Rainy Sunday Odds & Ends

Its an Odds and Ends Sunday:

• Despite all the rain here (and the fact that last night's windstorm will cost me about $4,000 in fence repairs), I decided to visit Barnes & Noble this morning.  I spotted a large table stacked with what the store has left over from the signed-books promotion that B&N ran over the Thanksgiving weekend...dozens of them.  There were even short stacks under the table.  I'm surprised there are so many of them, but not real surprised by the ones that didn't sell well.  What do they most have in common?  The signatures look like something scribbled by a three-year-old handed a pen for the first time.  The worst offenders do not resemble handwriting at all, and in only a few cases can you even guess at a letter or two.  No way would I want something like this unless I got it in person and had it personalized at the time.  Otherwise, who would even believe it is a signed copy.

• I'm hoping to whittle down my long list of 2015 favorites today so that I can post a top ten in both fiction and non-fiction around the middle of next week.  It's tougher this year than it has been for a long time, and I can't decide if that's because there are more good books this year or maybe more of about the same quality so that they start to blend together.

• I find myself reading a "Large Print" copy of Frederick Forsyth's new memoir The Outsider because that's the only copy that was available from my library.  It was a bit strange at first, but less so with every page.  I do especially like the way this edition of the book is bound without a dust jacket and an almost indestructible, slick cover.  (Incidentally, there were about six signed copies of The Outsider under the B&N table I previously mentioned...and Forsyth's signature is a very nice, legible one.)

• And, lastly, I'm finding that my ability to read six or seven books "at the same time" has disappeared.  I'm managing two comfortably at the moment, The Outsider and an ARC of Joshilyn Jackson's The Opposite of Everyone, but that seems to be the limit.  It's been a good while since I've actively read more than one at a time, so maybe the ability to read multiples will come back with practice.  I miss it.