Books Out of State

I went to Decatur, GA, for a few days. While I was there, I went to two different bookstores. The first one, Little Shop of Stories (a spectacular children and YA section, a smaller section of ‘books for adults), I managed to control myself to one small hardback.

I successfully resisted these books, but noted the titles for later.

Bad Unicorn; Platte F. Clark.

Fox & Phoenix; Beth Bernobich.

Lies, Knives, and Girls with Red Dresses; Ron Koertge, Andrea Dezso. (Dark short stories and poems, not for everyone, but I found the other side/what really happened fairy-tale slant interesting.)

The Teleportation Accident; Ned Beauman.

You Are Not So Smart; David McRaney. (The way our brain works–it lies to us and makes stuff up. We’re not really crazy, after all–or maybe we’re all crazy in the same way?)

At Books Again…. I blame the cat for sitting on my lap while I was looking at the paperback fiction.

Buy books and pet me!
Bookstore cat, Books Again, Decatur, GA.

Left: Self-control. Right: Not so much…

(Lost Cat, Caroline Paul; My Lobotomy, Howard Dully; The Half You Don’t Know, Peter Cameron; How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Julia Alvarez; Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd; Abstracts in Watercolor, Betty Lou Schlemm.)

Of course I visited the library in Decatur.

The library had built-in wooden bookshelves, several rooms of books (it used to be a house), and some nice comfy chairs. A nice new book selection, too. I read half of a comic collection there while warming up from a cold, rainy day.

Little Free Library, Decatur, GA.

Little Free Libraries are a spectacular thing, a book swap for anyone who wants to share. Look at the detail on the painting! The other side is On The Road.

Is that Harry Potter I see?

I had no books to swap, otherwise I would have perused the library a little more closely. Other people’s books are interesting, aren’t they? And its location in front of a coffee shop is perfect, as plenty of people read with their coffee.

The second Little Free Library in downtown Decatur! A very literary town.

This one was done by someone with a sense of humor, in a cartoony style. Another example of a nifty arty library–some of them are more plain. (The book she’s holding is Gone With the Wind.)

And both of them had a bunch of books!

It’s a little hard to see, but there’s Obama, Gingrich, Sponge Bob, Clinton, Nixon (maybe), and Hillary all saying “Read!” Even more books in this one, but I can read when I’m not on vacation…