See, Jeremy asked me a few weeks ago If I could work the 28th for him. I agreed, and offered him my shift today in exchange. I knew I had done this. If anyone had asked me if I worked the 22nd, I would have said, confidently, "NO. No, I do not. Jeremy will work that day, because I'm working the 28th, instead." Somehow, though, I failed to realize that today was in fact the 22nd, and therefore, today was the day I was not going to work.

So I went to work. I counted the register, I got the newspapers set up, and I changed the security tape. Then, Jeremy walked in. That was when I realized I am dumb.

Because we are both very nice, very indecisive people, we played a few rounds of "No, really. It doesn't matter to me either way. What do you want to do about this?" before I decided I needed the money, so I would stay.

I said "I'm not even supposed to BE here today!!" like five times in the first hour, just because it amused me. Then, I decided to begin and maintain a totally irrational hatred of all books that say "A Novel" on the front cover for a while.

Duh. Of course it's a novel! I don't need it spelled out for me. Maybe if you mostly write cookbooks, or piano concertos, and then you decide to write a novel instead, you should put "A Novel" on the cover, just so your fans don't get confused. But John Grisham? Nora Roberts? Novels are in fact ALL you write. I get it already. You don't need to tell me every single time.

Then, I noticed that like nine out of every ten novels say "A Novel" somewhere on the cover. If I was going to seriously hate every single book that said "A Novel" on the cover, I might never get to read fiction ever again. So I went back to just hating bestsellers instead. That way, I still get to hate Nora Roberts.

(Nora Roberts has sold her soul to Satan. She writes like 40 books every year. That's just not right. No one else is allowed to write anything anymore, because Nora Roberts is going to write ALL of it. Counting the stuff she's written under the pen name "JD Robb" that damn woman takes up almost THREE spined shelves in my bookstore. Tim Powers? Who's that? Connie Willis? Never heard of her. TOM FREAKIN ROBBINS?? No longer a stock author. But Nora Roberts gets THREE SHELVES of banality. But I digress.)

I decided that since it was technically my day off, I wasn't even going to bother playing "Guess What's Wrong With This Section" today. I read I Had Brain Surgery, What's Your Excuse? and started The Cloud Atlas("A Novel") I chose both because of intruiging covers, and I wasn't disappointed with either one. If you have more money than I do, or if you work in a bookstore, I recommend them both.

previous--next