In a Perfect World

In a perfect world, the new Dan Brown novel would be sliding under the radar: no one would be able to find it, no one but the most serious consipracy theorists would at all be interested in it, and it would be published by some crummy print-on-demand company that would cheaply bind it and overprice it. The fact that Dan Brown can become so popular is a kind of sad, and the reason I say kind of is because while Dan Brown simply exists in a realm of mediocrity or horridness (choose whichever one you think would be the worst), he is bringing people into bookstores -- despite the fact that the books, like the Twilight series, do nothing to make people think about anything apart from or inside the narrative.

The point is: the new John Crowley was released last Thursday and I have yet to see a single bookstore in Colorado Springs carry a copy. Even the indie bound ones, although being indie bound doesn't necessarily mean that a bookstore is going to stock an item. Let's take into consideration the trouble I had finding John Wray's Lowboy, which is very good and I think that you should read it. I looked everywhere, all the indie outlets first, but they were stocking about the equivalent, in terms of new releases, of what is stocked at Walmart or Kmart or Target (the chain department store I like). Finally I found and bought a copy at Barnes & Noble and did I feel guilty? No. But then again you have to take into consideration that this is Colorado Springs we're talking about, a city that's not exactly the pinnacle of culture or thought. The same thing kind of happened with Wells Tower's Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned but I eventually decided not to buy a copy of that book and just check it out from the library (I actually did hold a copy today, not from a downtown bookseller, but again from Barnes & Noble).

All right all right, Barnes & Noble isn't exactly the best place in the world either. What happened was this: I preordered the new John Crowley, Four Freedoms, from the store expecting, as with all preorders, that it would arrive on the day it was released. Most times I've preordered, books have come early, which is nice. I figured that with Memorial Day weekend and everything, my book might be a little delayed, but it's almost a week later and there has still been no word on its arrival. I called a store and they said, "Oh yeah, it should be here in 3 to 8 business days." Don't you think that totally defeats the purpose of a preorder? Which is making me frustrated because I've been looking forward to this book for some time already and there's this hindrance.

Also, in a perfect world, no one would stop and record over the first new episode of Pushing Daisies in months for some stupid basketball game. I'm going to find that person and punch them in the eyeball. Several times. Despite the fact that they could probably turn around and beat me up without a problem. Still. It's the principal of the matter. Now I gotta go to the ABC Web site and fight through all the download this download that junk to finish this episode, which was going so good and was a great reminder of what made this TV show such a wonder in the first place (although I hear that it went virutally unwatched: this, however, could be part of ABC's plan to validate their decision to 86 it: I still hope that ABC goes totally under -- once Lost is taken off the air). I missed Ned so badly.