10 Things I Hate About You: B. Dalton edition

This is the B. Dalton rant I promised some time ago. Although it may or may not apply to all B. Daltons in general, this list applies 100% to the one here in Findlay. And all of the items on this list contribute to me driving the extra distance across town to The Stately Raven (about which I will rave, given half a chance).

1. Poor Customer Service. This is a killer for stores -which is why smaller and locally-owned places are generally staffed by friendly, enthusiastic people. The B. Dalton employs solely grumps. These women are so lazy that they have refused to turn 90 degrees and search their computer database to see if a book I wanted was in stock. Instead I have gotten "Welllll, I don't know. I guess you could check on the shelf." These women (they are all women) do not greet customers or ask if they can help locate a book, but instead glare at anyone who dares to walk into the store as though they've been rolling around in shit for several days. Ladies - lighten up! You treat a customer right and you'll still have a paycheck. Consistently piss them off every time they come in, you're going to lose them to the competition, which clearly has you beat in this regard.
   
2. Selection. Okay -no bookstore can cater exclusively to my tastes. I know this (and it irritates me). But it's like the B. Dalton people looked at a catalog of "Books NO ONE wants to read EVER" and bought 90% of their stock from it. And then, when those books didn't sell, they put sale stickers on them in the hopes that they could lure a few saps foolish enough to judge content based on a sale sticker and make a purchase (don't you judge me). The other 10% is comprised of Twilight and Twilight knock-offs. I'm not really even exaggerating that much -that's the worst part of this. I wander* through the store picking books off shelves only to replace them with a sigh, wondering who in their right mind would actually read such a book. Or write it. I shudder to think. The selection really is just laughable.
3. Layout. I am aware that space is pretty tight. The store is crammed into an oddly-shaped corner store of the mall, and it's not very big. But anyone with even a basic understanding of design principles -or common sense- will walk in, attempt to *wander and, after either bumping into every other patron and bookshelf in the place, throw up their hands and say, "Screw this, man." The front of the store is open and inviting: tables present hot books and sales, and there is plenty of room to move around without tucking your elbows into your lungs. There's even a wall -a whole wall -showcasing best-sellers and favorites. But then, dear reader, you step into the traditional shelving area, and all hell breaks loose. Or is crammed into a tiny, tiny space and becomes even more hellish. The walls are lined with books and those cool Beauty & the Beast sliding ladders (which are for employees, of course, as if any of those biddies would ever slide exuberantly along them singing about books!!). The organization of these walled books seems to be...whatever they couldn't fit on the other shelves. It really makes no sense. The other shelves are squat, disorganized and depressing. Fiction is divided into...fiction. There's a separate section for sci-fi and romance, but otherwise it's like genre doesn't exist. Looking for a mystery? Oh, it's in there somewhere. Maybe. Classic literature? Well...it's probably in fiction, but finding a specific book in this store is about as probable as finding a thriving colony of Emperor Penguins in the Sahara. I've never seen a less efficient way of organizing books -and the majority of my own books are stored in bins.
4. Upkeep. Don't these people dust? Even occasionally? I know the mall has janitors. What the hell is going on in this store? When I worked in a (small, local and ultimately doomed) bookstore, we were cleaning constantly. Dusting, vacuuming and -most importantly -keeping the books straight. Customers come through and leave books lopsided, halfway out of their shelf space or on the floor. Part of working in a bookstore is noticing things like that and taking care of it. I did a test. I took a book (I'm pretty sure it was Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas -great book) and pulled it off the shelf, turned it face out and upside down and sat it on the shelf above its original home. I went back a week later...and it was still in the same place I'd put it. Unmoved. I put it back in the sad hole it had left behind in the shelf below. That is criminal, as far as I'm concerned. A whole week went by before anyone even noticed that something was out of place, and it was the person who put it out to begin with.
5. Romance novels. They sell well. I'm sure. And that's fine -a bookstore needs to sell books. That's why it's a store. But didn't someone -anyone -think that putting the romance novels right next to the YA and kids' books was kind of a bad idea? Are they trying to attract mothers who have nothing better to do than, oh, say, watch their kids? To whom is this set-up supposed to be attractive? If teens are going to read trashy romance novels, that's whatever -it's personal taste. But I think some common sense was checked at the door when they set this up.
   
6. Lighting. The front of this B. Dalton is warm and well-lit. Inviting, as I said earlier. You walk back into the stacks and it's like being in a totally different store. It's like shopping underwater. Blindfolded. At night. The light in the back of this place is like light that needed a place to go die and picked the bookstore. It's dim, bluish and for some reason vaguely nauseating. After 15 minutes shopping there, I feel as though I will never see sunshine again and I really need some coffee. This is not a conducive atmosphere in which to shop for books. The lighting needs to be consistent, bright (but not glaring) and above all showcase the store's books to their best advantage. I feel like I should buy books there in order to rescue them from the awful lighting.
   
7. The Shopping Experience. It's almost impossible to have a good one in this B. Dalton. Shopping for books is like any other kind of shopping -you have to be able to browse, to have a secluded area in which to try the books on for size. Instead, the awful layout, nasty employees and horrible lighting tell potential customers, "Look, jackass. You better have a book in mind the second you walk in this store or get the hell out. Also, find it yourself. Do I look like I want to help you?" After approximately 10 to 15 minutes of aimless browsing (or increasingly frustrated searching), the employees will emerge from behind their registers like resentful slugs and walk by whatever aisle you happen to be in, glaring at you, suspicion evident on their rotund, pasty faces. Apparently in their world, no one reads anything that isn't Twilight or featured in Oprah's Book Club, so someone who doesn't know exactly what they want when coming into the store can only be some sort of miscreant who will probably attempt to steal all 8 (unnecessary) copies of Paul Coehlo's The Alchemist (which, as an aside, I didn't like all that much when I read it). It's a horribly uncomfortable way to shop. I like to crack open a book and read a few pages...or chapters...before I am prepared to drop $7-20 on it. Most bookstores don't mind this. But B. Dalton? Get in, get out and don't just stand there. God forbid you just want to browse through some books.
8. Technology. I wouldn't be surprised if the registers and computer in this place are older than both of my siblings. There's nothing wrong with older computers...if they're still fast and effective. These registers grumble and bitch as they work to process credit cards and are generally about as friendly-seeming as the women who run them. And should you actually be able to get one of them to search for a book on the computer for you, be prepared to stand there for about 8 minutes while they fail to spell the title right, then screw up the author's name and wait for no searches to be returned; after having corrected them, be ready to wait another 3-5 minutes while the computer hums along like a geriatric bee before gleefully announcing that the book isn't in stock (before you go sniff around and find it in a section where it doesn't really belong anyway). Update your tech. It's pathetic. My cell phone works better than all of the computers in this place, and that does not give me much faith in the store.
9. Special Orders. Don't tell me it's going to take 4-6 weeks for a special order to come in (and then never call when it does, forcing me to come in asking for it anyway). That's bullshit. I worked in a bookstore, as I have mentioned, and we guaranteed that a special order would be in within 5-7 business days. Not a month and a half. If any bookstore tries to tell you that they can't have it within a week (unless the book is really rare or old), they're lying and/or they're a really bad bookstore. A special order is a special order for a reason -it should not be coming in with your next regularly scheduled shipment...that's why it's "special." You're ordering it "specially" for this customer, who should not be made to wait that long for a book they could have within the same day at another store, or within a week...since that other store will actually order it for them.
10. Promotions. I'm all for them. I think they're cool. I love special deals, coupons and frequent buyer programs. The one B. Dalton has sucks. It's like $40 to join it, meaning you have to spend about $150 in books before it even pays for itself. For someone like me who has limited cash most of the time anyway, $40 up front is not really that feasible. Granted, I probably spend $300 on books every year, but dropping $40 with no immediate, tangible benefit is never going to happen for me. I'm cheap. And for people who don't buy books as often as I do, this "frequent buyer program" looks more like a "huge ripoff program." Places like The Stately Raven know what's up -once you spend a certain amount of money on books, your next purchase is discounted pretty steeply. And it's free. FREE. You hear that, B. Dalton? It doesn't cost anything for the customer, except their loyalty -and with a place like the Raven, that just comes with the gig. People should not have to pay for promotions or discounts. That defeats the purpose. Also, would it kill you to have some author signings? It would involve moving stuff around so that said author could have a place to sit that's not on top of a bunch of shitty sale books, so yes, it probably would kill you...but in the long run, I don't think that would be a bad thing.

Whew! Lists! I am tired. If you made it this far, give yourself a pat on the back. And a cup of coffee or something.
Also, it's review Friday! Go check it out! Woo-hoo! Jane Eyre, aww-riiight. It's not an analysis, it's a review of it from The Things That Matter, but still. Jane Eyre. :D

Scorn (and a picture of Doctor Who)

There's something truly satisfying about writing a snarky review. Really satisfying. It's almost carnal -as though I'm stalking this unsuspecting book; noticing its weaknesses when comparing it to others of its kind; watching as it stumbles along and makes more errors; slowly luring it into the seclusion of my computer screen where I pounce upon it, tearing it apart chapter by chapter, mistake by fatal mistake, ink running like blood down my chin as I break its spine and it falls to the floor, twitching weakly and finally becoming still.

Um.

What?

But seriously (as my little brother would say emphatically) it does feel a little like that. It makes me angry to come across a piece of writing that had a chance to be good but due to failure on the part of writers and editors instead limps along like a wounded, malformed animal. Something like this book, Dedication, or Twilight (no rant on that today, I promise), just asks for someone like me to come along and annihilate it.

I have issues with writers who send out sub-par work. A blog like this is one thing. I'm sure I've made errors, and I know I don't spend nearly as much time crafting my entries as I could (or probably should). Even my reviews probably have some screw-ups in them, although I spend a lot more time on those. But a book? A manuscript that you send out to a multitude of publishers and pray (even if you don't believe in a god) that you get an acceptance letter and not just another stack of tactfully worded rejections? There's no excuse for a bad manuscript.

I don't understand why a writer would end out anything less than their absolute best effort -particularly a writer who has been published before. I'm not saying everything should be 100% error-free; most books have mistakes in them, and I'm by no means Little Miss Perfect. But when I sent my first piece out into the void, I worked on it for weeks. Weeks. Hours every day, talking to my professor, re-wording, re-formatting, fixing the timeline, clarifying details, polishing, cutting, revising and fretting over the placement of every comma and semi-colon (the piece did get published, by the way, in the spring edition of the North Central Review). It's 15 pages, double spaced, in Word.

So when I come across a published, full-length 100+ page novel that feels like someone wrote it and got bored halfway through, or didn't bother to make sure they were writing properly grammatical sentences, or wrote something that ends up falling flat on its face, it pisses me off. A lot. I take issue with boring, lazy, slipshod writing.

Not every book needs to be a great work of literature. Reading slightly silly books is a great way to relax. But I want to be able to feel that even the slightly silly books I read were worked on as hard as I work on my own writing, if not harder. I want to feel that the published book I hold in my hands was worth the time and effort people put into writing, editing, printing, marketing, distributing and selling the book. I want to feel that they money I spent and the time I used reading the book were not squandered.

Because if a book doesn't earn my interest and my respect, I'm going to hunt it down and kill it. Only with a review like this one for Dedication, or this one for the Heroines, or this one for Twilight can I feel like I've used that wasted time well -or at least gotten a little revenge for the time I wasted.

On to another topic -Literature. Capital L. I have a note on Facebook asking for thoughts, and that's gotten a fantastic response. However, I still want to post the questions to the Internet at large.

• What is Literature?
• What books do you consider to be Literature?
• What makes something Literature?
• What cultural influence does Literature have?
• Why do we/you read Literature?
• What is the significance of Literature?

Come on people, help me out. You know you want to. I want all the input I can get. Links, thesis papers, books, middle fingers thrown up in the general direction of my book snobbery -whatever. Send it my way. I'll love you forever!

Webcomics

This picture (which I am aware is not flattering) will make sense once you get to the entry on FreakAngels.


Webcomics are awesome. I read a lot of them, usually on Saturdays. Saturday is my designated web-comic day. However, if I find a new one that I like, I'll read it from the beginning until the most recent one so that I'm all caught up. I've been doing that recently with a new one that I found. So today instead of books, I'm going to talk about all of my favorite web-comics. Well...most of them. I don't have all day to do this.

• E-merl. E-merl is weird but awesome. It's a 3-panel comic (4 with the title, which is always pertinent to the joke), pretty simply illustrated, lots of bright colors (always important) with subjects like "Other Names For Roses That Would Not Smell As Sweet". Yeah. Awesome. Minimal swearing, not too much that would frighten the kiddies. Pretty tame, but very clever. It's updated Tues/Thurs
  
• Questionable Content. Definitely start at the beginning as this one is a continuous story with new characters and plot lines added consistently. It's also very clever, but it's more focused on the people and their relationships. Sort of like a sit-com without any actors and it's usually much funnier (excluding Seinfeld, which wins at everything forever I don't care what anyone says. Seinfeld formed me as a person). It gets updated pretty much every day Mon-Fri, although when they guy who does it is busy, the very offensive Yelling Bird will take over. I follow him on Twitter (along with the other characters who update occasionally). YB is horrifying. QC is one to check out; swearing and sex are involved, so if that's gonna bug you, don't read it.
• xkcd. A classic among web-comic aficionados. Lots of mathematical and literary references -a lot of it will go above the average reader's head, but it's really hysterically good. Also, hypertext. Never forget to read the hypertext.
• FreakAngels. One of my personal favorites. Warren Ellis writes it, and he's just undeniably brilliant. I also follow him on Twitter, and he's a very interesting alcoholic. FreakAngels follows the story of a bunch of twenty-somethings who accidentally caused the apocalypse, kind of. They all have these undeveloped powers they use and they can communicate telepathically. A lot of it deals with them trying to rebuild a working society from scratch, politics and human/kind of super-human relationships. It's so well done...I'm totally not doing it justice here, but I love it. I love it so much that I bought a FreakAngels tank top using my coffee money. That should be enough to get you to read it.
  
• Bite Me!. Vampires before Twilight. Real vampires, not faggots. It's a completed comic, so it took me about 45 minutes-1 hour to get through the whole thing. It's well-written and -illustrated. Funny, fast-paced and clever, I really enjoyed coming across it. Also the author makes fun of Twilight (hypertext. NEVER forget hypertext. It makes comics 10x better). Some swearing/risque humor. Nothing shocking, but funny as hell.
  
• Penny Arcade. A classic gaming comic. I game very little (L4D. Foreva.) but even I crack up reading PA, because it's just that good. It's funny and cute and silly and crude and hilarious. The story arc is sort of continuous, but you don't need much background to be able to really get into the humor. Swearing is rampant. Get over it.
  
• Pictures for Sad Children. Not my favorite. It's a little predictable, but occasionally there will be one that just sucks you right back in to its universe. It's got some real gems, and that alone makes it worth reading right through it.
• This image specifically: Dude Watchin' with the Brontes. I laughed for about a minute straight when I read this. It's just... gold. Absolute gold. If you're a literature nerd like myself, that it.
• Least I Could Do. It's just funny. There's a lot of sex in this one, fyi. The characters are awesome though, and it's really well illustrated. If you go back to the very beginning and read through it, you can see where the illustrator changed and it really made all the difference in the quality of the comic. I enjoy it.
• Dresden Codak. Heard of transhumanism? This is where you need to go to find out about it. It's an extraordinarily well-done comic. All I should need to say to get you there and reading it is that there is a character named Tiny Carl Jung. Yeah. I love DC.
• Girls with Slingshots. I just started reading this one yesterday. It's pretty sexual and there's lots of swearing, so no-go for kids, but it's good. It's funny, well-drawn and realistic. I'm getting a kick out of reading it. One of my favorite parts about GwS is that the characters are aware of their status as characters in a comic -much like my beloved Deadpool. It adds a slightly bizarre but ultimately interesting element to the stories.
  
• Last but not least is Wondermark. Wondermark is just plain weird. Also, hypertext. WM is really, really funny and clever, especially if you like off-kilter humor and things called a Piranhamoose.
  

Those are the comics I read most regularly, although there a few others scattered here and there that I'll check in on. Be sure to read at least some of these -they will take your day, shake it by its humor gland and force it to be awesome.
I'm not even kidding. Maybe a little.

Additionally, I love picnics. :)

My hands are covered in ink.

Today as part of my second job at Spectrum Eye (the first bit was finding, pulling and re-filing 2000+ files), I started faxing 929 new doctor announcements. Except first I had to cross off all of the out-of-state doctors. Then all of the in-town doctors. Then all of the doctors with no fax numbers (duh). Then I had to go through and find all of the optometrists and ophthalmologists to make sure I fax to them first (hello yellow hi-liter). I went from 929 to 373 doctors. 97 of those are now hi-lited. My hands are covered in ink from crossing stuff out. I don't just do lines, I do big wavy scrawls. No curlicues, just big waves. That way I know it's really crossed out.
After an hour and 39 minutes I decided I was done for the day.
I haven't sent a single fax yet.

In other news, you guys suck. I got zero votes on what review to post today! My feelings are hurt. On a scale of one to permanent scarring, I'm at about a knee scrape. Screw you guys. :(

So I picked the review of The Great Gatsby. Mostly because I worked really hard on it. It took probably 3 hours total to write, edit, re-write, re-edit, finish, polish, find links, format and publish. So be grateful. And go read it. I'm pretty pleased with it. Of course I could have written more or changed a few things...but I say that about every piece, every time I go back and read it again. I've learned to just let go a little. Once it's out there, it's out there. I'm chill with it. It's a good review, and I like it.

The only rotten part is now I want to watch the movie version except I know it will depress the hell out of me.

Today I'm going to be working on a review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower (thanks again Dirk), and possibly going to the library to pick some stuff up. I got Walden Two (which I'm working on) but the two other books I got I haven't even cracked. That's a bad sign for them...usually if I grab a book and let it stew for a couple of days the suspense drives me nuts and I blast through them. These two are just sitting there, bored and useless. That means they need to go back and I need to find something else.

Right now then I have TPoBaW, W2 and Interview with the Vampire to work on; Alex is going to lend me Parallelities when he gets back from NYC (cue jealous grumbling and bitching) and I'm hoping Jonah will let me borrow a sci-fi book he was telling me about, which is called either Up or Down the Line (my memory is horrible).

Other than that, I still need ideas. I'm going to go through my own books and pick out a few I remember well enough to review without rereading (Assassins of Tamurin which I've read upwards of 6 times is definitely one, maybe A Canticle for Leibowitz... we'll see. Memoirs of a Survivor. Stuff like that), but I still need ideas.

I'm also going to be writing a piece on what literature is for my super secret special project, and I want some outside opinions. What do you think literature is? Write as much as I want. If you give me good ideas, I'll use them and credit you in the blog entry about it and be forever grateful to you. I have some outlined ideas which I'll be keeping to myself so as not to bias your comments (which had better be many), but I would love to hear from you all. All...what, 5 of you who read this? If I'm lucky.

Sunday update

Sunday! A day of relaxation, haircuts and shopping. I got my hair cut a little shorter than I wanted, but I figure that it's better to have it too short than too long. It'll grow out in a few weeks and I'll need another cut anyway. It looks good at least. Huzzah.

I also read The Perks of Being a Wallflower this morning (courtesy of my friend Dirk Frey who very obligingly left it in my mailbox -thanks Dirk!), and really enjoyed it. There will be a review of that sooner or later, so huzzah for that!
As for tomorrow, I'm going to give you all a choice -I have several reviews lined up and ready to go, but I'm going to let you vote on which one I put up. If I don't get any comments, I'm just going to pick whichever one I want.

Your choices:

• The Things That Matter: Jane Eyre
• The Great Gatsby
• Living Dead in Dallas

Not too many choices, but all of them are finished and ready to be published. It's totally up to you. So get voting!

I'm also starting Walden Two today (thanks for the suggestion, Alex! Yay ideas!) and I'm still searching for some of the other book ideas you've given out. Additionally, more ideas are always good, so send 'em on out!

Tomorrow is also going to be awesome for several other reasons. I'm starting my second job at Spectrum Eye. I have about 60 more files to put away and then I get to fax 929 "new doctor" announcements. However, before I can fax them I have to cross about half of them off since they either don't need announcements or they're out-of-state. Either way, I'll get to wear a skirt to work instead of my slacks! I love wearing skirts, but I haven't been able to since I'm up and down ladders all the time. Then in the evening Jonah is cooking me dinner and we're having a picnic at his house. I can't remember the last time I went picnicking, much less had someone aside from a family member cook for me (not that I don't love my mom's cooking -she's the best), but I'm excited about tomorrow. :)

Frack

I just realized I'm supposed to post 1 "Info 101" article/week...so my big jump on 5 of them was sort of my worst idea ever. Those 5 would have covered around half of the articles I needed to write for my super secret special project (which clearly is no longer a secret at this point, but you know what? I'll call it what I want. Screw you.).

So for this week we have an article about the excellent Wooster Book Company -these fabulous people were the only ones to write me back when I sent out requests for picture permission for those first 5 articles (towards which I now feel rather bitter). I've been e-mailing back and forth for a couple of weeks with the owner/founder/all-around-cool-person David Wiesenberg in order to get info, more pics and all those shenanigans.

They are Ohio's largest independent bookstore, and I think they're great. I'd love to go visit them, especially for the Buckeye Book Fair (there's a link to info on it in the article, which you need to go read).

Go! Now!

Have a good Saturday.

Ho-hum

It's review Friday. That means you get to go and read about Wuthering Heights!

How exciting -amirite or amirite?
Of course I'm right.

I decided to hold off on Great Gatsby until Monday, since the review isn't quite where I want it as of yet. But that just means Monday will be even more exciting than today!

Short entry right now...I'm busy cleaning the basement and fun stuff like that.

More tomorrow!