So Orson Scott Card rewrote Hamlet so that Hamlet's father was a gay pedophile and abused Hamlet, Laertes, Horatio, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern, and that's why everyone is fucked up.

And then Scott Lynch (author of The Gentlemen Bastards) mocked him by similarly rewriting Henry V. Sort of: [link]

hah.

There is also some talk about rewriting Ender's Game ...

When I was a teen, I would have included Heathcliff/Catherine but now I think that's fucked up.

I posit that Heathcliff and Catherine deserved each other. That way the fucked-upped-ness is self-contained and doesn't have to spill out onto other unfortunate people.

Yeah, there's that.

AV Club has an interesting piece about the death of Borders. The most interesting part, though, is the conversation in comments which had nothing to do with megachains vs. indie stores or Amazon, but the value of having Borders or B&N come into your suburban or mostly rural existence.

Being a teen and having a place to hang out and read and discover all the science fiction or graphic novels or serious lit. That Borders and B&N had a big cultural effect in the heartland, where people had only been able to scrape by with B.Dalton and Waldenbooks and Crown type chains before.

David, that is precisely why though I love independent bookstores, I was never upset when a Borders or B&N opened up shop in less urban area. Sometimes that's the only place available to "hang". And I include libraries, because most libraries around here have extremely limited hours and they don't allow food/drink (for good reason). Plus you're not supposed to talk!

There was an article recently that the B&N in Georgetown is closing and about the loss of a "third place" - a place to gather that's not home or work - that also doesn't require you buy things (i.e., most people do buy a coffee or something when they go to the cafe, but it's not mandatory).

There really is a huge craving in American culture, I think, for that Third Place experience.

I know I wanted it as a kid and going to the mall was the only near equivalent (and we all did it), or we'd go to Cocoanut Grove, but that was so small and limited. Like, even a fairly unexciting neighborhood in San Francisco like the 9th and Irving intersection of the Inner Sunset is roughly fifteen times more interesting than Cocoanut Grove was in the 70s.

But I would've lived at Borders if I'd had one near me as a teenager. It would've been pure heaven.

There's a lot of talk in library circles about the concept of the "third place," and how libraries can become that third space for their patrons and communities. It's a useful idea and makes a lot of sense.

And I grew up pretty close to a good-sized city with great indie bookstores, but when the Borders opened up at the North Shore Mall it was a huge deal for my book-loving family and me. I remember we went and spent HOURS there the first weekend it was open. It's where I found and started reading and buying weird magazines I'd never seen before, like SageWoman and Parabola, where someone recommended to me Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen which then became one of my most beloved books, where I bought tons of great and interesting CDs, where I played my guitar in the cafe and hung out with friends. I have a lot of great memories of that place.