so I don’t really care. I’ll read it and I think there’s a good chance I’ll love it.
The Town in Bloom, by Dodie Smith. (This was a Christmas present, so I already have it, but still!) Dodie Smith wrote I Capture the Castle, which is one of my favorite books of all time, and I’m beyond excited to have another of her novels for adults, especially since this one is (sadly! horribly!) out of print.
Walk the Blue Fields, by Claire Keegan. She’s my favorite short story-ist at the moment, so I’m eagerly anticipating this anthology of her work.
Hurrah! Books!
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