Fun at the Bookstore (Book Pimp Giveaway)

As I said yesterday, we stopped off at the bookstore near my house, where I was pleased to see they still had two copies of Secret Society Girl on the shelves.

(We interrupt this blog for a public service announcement: Go buy Secret Society Girl before the hardcovers go ‘back in the vault.’)

I was looking for the new releases by a few of my friends, and actually found some. However, we didn’t find others, which was a drag. I figured it would be on the new paperback table, but when I didn’t find it there (though I did find the mass market Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi, which I have been recommending to Sailor Boy), we looked in the romance section. No dice. Then I looked it up on the bookstore customer service computer. “In store.” Um, no.

Then we asked a bookseller. I told her the author and the title, and while she was looking on the shelves where it wasn’t, I said, “it has a black and red cover, with a girl with a stake and a corset on it.”

“Honey,” she said. “They all do these days.”

She looked it up on her special computer, and confirmed that they had two copies, and were getting four more, and they could order it for me. I always feel bad at this point, because my response is, “No, don’t bother ordering it; I already have a copy” at which point they give me the “then why are you bugging me about looking for it” look. Though when I told her that I knew the author, she got all wide eyed. Which was nice. So, Colleen, if you want to come to town and sign here, I say go for it.

Then I wended my way back to the YA section of the bookstore, where I got into a browsing match with a woman who turned out to be a librarian at a grade 7-12 school. We started talking books. What we liked, what we loved, what we worshipped, what we insisted the other had to read right right now (Her: The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray; Me: Magic or Madness) and pretty soon, another woman overheard us and got in on the conversation (I think I sold her on either Enchanted, Inc. or Secret Society Girl or possibly both) and we walked away with a nice, healthy stack of books.

(And I found SB flipping through The Android’s Dream on the front table and getting after me about why I’d suggested OMW to him rather than TAD, and I’m all, dude, the last time I suggested a book to you (last January, and it was The Golden Compass) you didn’t read it for 12 months (and then begged for Amber Spyglass for Xmas). He still hasn’t read Scott Westerfeld, and I’ve been hawking that for, like, a year and a half. I know, I know. I’m not sure why I’m marrying him, either. Um, SB, not Scott.)

I walked home on air. Here’s the thing: I looooooove books. I love reading books, I love recommending books I’ve read, I love talking about books with other book readers, I love talking about books with people who hardly read at all in the hope, perhaps, that they will come around. Books books books. Yummy! And I have so much fun striking up conversations with people in the bookstore and convincing them to buy books that I love. I even joined a book club. (Which reminds me. I have to get that book and read it.)

So I’m going to start doing more book pimping here. I’m starting this week, giving away a copy of one of the books pictured in this post. (We’ll be doing the others a little bit later.) Leave a comment below if you’d like to be entered. We’ll do the drawing at the end of the week.