TSS: Write-a-thon! and Adventures in Gift Cards

Happy Sunday, all! The title of the post says Write-a-thon, and that is, I suppose, my plan for the day. My main goal is that I have the discussion section of one of my dissertation chapters that I told myself I’d have finished by today. It’s already in pretty good shape, actually; I had a minor epiphany on Friday about how to reorganize it and cut some of the paragraphs that were flailing around without reaching a point, so today there are just a few holes to fill in and a conclusion to write. I’ve also got three reviews left from the read-a-thon to start from scratch, plus two more where the review itself is written but the post isn’t ready to go yet; I’d like to knock off two from each category, if I can. Maybe I’ll also get a little time to actually read (crazytalk, I know); I’m not very far into Brunonia Barry’s The Map of True Places, but I’ve been enjoying it, and am looking forward to seeing how Barry builds her story.

Amidst my normal slew of errands yesterday morning, I also gave myself permission to go spend two bookstore gift cards that were burning a hole in my purse. Normally, I try not to let myself go into bookstores all that often, and when I do, I’m usually either shopping for someone else, or just browsing (read: torturing myself.) To be able to spend an hour wandering around not one but TWO bookstores knowing that I HAD to buy some books (lest the gift cards go to waste) was quite the experience. As my TBR pile shows, I acquire books at a good clip… but they’re very rarely *new* books, and when they are, they’re much more likely to come from online than from a bookstore. (To give you some idea, of the 169 books that came into my house in 2009, only 14 of those came from bookstores – and of those, 10 were purchased with a gift card.)

However, while I’m sure that saves me money, I think I might be missing out on some awesome serendipitous finds. I went into the first bookstore yesterday with a fairly clear idea of what I wanted to purchase, if I could find it: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan. I browsed around for a bit and couldn’t find it, and since it’s a small indie store I figured they’d already sold out and hadn’t had a chance to order more. I was getting ready to grab something else and head to the register when I got the bright idea to check the window display, and lo and behold, they had a copy… and not just any copy, but a *signed* copy. Too cool.