Reading on Metro

For years, I couldn't read on the Metro. It made me car sick. Suddenly I find I can and it is an amazing development. I take those novels I want to read and yet find it hard at first to tackle onto the train and suddenly I am nearly missing subway stops. The first I started on the train was Death of the Heart, followed by Voyage of the Narwhal and then The Reluctant Fundamentalist. In each case, I ended up finishing them at home in bed because I became so absorbed I couldn't bear the stop/start nature of reading on the train.

And I am fascinated by what other people on the train (or bus) are reading. This morning on the bus the woman to my left was reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the woman on my right was reading Thr3e. Lots of people in D.C. read non-fiction; a lot of young girls and middle-aged women read sad trash. People read self-help books about finding love. A handsome black man kissed his beautiful wife goodbye yesterday morning and then stood up to let an older woman sit down and leaned against the wall of the car to read his Bible.

By God, they read. They read actual books.

So far in 2008:

18. The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid
17. The Voyage of the Narwhal, Andrea Barrett
16. The Shadow Isle, Katherine Kerr
15. The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
14. David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Coriloff Affair, Irene Nemirovsky
13. Th1rteen R3asons Why, Jay Asher
12. Five Go to Smuggletop, Enid Blyton
11. And Then We Came to the End, Fabulous, just like my experiences at a Nashville PR firm, Joshua Ferris
10. The Tenderness of Wolves, Cold, but no Cold Mountain, Stef Penney
9. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Paul Torday
8. Dragonhaven, Robin McKinley
7. The Tale of Despereaux, Kate DiCamillo
6. The Asolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Alexie Herman
5. The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff
4. Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill
3. Inkspell, Cornelia Funke
2. Riding Lessons, Sara Gruen
1. Summer People, Brian Groh

Reread:

16-17. The Eustace Diamonds, The Prime Minister, Anthony Trollope,
13-15. LOTR, three volumes.
5-12 Island, Castle, Valley, Sea, Mountain, Circus and Castle of ADventure, Enid Blyton
4. Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson
3. The Silver Princess in Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson
2. Captain Salt in Oz, Ruth Plumly Thompson
1. Earth Abides, George R. Stewart

The drumbeat begins ...

Of course, it's been drumming all along in my head and heart but I thought I'd start an occasional analysis of the presidential race here on my ickle blog.

Can't do much better than Jib Jab's latest, of course.

But, for anyone as obsessive as I am, here are two must-bookmark sites: Pollster.com and Zogby's electoral map.

Zogby has been very good in recent cycles and his map has Obama with 273 electoral votes right now, and that's not even giving him Michigan or Ohio, where he's currently running ahead.

Also when you look at the Pollster.com date, look especially at the surveys that poll LV (likely voters) rather than RV (registered voters). LV polls are more accurate. For example, if you look at Florida, in the polls that surveyed LVs, Obama is consistently ahead in the last few weeks. Even better are the campaign internal polls, which draw from actual voter lists, but they are rarely made public.

Also I like (especially because I'm a strong D) the national four-way chart. Since that measures the actual match-ups, I think it's more accurate.

Disclosure: I'm not totally talking as an amateur poll-watcher here. I did political polling for six years and worked briefly at one of the top Democratic polling firms.

We don't want your kind here

It's an article of faith among book lovers, readers and writers that we should at all times and in all places support independent booksellers. I always have. I have gone way out of my way to buy my Harry Potters from indie stores, preferably members of the Association of Booksellers for Children, of which I am a member. When I lived in Nashville and when I go to Memphis, I never go to a chain bookstore. Why should I when the fabulous Davis-Kidd is available for browsing and brunching?

But I have to say, I have had some bad experiences with indies in our nation's capital. My most recent is the third so far with a venerable indie chain here. I'll describe all three because this is illustrative of why the chains are gobbling up the indies without even a large belch. I went into a branch of the indie which shall be nameless, looked around in fiction, saw nothing but new releases. I was looking for The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope. I go to the desk and ask if they have it. Young fresh-faced boy says, "Oh, yeah, I think we have that." He looks on the computer for a while and then says, "Oh, no, we wouldn't have a book like that."

Like what? Old? Long?

"We could order it."

Only a few weeks before I had gone into the same store looking for The Two Towers. Now come on, what bookstore would not stock all three titles of The Lord of the Rings? I didn't even ask that time because I was so annoyed, and desperate because I had apparently packed the middle volume and sent it with the POD to Nashville (we are trying to move). I needed it so bad I knew I'd be going to Borders on my way home from work since I'd struck out at the indie-bendie. What's the point of dissing them for being lame?

And I remembered that a couple of years ago at a different branch of this indie store, I went in (see I always go to the indie first) to get the third volume of Jeanne DuPrau's trilogy that begins with City of Ember. The name of the third volume is Prophet of Yonwood, and I didn't remember the name exactly, but I knew the author. So it's not on the shelf. I ask. A lady looks it up. (I should mention that both she and the young man were faintly condescending, but not as bad as the premiere indie in DC, Politics and Prose, where I have always been treated like a bug if I ask a question.) She allows as how it is not yet released. "Humm. I'm sure it's out," I said. "Oh, no, dear (subtext, you stupid twit)," she says. So I went that same day to Barnes & Noble and picked one up from the stack on the table display outside the children's department.

With all this history, I told the fresh-faced snot never mind. But as I left and stood in the hot sun outside, I thought again of how stressed and threatened independent bookstores are and how much poorer my life would be without them, and I went back and asked him, "How long would it take to order it?" He looked at me, vaguely. "Trollope," I reminded him. Who can expect anyone to remember something that happened, oh, less than a minute ago? "The Prime Minister." With a faint air of annoyance he goes back to the computer. Finally, he looks up. "I don't know. Maybe by the end of the week. Maybe a couple of weeks."

"No thanks."

By the way, I checked and they still didn't have The Two Towers.

In fairness, the Borders on 18th and L that I went to the next day didn't have it either, but they had a pretty good selection of Trollope and I got The Eustace Diamonds instead. Tonight, in fact, I'm heading to the Borders in Silver Spring to see if they have it.

It's really sad. That very week the Post had a story that this indie is closing some of its branches to avoid bankruptcy. I don't want it to go out of business, but if an indie won't provide better customer service than a mega-chain, maybe it should close up and go home.