The Book Thread Book • Page 160

damn there's a B&N closing near me and all books are 50% off, everything else is 75% off

 

when this happened with Borders back in high school it went nuts.

 

a dream

 

I miss Borders

 

Have you read any of Caro 's LBJ series?

 

I haven't, I'm only on Jefferson lol. I'm having a hard enough time limiting it to one book per president. If I wasn't, I'd be on my third or fourth Washington biography

 

update: we were there (my wife and 2 year old daughter) for two hours. I went through multiple sections multiple times and came out with only one book: The Texas Field Guide to Birds lolololol

 

I'm not too far into the series yet but highly recommend it when you get to LBJ

 

You’re doing it very wrong

 

lol I get buyer's remorse before I even purchase anything. every book I picked up I was just like 'eh, I can listen to this on Libby for free.' Plus, even with the 50% off discount, new hardcover books are still not super cheap. Grabbing a bunch really adds up.

However, all the toys were 75% off so I got a $50 boardgame for $12 and we ended up doing all of our birthday shopping for our daughter. Saved sooooooooo much $$

 

Stephen Graham Jones shouting out Mike Flanagan in the afterword of Reaper is not hurting my suspicion that he's my new favourite author. absolute king shit

moving onto Vandermeer Southern Reach trilogy, been meaning to do this one for years

 

the most impressive part of this post is that you were able to keep a 2 year old in one space for 2 hours

 

she was shockingly well behaved. my wife and I took turns letting her run around before eventually putting her in the stroller and pacifying her with snacks, while we switched off in line going out to browse

 

Haha I’m just teasing. I’m the exact same way! I only buy books if I REALLY like the author/book regardless of price. I mostly go during their big sales for board games and clearance.

my wife texted me yesterday and said she wanted to go to Half Price Books. So we are going tonight lol

 

Used bookstores are the way

 

I found bookoutlet.com a while back & was surprised at some of the selections. Obviously a lot of booktok and kids stuff but I was able to find some things that were a bit more my speed

 

they truly are. buying new books is absurdly expensive. however, couldn't pass up the baby toys. that 75% off discount was insane

 

As a consumer/purchaser, used bookstores are awesome. As an author, kinda hate them because the author gets no part for their work, and author cuts are already paltry enough as is on the first sale.

 

I have a gift card for HPB but I have so many unread books already. I may just end up buying some criterion blurays unless I find my next book in a series I'm already reading or something

 

yeah that was another thing......all blu-ray and everything in the music section was also 75% off. good thing I don't purchase a lot of physical media anymore

 

Yeah true, but also as an author myself I don’t care as much about my cut if it’s getting into readers’ hands, and if a bookstore is nice enough to support my work. There’s value in that that goes beyond money. The more bookstores my books are in, used or not, the better IMO.

 

Ended up using my gift card on books after all. I got Vampires of El Norte, Billy Summers, and Parable of the Sower

 

I have read 33 or so books this year. Of those, these were my favorites:

01. The Nakano Thrift Shop by Hiromi Kawakami

02. Free: Coming Of Age At The End Of History by Lea Ypi

03. Days At The Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

04. Herbert Wehner by Christoph Meyer (German)

05. Een Leeg Huis by Marga Minco (Dutch)

06. People From My Neighborhood by Hiromi Kawakami

07. The Ivory Tomb by Melissa Caruso

08. Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami

09. Haltung: Ein Essay Gegen Das Lautsein by Mely Kiyak (German)

10. Punk Paradox: A Memoir by Greg Graffin

 

This has been the year of Tolstoy for me. I read War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and a whole bunch of his short stories and novellas, of which stood out The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man.

 

Man I remember buying a stack of used Russian literature in like 2012 or 2013, only ended up reading like two of them lol