LaurenandLloyd.com
where our wasted time becomes your wasted time
I’m trying to sell some Spanish Books on Craig’s List. Anybody want them?
Actually, it doesn’t look like anyone is interested on Craig’s List. Anyone want them for any sort of worthwhile project before I put them in the Free section? You have to come get them.
What about Wally? Can I interest anyone in Wally?
No? Can’t say that I blame you.
I was looking around in Barnes and Noble lately and the Science Fiction / Fantasy section is looking a little sad. Spacewise, it was alright. It took up a roughly 30 foot corridor with books on both sides, but there were a few things that were a little off…
The new book section took up about over a third of that space. That doesn’t sound like a bad thing, but New Books are Displayed, so you get less than half as many books on a shelf. For me, personally, a third of that space was completely wasted as well. At least a third (it might have been more) was devoted to “Trade Paperbacks”. I don’t buy Trade Paperback books. I don’t even know what that means. I buy hard cover books and paperback books. If anyone knows why trade paperbacks exist, please let me know.
Of the remaining space, there were 5 full shelves of Game of Thrones* books. I understand that they are good books, and I would have read them by now except my Brother-in-law stole them from me at our Christmas gift exchange last year. But that’s a lot of shelf space for 5 books. Knock out 4 more shelves for J.R.R Tolkien’s 6 books and you’re really starting to eat into the shelf space.
Books by Frank Herbert: 2. Books by Brian Herbert: 4. If you don’t understand what a travesty this is, ask me when you’re looking to kill a lot of time. Books by Robert Heinlein: 3; Isaac Asimov: 4 (fun fact about the name Isaac: I know that one of the letters is doubled, but I will try all of the other letters before “a”); Gene Wolfe: 1
Those were the ones I checked before I was too depressed to bo on. Those guys have won over 35 Hugo and Nebula awards between them. You’d think maybe they could sell a few books.
On the plus side (I guess), the comic books are off in their own section now, and there’s a new section of the book store called Teen Fantasy/Adventure or Young Adult Fantasy/Adventure or something like that.
*I’m intentionally calling them that in hopes of enraging fans.
I (this is Lloyd) went to high school at Saint Paul’s College High in Concordia Missouri. One oddity of a boarding high school was that the school had a “bank”. Parents would deposit money into an account and specify how much money you could withdraw each week.
It would be hard to describe how inordinately proud 14 year old me was when my parents thought about it and decided not to put any limit on what I could take out. I knew that there was enough in there for me to get $5.00 a week for a semester. I don’t remember if that was money from my own bank account at the Farmers Bank of Lohman* or if it was my parent’s money. Money in our family was pretty fungible.
$5.00 happens to be enough money to walk to Casey’s every evening after Study Hours and buy an orange popsicle and still have enough money left over to walk downtown and buy a paperback book on Saturday.
Living at Concordia put me approximately 5,000 times closer to a bookstore than I had been at Honey Creek. It didn’t really matter that they didn’t have a lot of books to choose from. We only ever looked at the science fiction / fantasy section. Really, section is probably too strong a word. It was maybe 4-5 shelves that were maybe 3 feet wide.
Looking back on it, I can’t imagine that we went there every Saturday, but it must have been close. Just looking at the number of books in my basement attests to that.
Since I found one, here’s what the inside of the Farmers Bank of Lohman looked like:
*I once kissed the daughter of the bank president.
Lauren let me go to Barnes and Noble while she went to buy picture frames for her pre-schoolers’ Christmas presents (more accurately, the presents that the pre-schoolers give to their parents). As fate would have it, soon after my arrival they announced that it was Educator Appreciation Day and that Lloyd (and presumably any other educators who happened to be there) would receive a 25% discount on all purchases.
I didn’t buy any books. They had some that I would like to read, but we have a book store in Seward now, and I’m trying to buy all of my books* there. I don’t know when Seward last had a bookstore, but I can tell you that before our current bookstore opened there hadn’t been one since 1987.
You ought to have a bookstore in the town you grow up in. And if it means I have to pay more for my books to keep one here, I’m prepared to do that. Sometimes I cringe a little when I look at how much less a book costs at Amazon.
I’m not a a buy local Nazi. I’ll buy things in Lincoln when it’s convenient and I’ll order things online pretty much at the drop of a hat. It’s just that I really like the idea that kids in Seward can walk downtown and buy a book.
But I did buy some games.
*used books excepted.
Cousin Sam commented yesterday. He still hasn’t deigned to comment on the Sommerer Family Website, but baby steps. In his honor, today’s post.
Ever since high school Sam, Brad and I read, more or less, the same books. This was useful because paperback books could cost as much as $1.95 each and we certainly couldn’t afford to spend that much on books as often as we would like.
Before high school, I don’t remember ever buying a book (except books to play games: D&D, Star Fleet Battles, Car Wars…). All the books came from the library. In Concordia Missouri I can’t remember ever going into the library. I can’t remember if there was a library. But there was a book store, and there were always 3 shelves of Science Fiction and Fantasy books there.
My recollection is that I mostly purchased Science Fiction and Brad mostly purchased Fantasy, but that we all read all of them. Brad was a little paranoid about his books, and we had to learn to read with the book open no more than 40 degrees, lest we break the spine.
But none of that is what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about taste. It seemed like we all read and enjoyed the same books back then. Not so much anymore. We still like some of the same books, but just because one of us likes a book is no guarantee that the others will.
I’m assuming that everyone’s tastes change over time. I know mine have. Back then my favorite authors were Piers Anthony, Anne McCaffery and Robert Heinlein (actually, I think Piers Anthony was Brad’s, and by some obscure rule, we can not have the same favorite author at any given time). Now I think that most everything that Piers Anthony has written is only fit for teen age boys, that Anne McCaffery hasn’t written anything worth reading in 25 years and that Robert Heinlein is still The Man.
So, given that Brad and Sam’s taste in books have also changed, how can I tell which books to recommend/give/loan to them? Sam sent the Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne back with us when we were in Missouri over Christmas. I was reading something else (I can’t remember what) at the time, and so Lauren read them before me. She had some LOL moments, and seemed to enjoy them. I just finished reading them today (and finishing the main quest line in Skyrim — thanks MLK).
I liked them. They were witty, the world the author created was interesting and (this is increasingly important to me) internally consistent. I’m glad I read them, but I don’t know if Sam thinks they are the best books he’s read in a long time, or just a good read. I would like to know the answer to this, but I would like to know it because I understand his taste in books – not because I had to ask him. I want to know this, so that I know what books to send back to him. I also want to know this about Brad for similar reasons.
If you’re having trouble coming up with a comment for this post, Favorite Author(s) and why would be legit.
Well, the book I “wrote” for my dad didn’t get here before Father’s Day, but it really turned out nice. This will sound stupid, but it looks just like a real book. It even has a bar-code on the back.
So, if you were waiting to see the final product before turning your blog website into a book, I would say that it’s easy enough, and turns out okay too. It’s not perfect. The automatic software isn’t the best at laying out pages, so there are some pages that are nearly empty, but there are not many of those. Things that I would do differently…
Now I have to decide whether to mail it to him or keep it until the family reunion that starts on the 1st of July. Oh, and you’re all invited to attend.