NaNoGuiltMo

I lost NaBloPoMo. I could have kept it up, and I didn't. Is it worse if I feel bad about it, or if I don't? Anyway, I was rather sorry about it, but I'm not any more. Take that, Internet! I can still post until you explode!

Anyway, I had my reasons, but they are super boring and not worth a post. I will say that I went to my second favorite book source after BookMooch* this weekend, the Strand Bookstore here in New York. For you non-New Yorkers, it's a giant musty shop of dreams that looks like the bookstores in books. It can be a little intimidating on first visit, but last time I was there I confused R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman and no one even bothered to kill me. (Ask Sarah, she was there.)

The Strand periodically puts out carts of $1 books in which one can find many treasures, and also dusty stacks of the sad unloved tomes of our age (Rudy Giuliani's LEADERSHIP, anyone?) Within minutes I had immediately pulled two near-pristine hardcovers, Norris Church Mailer's CHEAP DIAMONDS and Galt Niederhoffer's A TAXONOMY OF BARNACLES. (I had actually read the first chapter of the latter in a library somewhere, but always meant to get back to it.) After a pass through the indoor selection, including the half-off review copies in the basement, I approached the counter with my two books. The checkout woman scanned the Mailer (yes, that's Norman Mailer's wife's novel) -- $1 -- and then the Niederhoffer -- $12.47. Apparently, even though I found it on the dollar cart, it was a review copy and therefore officially too good to be true. Normally I would have fought it -- it was on the dollar rack, so it should be a dollar, too bad! Then I remembered I had a non-New Yorker guest in town, so I meekly took my remaining $1 book and carried on to the East Village. Those dollar carts... they're more dangerous than I thought.

I also picked up three library books this weekend, Cheryl Mendelson's ANYTHING FOR JANE, Andrew Trees' ACADEMY X and Ayun Halliday's JOB HOPPER. Thanksgiving is coming, so it is time to return to the burrow from whence I came (or it will be on Wednesday). Hopefully I will get a lot of reading done when I'm not watching the "Godfather" trilogy with my sister. Don't laugh, we have actually planned to do this.

---
*for the record, my bronze-metal favorite source for books is Amazon Marketplace, especially if you're looking for a popular book which may be listed for $0.01. That's about $4 with shipping, but even so! But I have found this less useful as I save my list of books I want to read on Goodreads, and not on my Amazon wishlist.