I must be lucky, 'cause the sky is with me still

[lizblackdog]

The triumph of hope over experience: me, walking into a bookshop simply to savour the mingled scents of new books, thick carpet and coffee, and imagining I could come out without buying a book.

The book was naominovik's Temeraire, which has been on my "must get round to reading sometime" list for ages. The blurb on the back made it sound like Anne McCaffrey and Patrick O'Brian's love child - and if it had only been that, I still would have had fun reading it. But it was a lot more interesting and original than that, and with much better dragons, and it made me cry twice. It was really bloody good.

I am now deciding if I need groceries more than I need to walk down to Waterstone's and buy the next one tomorrow. I suspect the book will win. I've got enough coffee and pet food to last the fortnight, anyway.

Comments

[wychwood]

wooooooo!

I would lend you all the books instead, but sadly they're off with another friend and therefore inaccessible :(

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

S'allright. I'll buy 'em. I eat too much anyway. XD

[mencc1701.livejournal.com]

I have the same inability as you. Bookstores are very hard to walk out of without making a purchase, especially independent and used bookstores.

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

that's my biggest pet peeve with the area I live in. We have this huge shopping mall (http://www.castlepointshopping.com/) on our doorstep - five minutes' walk from my front door - but no "real" shops whatever. No charity shops, no second-hand bookshops, no independent shops at all. If I want anything like that I need to take a bus into town, and I hardly ever do 'cause I'm a lazy bitch and Castlepoint sells everything I need to live. But I do find it depressing.

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

...also, I realise this sounds very like flogging a dead horse, but hey! music meme!!

[mencc1701.livejournal.com]

Yeah, malls are good if you want something specific and want to get in and out fast.

They do, however, really suck if you want to browse around and find cool stores.

As for the music meme... *cough*. I'd totally forgotten about it... lol.

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

DO EEET!!! I got lots of them right!

[mudshark58.livejournal.com]

Have I seen the music meme? Sometimes I mean to come back to things and then... don't.

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

It wasn't mine, it was Dave's. He's been sitting on it for a month without posting the answers.

http://mencc1701.livejournal.com/346187.html#cutid1

[mudshark58.livejournal.com]

He's been sitting on it for a month without posting the answers.

Don't you hate that?

I can't see it, though.

[myrystyr.livejournal.com]

and imagining I could come out without buying a book - why do you think I avoid bookshops nowadays? :P

Seriously, there's this massive secondhand bookstore I know of, which right at the height of the Harry Potter craze was the only place to have multiple copies of all HP books out at the time - good thing I wasnt into HP then... yes, the DVD of HP5 has played twice here in 1 week, why do you ask? *stares at shelf of 30+ unread books* I'm tempted to go buy that book you mention, so please lock me in here until I've read some more of the books I bought over the past few years...

[lizblackdog.livejournal.com]

I'm too far away from second-hand bookshops and too fast a reader to have any unread books in my home at all, so I'm jealous of your 30-book stack of potential.

Temeraire's worth buying.

[myrystyr.livejournal.com]

The shelf of unread books includes:

5 Robert E Howard, 1970s editions
4 Ray Bradbury anthologies
volumes 3 and 4 of Joseph Campbell's Masks of God
Michael Palin diaries hardcover
Vampire Hunter D
The Guns of Navarone
and a dozen or so others

Temeraire is now added to my "buy to read someday" list, so keep pestering me to get through those unread books ;)