I hadn’t really said as much on this journal, but I was on an unofficial book-buying hiatus through most of January, trying to take the opportunity to get caught up on reading the books I actually already own (wacky concept, I know). This got thrown off track though yesterday, since I was feeling down about getting a rejection letter–so I decided on emergency bookstore and walking therapy, by way of coping.
Therefore, picked up in print and making my first two purchases of 2011, I present:
cmpriest- A used copy of Susanna Kearsley‘s Named of the Dragon–which I’d actually previously owned and hadn’t been impressed with the first time through. But I found myself wanting to re-read it and feeling sad that I’d gotten rid of my last copy!
What I was actually looking for were the first two books of Cassandra Chan’s mystery series, The Young Widow and Village Affairs. I cannot find them for love or money in any of the local bookstores on my usual routes–and I checked eight, including the downtown B&N, the downtown Borders, two of the three used bookstores at Pike Place Market (the third being currently inaccessible due to construction), the U-Bookstore, Half Price Books in the U-District, Twice Sold Tales in the U-District, and the Ravenna branch of Third Place Books. I shall therefore probably have to order them, and that’s fine, though I’d wanted to give the local stores a good fighting chance at selling me these titles first.
Also of note on this walk: my marketboys were doing crazytalk huge amounts of business when I swung by them for blackberries. The market in general was very, very crowded, possibly more so than usual just because the construction does weird things to the flow of people through the place. But still, wow! Way more people there on a Saturday afternoon than I’m used to seeing when I swing through there in the mornings and afternoons, to and from work.
There was a rally going on in Westlake Park downtown when I walked from Pike Place to Borders. I wasn’t terribly surprised to see it was a rally in support of the protestors in Egypt, and I was glad to see them raising their voices. Saw a couple of people on the corner of Fourth and Pike holding up an Egyptian flag, and scattered outlying knots of people on the fringes of the main rally as well as I swung over to B&N.
Yunnie Bubble Tea in the U-District still makes extremely tasty bubble tea. I miss them.
Half-Price Books in the U-District is still pretty awesome, even though they don’t have the amount of space at their disposal that Third Place does. Good place to go for book spelunking.
Gray, cool, and rainy but not too much so is a strangely appropriate type of weather to have if you’re moody and in the mood for exercise. I actually kind of liked the weather as I walked from the University District on up to the Ravenna branch of Third Place (which I’d never been in and which is much smaller than the main store), and from there up towards 80th. Also, north along 20th from Ravenna Third Place is a nice residental stretch of neighborhood, and gave me that odd little sense of satisfaction I sometimes get when I check out part of Seattle I’ve never seen before. ‘Cause, y’know, a Warder should walk her city and stuff.
By the time I made it home, close to five o’clock, I was feeling better mentally, albeit footsore. I estimate I did four miles and change while I was out, which is about what I do on a daily basis during the week–but during the week, it’s split up into morning and afternoon chunks.
And finishing off the day with a viewing of Megapython Vs. Gatoroid, this week’s Syfy channel crapfest, was pretty much exactly what I needed. Toss in some 4th season Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and some Voyage fanfic, and I was in a much better frame of mind by the time I went to bed.
I’m a little sad about missing Conflikt this weekend, but on the whole I think I made the right decision. My reserves of Cope were pretty low, and I needed some quiet Me time for a while. solarbirdseanan_mcguire
Today I have been working on query letters for Lament, and a bit of actual writing. And I’ve been playing with the shiny new barcode scanning functionality in the iPhone Goodreads app, scanning in a bunch more of the books I own that I never got around to adding to my shelves on that site. I’ve topped 1,500 titles on my Goodreads account and will be amused to see if I top 2,000 by the time I’m done with the scanning.