Went to Barnes and Noble last night to make sure my name was on the list for Harry tonight. While there, of course, I ended up doing a little shopping and found some interesting things.

First of all, for anyone who wants to upgrade bits of their library, B&N has its own press that does trade paperbacks and tiny hardbacks of great literature. (And I do mean tiny, they're like 4" square.) I picked up two of the hardbacks, since they're a good bargain ($6) and look immensely sturdy - Jane Eyre, as my only other copy is an aging mass market paperback, and Leaves of Grass for a Teaching Company "class."

Then I took a sideways step from Bollywood into Bollylit (Bollit?) with Kavita Daswani's Indian chick lit novels For Matrimonial Purposes and The Village Bride of Beverly Hills. I simply could not resist that second title!

Speaking of CD classes, sandwiched between romances and wedding books (where it's just about guaranteed that no man will ever find them) was a display of B&N's entry into the higher education sweepstakes, "The Portable Professor." Billed as "College Level Classes Taught By Real College Professors!" they're $40 boxes with a stack of CDs and a book. After having graduated from three colleges I'm not automatically impressed by College Level Classes by Real College Professors, knowing the kind of fluff that can be cranked out by same. That one of the Portable Professors was talking about gender differences in communication only cemented my opinion that these were pretty low-level - but that's probably not going to stop me from going back someday and picking up the one on the life of Ben Franklin. There are a couple on American history that I'll doubtless sniff around in the future too.

At home I came back to a lovely juicy package of review books, many of which I've been really looking forward to - The Darwin Conspiracy, How to Marry a Murderer, The War of the Worlds Murder, The Stiff and the Dead and most desired of all, Undead and Unappreciated. And shawan_7, bless her, has scored me a copy of Nothing to Fear but Ferrets, which I've been wildly curious about.

As soon as Harry's done, I'm going to have some great stuff to sink my eyes into.

ETA, courtesy havocthecat: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jim_smith/144194.html BWAhahahahahahaaa!

ETA #2, courtesy of metaquotes: A love letter to fandom, with literary side notes:

BOSWELL: Hi! OMG you don't know me, I'm Scottish, hi, I'm like, your BIGGEST FAN EVER!
SAMUEL JOHNSON: K.
BOSWELL: Dude, you know what would be cool? If, like, I followed you around for like, a dozen years AND WROTE DOWN EVERYTHING YOU DO. That'd be *so cool*! Can I can I can I?
SAMUEL JOHNSON: K.
----
And even when these relationships turn crazy, that's all right, because it's just because we're so intellectual! Really! For example again:
MAIDSERVANT: Hi, Miss Austen. Er... Madame de Stael here to see you. Um, she wrote this book called 'Corinne'... she's a total BNF! Squee!
JANE AUSTEN: Madame de Stael? She is such a complete bitchwhore, my sister Cassandra's friend's French nephew told me. DISMISSED!
----
ANNA SEWELL: I hate the London literary scene. They think they're such BNFs... they just cannot attain the pure beauty of my prose and the depth of my metaphors.
LONDON LITERARY SCENE: Your book is about a horsie.
ANNA SEWELL: Aaaargh! You people are such PLEBES! Defriends!

ETA #3, from filkertom: (Not a spoiler, a contest) So many people have predicted the death of Dumbledore in HBP, that people were challenged to write the death scene using the style of another famous author. The Pratchett one is particularly dead on, and the Seuss one was inevitable, but I have a certain fondness for the one that starts It is a truth universally acknowledged that an old wizard in possession of a big secret must be in danger of his life.

PS - can anyone point me at a Bollywood shot of someone reading? I want a new icon...

Tags: academia, books, clever sarcastic people with keyboards