Shop Hop

 I am a quilter.  I don't need an intervention for that because I've kicked the habit and no longer go to fabric stores just to fondle and pay for piles of fabric that will only sit in my stash for years. I am relying on that stash to see me through to my shroud.

But some would say I might need an intervention for this:

Yesterday Friend Laurie and I did a bookstore shop hop. What fun that was!  We chose three independent bookstores, two before lunch and one after.  It's a rule if you are a book person that if you go into an independent bookstore you must buy a book.  It's so very important to keep them in business.  Yesterday I bought six.  The one on the top was a birthday gift and the second one was a loan from Laurie but it sounded so familiar when I got home I searched around and saw that I had listened to the audio. The rest are new purchases.  There is nothing like the smell of a new book. Nothing like opening the first page and settling in.  Not even coming home with a pile of new fat quarters.  Yes, I enjoy used book sales, that's another avenue of ownership.

I buy books.  I also use the library and listen to audio books a LOT.  The buying started long ago when I worked in a bookstore and the employee discount was 30% off.  Well. So it began.   I'm not quite a hoarder but as any hoarder would say, I "collect."  Laurie and I discussed our criteria for keeping a book.  I have favorite authors so will buy anything they write and they are shelved together. She also has favorite authors but her criteria is more "would I read this again or would I press it on to a friend to read?"  Those she keeps.  The others she sells back to the bookstore so they can sell it as used and she gets store credit to buy more!   I must add that my Christmas gifts are gift cards to bookstores so I can shop all year at no cost to me.  Well, almost no cost.

I am getting fussy.  I am really done with WWII.  If a cover shows an airplane in the sky in the background and a woman standing in the foreground with her back to us, I don't even pick it up. You'd be surprised how many of those there are right now if your eyes are trained to look for them. I'm tired of the books about bookstores.  I won't read a romance nor fantasy nor science fiction nor dystopian. I want something different.  I love cookbooks that are more about reading about someplace new in the world, thus I ordered Cold Kitchen yesterday.  

Lunch was at a new place for me, too.  It was a Bosnian restaurant and wow, was it good!  There was a small grocery next to the restaurant and one of the things Laurie and I like to do is hit unique grocery shops so this one was really fun.  We left with our arms loaded with goodies and we had to rely on the picture of the product because we couldn't read the labels. 

Today being Tuesday I went to school to read. 

I bought this book yesterday.  I tell the kids all of the time that you are never too old to read or buy picture books.  Never.  Loren Long hardly ever gets it wrong.  The Yellow Bus is happiest when being used by children, then senior citizens then surprisingly, by goats.  We all want to be appreciated for who we are and Yellow Bus is no different.  I told the kids I read this in the bookstore to see if I wanted to purchase it, then read it again at home and then again in the car before going in to school.  Everytime you read a picture book you will see something you didn't before. And always, always, read the author notes at the end.  Always.  This one is a treasure.

Staying with the school theme I read this one.  Rick sits on the nature shelf in the classroom with moss, acorn and bark.  But he overhears a lesson on rocks and longs for adventure, like being shot out of a volcano or being a part of a rock slide.  He gets his chance but is the grass greener on the other side of the fence?