Books and the City

One good thing that came out of yesterday (besides, y'know, getting a clean bill of health from the fat man in the lab coat) was finally having a chance to hit a few of the nearby bookstores. My appointments have generally been morning, so even when I wasn't hobbling around, I pretty much needed to chow down and get back to work tout-de-suite. But I finally schnagged a coveted mid-afternoon slot, which gave me an opportunity to browse a bit.

I'm perilously close to being finished for good with the bookstore at Clark and Wellington. It's always been disordered, but it's gotten steadily worse over the years. The loose stacks of books continue to grow while the chance of finding one I'm interested in correspondingly decreases. (It's a never a good sign when a shelf appears with the motto "frequently requested".) Moreover, it's gotten so filthy that it's unpleasant just to be in there. I told myself I really should look over the stacks of children's books by the register for something nice for the boys, but all I wanted to do was check out and go. (Despite everything, I did find--purely by hazard--a book I've been searching for, Frank O'Connor's My father's son.)

So it was a relief and a restorative to move on to Booklegger's on Broadway. Ah, the luxury of clear categories in alphabetical order! Still didn't find anything for the kiddies, but I did hit upon a kiddie book for my older brother. Plus an O'Brien novel for my next Irish lit binge (currently scheduled for this coming March). Continuing with the current mania, we also have another McBain mystery på svenska from the Gallery Bookstore on Belmont. (There's a new compilation of Moberg's Christmas stories available, but at $40 plus $12 postage from Sweden, I decided I could give it a pass.)

I'm within six pages of the end of Hamsun's Mysteries, so I'll be able to put that to bed on the ride home and hold my head high when I see my sister (who bought it for me for my birthday) in two weeks. Then it's on to Hardy's Wessex tales, which I've already dipped into a bit. After that, who knows? It'll probably depend on what Father Christmas plucks from my Amazon list.

Near miss

I've spent more time browsing Amazon in the last month than I think I have in the whole year prior. The other night, on a whim, I checked to see if they had the latest issue in one of my favourite hardcore gay porn series. (Yes, I know, some of you can already see where this is going.) To my surprise--not least of all because I looked for it in Montreal a few months back and never found it--they did. My mind did waver a brief second before I added it to my cart. Did I really want Amazon to start suggesting titles based on such a purchase? After all, who knows when I might be logging into my account with less jaded eyes present. But I figured they've thought of everything, so there must some way for me to turn off XXX-rated suggestions. Now I thought I'd saved it to my "buy later" box. (I plan to pick up one or two more books before the end of this flurry of gift-buying and, miser that I am, I'd like to group as much as possible to save on shipping.) That I hadn't was something I discovered only after I'd impulsively picked something off my sister's wish list to ship to my mother's and was about to proceed to checkout.

This is one reason why I have one-click purchasing turned off.