An Open Letter

Posted by: Eva on: April 3, 2008

In: *Personal| TBR
Comment!

Dear Barnes and Noble,

I understand if you’re a little upset with me right now. After all, I did read a whole hardcover book in your store while I was on vacation, and I didn’t buy it. Not that I meant to do that-I just wanted to flip through it, and you didn’t have the paperback version, but one thing lead to another and soon three hours had passed and I was done. I felt bad. But honestly, I don’t think that’s justification for the low blow you dealt me today. I’d even go so far as to call your behavior churlish.

This afternoon, I went online to write a review of Wild Swans. It’s a great book, and I want to write a nice, long post on it, but I made a fatal mistake: I checked my e-mail first. And I saw one from you, telling me that bargain books were 3-for-2. Even though I have a New Year’s resolution not to buy any books, I thought I’d just go browse for a bit. That was my biggest mistake. But how was I supposed to know that you’d have 1,000 non-fiction bargain books and 2,000 fiction ones?! And of course, I had to go through them all. So two (ok, three, but don’t tell anyone else) hours later, I’m left with no review and a huge problem: you have a ton of great books at insanely cheap prices. I mean, three brand-new hardcovers for $10?! And if I spend $25 I get free shipping? It’s like pushing crack: seriously uncool.

Take the non-fiction choices. There’s the ones I’ve been at least casually interested in forever, like The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand, Odd Girl Out by Rachel Simmons, The Foreigner’s Gift by Fouad Ajami, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd, The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler, Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane, Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent, and A Hundred and One Days by Asna Seierstad. Then there’s several interesting sounding ones about American foreign policy: The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind, Rogue Nation by Vlude Prestowitz , and The Age of Terror, ed. Strobe Talbott, etc. . And the ones that I’ve either read about on blogs, or that just sounded interesting: Obsessive Genius, The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Priscilla Johnson McMillan, The Rabbi of 84th Street by Warren Kazok, Going Nucular by Geoggrey Nunberg, America’s Women by Gail Collins, The First Idea by Stanley Greenspan, Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith, Tripping the Prom Queen by Susan Shapiro Barash, Two Lives by Vikran Seth, Literary Occasions by V.S. Naipaul, The Geneticist Who Played Hoops With My DNA by David Ewing Duncan, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? by Harold Bloom, Burden of Memory, the Muse of Forgiveness by Wole Soyinka, Blind Men and the Elephant by Bernth Lindfors, and 1453 by Roger Crowley. Are you beginning to understand what you’ve done?

But it gets worse. Much worse. Because then I went to the fiction section. And I found books I’ve heard about on other blogs, like: The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard, Night Watch by Sarah Waters, The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany, The Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa, Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala, Alentejo Blue by Monica Ali, Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto, Pinkerton’s Sister by Peter Rushforth, and The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak. And the ones by authors I already love, like The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel, Novelties & Souvenirs by John Crowley, Making It Up by Penelope Lively, Captain Alatriste by Arturo Perez-Reverte, Rasputin’s Daughter by Robert Alexander, The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho ($4.48), Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcie Marquez, and N or M? by Agatha Christie. As well as a couple random ones that looked interesting: Love Poems, ed. C.N. Edwards, The Third Translation by Matt Bondurant , The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard, and All Aunt Hagar’s Children by Edward Jones. Of course, I didn’t expect you to have a huge selection of international books. But, it turns out you do. Like these Middle Eastern ones: A Woman in Jerusalem by A.B. Yehoshua, The Liberated Bride by A.B. Yehoshua, The Sand Cafe by Neil MacFarguhar, Arafat’s Elephant by Jonathan Tel. Or these, set in Latin America: Turing’s Delierium by Edmundo Paz Soldan, Malinche by Laura Esquivel, Brazilian Red by Jean-Christophe Rufin, Come Together, Fall Apart by Cristina Henriguez, The Zigsag Way by Anita Desai, The Mambo King Plays Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos, A Simple Habana Melody by Oscar Huuelos, The Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llossa, and The Double by Jose Saramago. Have I mentioned the African ones yet? Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche, Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala, Loot by Nadine Gordimer, Links by Nuruddin Farah, The In-Between World of Vikran Lall by M.G. Vassanji, and Knots by Nuruddin Farah. And then there’s Europe: In Lucia’s Eyes by Arthur Japin, Infidelities by Josip Novakovich, The Commissariat of Englightenment by Ken Kalfus, The Crime of Olga Arbyelina by Andre Makine, An Iliad by Alessandro Baricco, The Time of the Uprooted by Elie Wiesel, The Dream Life of Sukhanov, The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits by Emma Donoghue, The Wolving Time by Patrick Jennings, and There are Jews in My House by Lara Vapnyar. Oh, and of course I can’t forget Asia! The Tree Bride by Bharati Mukherjee, Empress by Shan Sa, The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran, An Obedient Father by Akhil Sharma, Kabul by M.E. Hirsch, Goodbye Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto, Harmony Silk Factor by Tash Aw, Broken Verse by Kamila Shamsie, and Snow by Maxence Fermine, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh.

Now do you understand what you’ve done? Because, obviously I can’t buy 86 books. Even at great prices. So now I have to try to narrow it all down, which means I’ll probably spend even more hours that I ought to be reading or blogging doing window shopping for books. Barnes and Noble, you are cruel. There’s just no way around it.

Yours Despairingly,
Eva