A Good Find

I stopped by a used bookstore called the Book Stop near my office at lunch today. A tall blond woman offered to help me navigate their tightly-packed, sparsely-labeled shelves, which I needed. I requested political books, mysteries, sci-fis, classics, and a fantasy book: a wide arrange of genres. She told me something about each author I named, as though they were all acquaintances of hers. When I asked for Evelyn Waugh, she even drew in a breath, then quietly retrieved it.

The world would be a lot more fun to live in if every worker was so devoted to his craft.

I picked up 7 books, 2 of them hard-back, and paid $20. I hadn't even gotten started going through my list of books to buy. If this bookstore had more square footage, it would be perfect. As it is, it looks under 500 square feet, and a healthy portion of that is dedicated to romances, which doesn't do anything for me.

I bought the only Kurt Vonnegut Jr book they had (it was $1) - but the girly artwork on the cover, the silly title ("The sirens of Titan") and the description by wikipedia ("A comic scifi") makes me worry about it's quality. Yet it was nominated for a Hugo award - are those easy to get?