Archives - Weekly Update

I am writing this Thursday night as I jot notes of things to take with me to South Carolina tomorrow when I head to the South Carolina Book Festival in Columbia. Confession here. I hate packing to fly. The fact that everything I want for 72 hours needs to fit into one bag is true pressure. I think I have the books picked out. I am going with an advance reading copy of A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS by Khaled Hosseini, best known as the author of THE KITE RUNNER, which will be in stores on May 27th. I started this one this week and I am itching to read more. I also am bringing BECAUSE SHE CAN by Bridie Clark, an "insider tale" of the publishing industry like THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA got inside the magazine biz. It sounds like a complete romp and the kind of book I can disappear into on the plane when there is way too much moving around and I have trouble concentrating. And because I am headed south, I also have with me Cassandra King's QUEEN OF BROKEN HEARTS, which will be in stores on March 6th. Three days; three books. Got that piece right.

I got home around 7:30 Tuesday night and saw the words "Snow Day" scrawled across the calendar in the kitchen for the following day. Only a few flurries had started to fall, but clearly my younger son was wildly optimistic about the pending storm. By 9:30 the snow was falling faster and then the trifecta happened that all kids dream of in this modern age: We got an email, website update and phone call that school was going to be closed for the following day. I was grateful to whoever had chosen to call this one the night before. Truly those 5:30AM calls have the phone ringing way way too early for me. My next hour was spent emailing Cory's friends to set up "Snow Day at Our House," one of my favorite events.

I am not big on "how to" books beyond cookbooks, thus my latest explorations into the world of knitting have proved interesting. Here is a recent experience. I showed up in the yarn store with three squares of knitting, which to me looked like the start of the back and two fronts of a sweater. My question? How do I make sleeves and the rest? I clearly had a design in my head and was trying to interpret it. Luckily, Doris and Nancy at the store I frequent, A Yarn for All Seasons, have learned that typically I will show up with something completely out of the box like this, with no pattern and no plan beyond "I think I am on the right track." I usually am not.

I spent part of this week traveling to and from Indianapolis for a trade show. While I was cruising through LaGuardia and the Indianapolis airports, I spent some time at the Hudson Bookstores. I was surprised how many of the BIG books like Linda Fairstein's BAD BLOOD were not there (I was looking as I had told a fellow passenger to read it). While I know every book cannot be every place, I am very frustrated whenever I cannot find what I am looking for in a store. I am not even talking about how hard it often is to find a book in a store. I am talking about it just not being there. Thus, please see our poll and question this week, which ask about this very subject. Are you able to find the books that you want in bookstores? I ask since there are times I throw up my hands in utter frustration since I feel like I am on a quest for the Holy Grail for a title that SHOULD be there.