In re bookstores - there used to be a place called Chaos Unlimited that specialized in second-hand mysteries and SF. It was on the second and third stories of an old townhouse that had another store on the first/ground floor. It was a warren of shelves that formed little alcoves and you had to hunt through for things, although they did have the books in order by author names. Because of the bookshelves, they had a sign saying "upstairs went thataway" with an arrow since the steps were hard to find.

Nice place - they had a comfy old armchair where you could sit to browse through books and (as many of the best bookstores do) a cat. And, since the cat tended to lie in the middle of the doorway (as cats will) I and most other patrons got used to stepping carefully over it to get in.

Of course, it closed. sigh.

All bookstores need cats.

e.l. konigsburg has died.

Whee!!! Somebody here at work is doing World Book Night and I just scored a copy of Good Omens! I've been meaning to get a copy of this forever!

I am giving away Good Omens tonight! But World Book Night is supposed to be about targeting non-readers and light readers, not handing out books to your co-workers. I won't tell on them, though.

Well, it was a department-wide IM, so I don't know how many people who expressed interest are not big readers.

I stayed up too late tonight finishing Frost Burned, the latest Mercy Thompson novel. I should have finished it ages ago, but the story stopped really holding my interest shortly after Adam and the rest of the werewolves escaped from their captors. Still it was enjoyable, and I will be impatiently waiting for the next one. I was half expecting Mercy to say she was pregnant at the end of the novel considering the way it started. I'm still not convinced she isn't. The end sort of left it open to interpretation.

Has anyone here read Lady of Ashes by Christine Trent? One of the GCS readers wrote in to recommend it to me. It sounds interesting (oooh, Victorian undertakers and mourning rituals!), but I also know that I prefer books with some sort of paranormal/magical realism/urban fantasy flavor to them.

I'm reading a great mystery(I guess) although it's more litfic than a lot of them I've seen lately, called "Reconstructing Amelia". A lawyer thinks her daughter has committed suicide, but she finds out she didn't(and a lot of other things) by going through her posts and texts.

Jilli, if you haven't read it already, I do think you would like "A Natural History of Dragons" by Marie Brennan.