Kay Hudson

I made another pass through Borders this morning, not looking for anything in particular but unable to resist the increasing discounts.  As it turned out, this is also the last weekend the store is honoring Borders Plus cards with an extra ten per cent off.

The store is still neat and clean, not as crowded as it was the first weekend of the sale but still busier than it ever was before they pulled the plug.  The shelving has become a bit random, but there’s still a lot of stock.  Apparently they are still shipping books to the stores rather than leave them languish in the warehouse (or be stripped and returned to the publishers).

I started with the science fiction shelves.  I haven’t kept up with sf in recent years the way I once did, although I still order fairly regularly from the Science Fiction Book Club.  I do love a good space adventure now and then, and on my last trip to Borders I picked up the first in a series by Ann Aguirre.  Haven’t read it yet, but I found two more installments on the shelf and picked them up (still missing number three).  I also bought Darwinia by Robert Charles Wilson, a book I missed when it first came out in 1998.  Alternate history with a gorgeous cover.

Then I went over to the romance shelves, where I found Kieran Kramer’s When Harry Met Molly, a double finalist (for Best First Book and Best Regency) in this year’s Rita contest.  How could someone who loves (and writes) humor resist that title?

On the mystery shelves I found Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn, a handsome trade paperback from a predominantly romance publisher (Mira) which labels the book simply historical fiction.  This is the fourth volume (I think) in a series, so I’ll be jumping into the story.

Back to the front of the store, where I picked up two novels by Melanie Benjamin.  I blame these on National Public Radio, which carried an interview with Benjamin this week about her current release, The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb, a novel based on the life of its historical heroine, less than three feet tall, who refused to hide from the world.  On the next shelf down was Benjamin’s previous novel, Alice I Have Been, based on the life on Alice Liddell, the original Alice in Wonderland.  I’ve bought a lot of books that I might otherwise never have heard about since our Houston NPR station split into an all-talk channel and an all-music channel.  Maybe I should be listening to the music side more.

Meanwhile, the invisible To Be Read shelf in my Kindle continues to expand.  On the previous Borders expedition, I bought the last volume in a set of four by Zoë Archer, an alternate nineteenth-century fantasy series called The Blades of the Rose.  I didn’t find any more of those today, but I remembered seeing the series at Amazon.  Checked this afternoon and found all four bundled into one file for $9.99.  Click.  Now available on my Kindle, four more novels . . .

Not a contemporary setting in the stack today.  I am currently reading It Had to Be You, by my good friend Cheryl Bolen, on my Kindle, a novel set in Los Angeles before and during (and maybe after–I’m at the 60% mark) World War II.  The serious side of the novel deals with the unconscionable treatment of the Japanese living in California in those years;  the fun part covers Hollywood and teems with well-known names of writers and actors.  Cheryl’s done a terrific job of making life in the Los Angeles of the thirties and forties an integral part of the novel.

Is there a twelve step program for book-aholics?