For me a book store is typically a rip-roaring, out of your seat and on your feet adventure in decision-making. An adventure on which I usually heartily and quite frequently embark.
That isn’t to say I always leave the book store in question after having made a particularly pleasing decision.
I have been known to spend hours perusing the shelves and flipping the pages, until, exhuasted and hungry, and unable to ultimately decide which two or three or twelve books I would like to have in my possession when I walk out the door, I exit said literary-laden establishment, empty-handed and a little overwhelmed at the sheer volume of potential texts which one could swallow with their eyes.
Or sometimes, I impulsively grab a book from the nearest (in this case, fiction) shelf, afterward walking it and myself proudly and determinedly to the check-out counter, smiling broadly at the clerk and cheerily assuming everyone present must be thoroughly impressed with my clearly keen decision-making skills.
And then, sometimes, I get home and start reading said proudly chosen book and grimace when I get about half-way through the text, when I realize that I’m reading the second book (behind Alcott’s Little Women) I’ve ever been able to classify as “bad.” Times when I understand that book stores, although ripe with the quantity, aren’t always overflowing with the quality, and that certain texts within those aforementioned potentially adventure-laden aisles (like say, William Norris’ Snapshots, for example) can be disasters in prose just waiting to be read.
Whenever I experience a particularly nasty flavor of Book Store Misfortune, it makes me warm and fuzzy inside to know there is and will always be Powell’s.
Yes, Powell’s, blessed and oh so vast Mother Of All Book Stores, you are my Graceland.