Wanna be a member? Wanna be a member?

[austin_dern]

I was puttering around Barnes and Noble -- I'm a great putterer -- trying particularly to find a suitable book on which to use a bonus 20 percent off coupon my parents got for being a member. You can understand why a completely arbitrary and ultimately unimportant decision like that would get me stuck. Obviously the thing to do is use it to buy a book that would otherwise be a little out of my price range, but there really aren't so many that are until you get into something like The Outrageously Complete Calvin & Hobbes Printing Even The Black-And-White Strips On That Expensive Glossy Paper and that, actually, tips a little over into being too expensive. It's also clearly going to be available for years to come, so there's not the real need to buy it now lest I miss the chance to get it on discount.

Making things a touch more complicated for my over-thinking mind is that unless I'm completely wrong this is a discount for only one book. So I can't do what I would with Kinokuniya when it has a special 20 percent off weekend, namely, gather a bunch of fifteen-or-twenty dollar books that look interesting and enjoy the chunk off that price. That's a shame since I can easily find fifteen-or-twenty US dollar books that interest me; and while it's harder to make the time to read while at home and hanging about with my parents or having to actually drive myself instead of let a professional do it for me, and I haven't finished reading the last books I'd bought in Singapore (I always overshoot for reading material on plane flights, at least ever since I ran out of stuff in Los Angeles International with several hours to my flight and six hours of flight after that), I like having a hefty pile of interesting things to get to. This is why it's impossible for me to fit my books on a bookshelf simultaneously.

Now for today's odd/quirky thing to happen: while I was looking around the Reference section a couple of kids gathered together just down the aisle, near the car repair and self-help books. I wasn't particularly listening to them, but one of them said something and they started to agree, ``Yeah!'' ``Awesome!'' ``Great!'' and so on. I have to suppose that was about something other than the car repair books. Maybe the self-esteem books work at a distance these days.

Trivia: In 1849 there were sixty anthracite furnaces making iron in eastern Pennsylvania. Five years later there were twice as many. Source: Coal: A Human History, Barbara Freese.

Currently Reading: The Essence of Style, Joan DeJean.

Comments

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

I never seem to have my savings card when I go into Barnes n Noble or Borders or B Dalton or Vromans ... I tell ya, Calvin musta transmogrified it..

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, now you see why I keep my book club cards in the front of my wallet -- only my ATM card gets better placement -- and things like my driver's license tucked away in the hard to access spots. Barnes and Noble lets people use their phone numbers, though, at least around here, if you remember your phone number ...

[nsingman.livejournal.com]

Is that the same Kinokuniya with an outlet at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan?

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Huh ... I didn't know there was one, but yeah, from the web site they've got an outlet at 10 West 49th Street. Neat.

The branch at Ngee Ann City on Orchard Road, Singapore, manages to somehow be infinitely large in extent, and to have as many holdings in Japanese as in English, plus some bits in non-English European languages. Great spot. If I ever get an excuse to be in Manhattan I'll have to check it out and see if they can fold space and dimension too.