For those of you who celebrate Christmas, how was it? Mine was great - I cleaned up. I got a Kindle (awesome, by the way!), a number of books I had been wanting (including a great one on PHP), several boxes of chocolate, and over $500 in bookstore gift cards. I got my significant other a few shirts, some camping gear for the spring, and a huge sausage and cheese basket. Of course, being male, he was most immediately impressed by the edible portion of his gifts.

Best of all, I had 5 days off to spend away from work. My pets appreciated that!

For now, I’m on a bit of a posting break, so things will be light until after the 1st.

I’ve been trying to pick up a simple paperback copy of The Alchemist for about a month now. Given the book’s immense popularity, that should be easy. Right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case at all. The local Borders carries only a $30 hardcover special edition, which isn’t what I need. The local independent store refuses to carry it for “moral reasons” - which sparks an entirely different rant that I’ll get back to in a moment.

I seriously can’t understand why a major bookstore with thousands of titles in stock would fail to carry a simple copy of such a popular book. The fact that they DO NOT have it is almost as strange as it would be if they started carrying things like hoodia diet pills. Of course, they do sell plastic pig flipping guns and Burt’s Bees products, so perhaps books have taken a backseat to those obviously more important items.

And while I’m ranting, I just wanted to express how irritated I am with the local store. I’ve always been one of those obnoxious sorts that prefer to help out the local businesses before hitting up a Borders. Unfortunately, the last two times I’ve been into the local, independently-owned store, they’ve told me that I’m essentially an immoral person for wanting to read the books that I was looking for. And no, they don’t claim to be a Christian bookstore.

First, it was a Chuck Palahniuk book. I guess I can sort of agree with them there, as he’s not exactly the purest writer - but come on, he’s huge. This thing with The Alchemist is even stranger, as it’s a very spiritual book. It may not be 100%, in-your-face, “Jesus died for your sins” uber-Christian, but neither are most of the books that they carry. My guess is that they just don’t want to carry anything that might be somewhat thought-provoking.

Anyway, that’s my rant for tonight. We’re about 42 minutes away from Christmas Day here in the midwest, so I’m off to bed. Merry Christmas!

When I don’t have any good ideas about what I’d like to read, I like to visit Amazon and enter in random queries. For instance, tonight I used the phrase “gold chain“. I found several books that seem like they could be interesting:

Chains of Gold - A fantasy tale for .29.

Chains of Gold: Charlie Q.’s struggle to be free of intangible, invisible chains - The depressing tale of a man who starts the book ready to commit suicide. I certainly hope it gets better from there…

Today I browsed the book section at Best Buy while my significant other browsed for a new tv mount. I noticed that Sue Grafton’s book, “T is for Trespass”, was one of the few books they actually carried. I didn’t realize that she had gotten so far through the alphabet in the last few years. I have to wonder - what is she going to do when she runs out of letters?

So I’m posing the question to anyone who drops by. What’s Sue Grafton going to do when she gets to Z? Will she go back to A? Start with numbers? AA? Will she just kill herself? What do you think?

Apparently, some crazy publisher decided that rockstar memoirs were the hot thing this season. Sting, Genesis, Eric Clapton, Slash, and Nikki Sixx all have new titles on the bookstore shelves. I’m not entirely sure what they have to talk about beyond diamond rings and women and sex and drugs…which gets old after a while. What do you think? Will you be reading any of them? I would read Air Supply memoirs, but that’s about it.

Amazon has revealed that they were the secret buyer of JK Rowling’s latest book, a handwritten tome that factors heavily into one of the Harry Potter novels. They paid roughly 4 million dollars, and there is no word yet about whether they would include excerpts online. I can’t imagine paying that kind of money for a book that you can’t mass produce and make money on. Of course, I cringe at the price of hotels in Vegas, so I guess I really can’t speak for a huge company like Amazon.

What do you think? Were they crazy?

Despite the fact that everyone and their dog has read it, I still haven’t gotten around to reading The Alchemist. I’m not even sure why. It’s not that it sounds unappealing, or that I don’t think I would like it. I’m pretty sure that I would. And it’s not that I haven’t been able to find a copy, since that book is to bookstores what gold chains are to rappers.

So why haven’t I read it? I guess it boils down to sheer laziness. In fact, I should probably take it off the holiday wishlist and just buy it right now.

When I write, I don’t use much. Sometimes it’s my laptop, other times it’s a notebook and pen, but I’ve never been much for “props”. I’ve known students who use custom pens, fancy notebooks, and special bags, and maybe that helps them, but to me it’s always been a distraction. I definitely love those things, I’ve just never found them to be necessary for the creative process.

What about you? How do you typically write? Do you have any special props or rituals, or will you write on whatever surface happens to be available at the time?

There are few things in the world more beautiful than poetry in the romance languages. My personal favorite is Spanish, largely because I’m more familiar with the language. Of the Spanish poetry I have read, I’ve always had a fondness for Juan Gelman’s words Apparently, I’m not the only one. He was just announced as the winner of the Cervantes Prize.

I would post one of his poems in translation, but honestly, they lose a lot when read that way. If you have the time, I highly recommend that you pick up some basic French or Spanish and read a bit of the native poetry. It’s beautiful in a way you’ll never know until you experience it.