Bring it on back

Went to Parade's MPH today. Disturbing. What are they doing to the YA and Children's section?! Where is Garth Nix's Sabriel trilogy? Where is Eoin Colfer?

I used to like that place. A lot. Would've been happy if you had let me roamed round the place every Saturday night. (I know, sad, isn't it? I don't go clubbing and the like. I go to bookshops! <3) But now...I just come away, almost every time, feeling like a bit of my enchanted castle's been desecrated or abandoned to ruin.

And the fact that the CD of the week or month is usually played in the YA section. Not Fiction, with its rows and shelves of new books which, I sometimes wonder, whether people do bother to scan and buy. So anyway, today's music selection was pretty off. Some woman singing country. She covered one of Celine Dion's songs. Need I say more? =/

And the books. Limited. And some in really sorry conditions. I used to complain how MPH wrapped up the books. Not anymore. I don't blame them for it one bit. Saw people reading with the books on the damn floor pun. You. Do. NOT. Read. Books. ON THE FLOOR. Especially books you have not bought and therefore do not own. Have some civic consciousness. There are people out there who might want to buy those books.

The worst thing I find is...bent covers. I know, I'm a almost a book fetishist when it comes to buying books. I look for bends and lines in the spine; whether the type is readable; the illustration on the cover - some of you have even found it funny that I refuse to take the price tags off books after buying them. But that's just me. But - but - bent covers. Even the little bends at the corners set my nerves on edge. And you expect me to buy books in that condition? *wide horrified eyes*

There is - and will never be! - the one perfect book. Ever. Some do come close to it at times - Plath's The Bell Jar, Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky, etc - but the one thing that will always turn me off is a bent cover. Fact. I don't fall for blurbs. I get pissed when the blurbs take the place of a synopsis. (Happening more often lately, it seems.)

Am just feeling a bit, you know, blue. At the state our bookshops are coming to. If the Kids section is so disorganized and half-hearted as it is, kids aren't going to be happy browsing. They'd probably grab the latest Gossip Girl or Stephanie Meyer book and just leave, because those are prominently displayed. And it saddens me, really, that MPH isn't making any effort to promote Diana Wynne Jones' new book. (Can you imagine a world without Howl Pendragon? I can't.)

Don't even let me get started on Pyramid's MPH. Even if I did find Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle there, it still isn't making me happy.

I'm just whining, of course. You've probably heard my book rants so many times already, you can tell what I'll whine about every time.

Am starting to think that electronic books aren't such a bad idea after all. Who knows, maybe it'll be cheaper - and more satisfying - to have a Kindle or similar gadget in the future and download books whenever I want to. For one thing, books won't go out of print as fast (I hope), and for another, you don't have to search till the peak of Mount Everest for that book that no bookshop seems to have.

But nothing beats the feel and smell of paper eh. And nicely illustrated book covers. (I'm a sucker for pretty book covers.) And certain kinds of paper have that particular smell that I always associate with my early reading days. Enid Blyton, Sweet Valley, Puffin classics.

I still get people saying to me, "It's just a book." It's never just a book. Ever.