spending all our money on brand new novels

[ontology]

I really love my job.

Now, not every day is the giddy glory that the eight hours last Saturday were, but going to work and doing my work continuously makes me happy. Borders may not get a ringing endorsement from me as companies go, and certainly I have to wade through a lot of bureaucratic nonsense, and sell a lot of rubbish books (and even rubbisher things which are not books and sometimes not even remotely book-related), but the real part of my job, the centre of it, is taking care of books and interacting with customers and I love it.

I've had some really lovely customers lately. On Wednesday this dignified woman in, I think, her sixties, in a long coat and an elegant scarf and glasses and possessing an accent somewhat suggestive of upper class New England came in looking for a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which she said was an old, old favourite that she hadn't read in years. We had a very companionable conversation and I think I will have to put her in a story someday. Today an attractive bearded young bloke (in a Death Note t-shirt with 'L' on the back, n'aww) bought a copy of the sole Dresden Files graphic novel, and we enthused about the series together. (I am currently on book six -- begun this very evening -- and am utterly addicted; it is marvellous.) 

And although I have to reschedule my library-and-Hockman's day, I really love working Saturdays, because the bookstore is very, very busy and full of book-loving people (in varying degrees) looking for something to fall in love with, and I have the best interactions and am happily occupied all day. We didn't have anything to shelve or repair today, so I was told to concentrate mainly on customer service -- hurrah!

Now, a question for the f-list. What books would you suggest for a) reluctant readers (of both sexes), and b) girls who like Twilight and are primed for introduction to better things (or the friends and relations of girls who like Twilight, trying to find them new things to read)? I can suggest plenty of books for women and older teens who enjoyed Twilight (or hated it!) -- Robin McKinley's Sunshine, of course, for proper vampires and a heroine who is not a dishcloth, and Emma Bull's War for the Oaks for a much better supernatural romance (inside a plot that is actually awesome, and more importantly, there!) -- but younger girls? I am at a loss. There are plenty of other rubbish teen vampire pop romances (they litter the YA section lately), but I feel the need to somehow instil a love for actual literature. As for reluctant readers, I was in no way one and find their minds difficult to comprehend. ;) What sorts of books would hook a boy or girl without the ravenous lust for literature I seem to have been born with? I want to recommend favourites of my own, but I don't know which of them would be the most apt (though I imagine Gail Carson Levine is a good place to begin with girls), especially since I was reading things like Dickens and Alcott and L'Engle at the age of nine, and Tolkien by twelve, and T.S. Eliot by fourteen (not counting the Practical Cats, which I think I must have been in love with all of my life, because I have no memory of being introduced to them but every memory of being familiar with them). A lot of people come in with, especially, ten- to fourteen-year-olds looking for something, anything that they'll read, usually because their schools require them to read some fiction, and I try my best to help them, but am floundering rather a lot.

I made brownies to bring to work, because... look, I'm not a suck-up, really! Uhhh. Heh. Anyway, this time I didn't forget to bring them, as I forgot the cookies I made a week and a half ago (and then I forgot them again when I meant to bring them to Jonathan's...). I also bought a baguette on the way to work and brought cheese from home for a lunch of bread and cheese; very old-fashioned and delightful.

And I'm bicycling again! I've missed being Bicycle Girl! The weather today is marvellous -- rainy and warm and windy and alive, and there is little like strenuous excercise in pleasing weather to lift one's spirits. Of course on the way to work it was very wet, and while the rain was mostly drizzle and not much trouble, the streets were full of puddles and I had to sponge mud from my entire person upon arriving at work. Siiiigh. But the way home was dry and absolutely perfect, and there was wind in my hair, and I may have sung a lot.

(Also I may have kind of wandered into Rue21? And they were maybe sort of full of their usual clearance racks of awesome and win? And I may have purchased one (1) grey and black striped shirt with a bow, two (2) elegant waistcoats in different styles, and one (1) very lovely summer dress consisting of a white ruffled blouse and polka-dotted skirt -- for two dollars apiece. However, dear readers, it is highly unlikely, for I only ever spend my money on extremely important and serious things.) 

Tomorrow, Dad and I are going to see Slumdog Millionaire (which has somehow made its way, very late, into our cinema, probably on sole virtue of having won many Academy Awards, because indie films are about as common in my cinema as capital letters in an e.e. cummings poem). I'm kind of enjoying my life right now; and that feels good.

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[wanderlight.livejournal.com]

and I think I will have to put her in a story someday
Essentially: you = ♥. :)