Two items of note

My former boss--of peach schnapps fame--just told me about a neat online book resource I hadn't known about: abebooks.com. It's a user-friendly, deal-laden marketplace that offers lots of perks and filters and charms, and there's purportedly free shipping to boot. (I was about to get excited about its viability as an alternative to Amazon, but I just read that Amazon is acquiring it. It's not that I have much against Amazon, really--like Starbucks--but given the option, I'd rather support something independent. Still, this site has been around for a long time, private and apparently thriving, and has much to set it apart.) You can search and browse signed books, first editions, out-of-print books, used textbooks, and rare books in addition to new, and they're all coming from smaller booksellers. And there are powerful search features and interesting browsing categories.

So I started nosing around the award winners this morning when I should have been working, which suddenly made me remember something important (in my world). And relevant!

The National Book Award winners were just announced. I'm more of a fan of the National Book Award and Pulitzer than I am of the literature Nobel and hit-or-miss Booker. It's worth noting that the comprehensive list of past winners and finalists is a great place to begin a next-book scavenger hunt--you know, that intoxicating process whereby you find that some reputable source has touted the worth of a book whose premise or subject catches you, and you bounce around reading different reviews and end up scrawling an illegible list of might-buy titles and trotting into a good book store and holding it up to the shelves, hoping to settle on just one or two, vowing to be very discerning and frugal.

This might merit another trip to the book store for me tonight.

When the time comes to pack up my belongings and move again, I'm going to curse myself for this. Books are deceptively heavy. Deliciously heavy.