Crisis!

I finished S. M. Stirling’s Dies the Fire today and now I am in full crisis mode.  My local bookstores within walking distance did not have the second or the third books in the trilogy (which, I discovered, is now technically a tetralogy).  This was very bad news.  Fortunately, there is a Borders about 15 minutes away, so I jumped in my car and braved the Black Friday traffic.

The parking lot at the Borders was a complete mess.  The bookstore shares a lot with Circuit City, so there were a lot of people out searching for holiday bargains, a practice that never fails to send me into a deep depression.  Apparently, shopping on Black Friday makes you stupid, or perhaps confirms your stupidity, because I had to restrain the urge to run over at least fifteen morons who felt that it was perfectly okay to step off the curb in front of a moving car, stop, and have a conversation in the middle of the road!

I found the last parking spot at the back of the lot, feeling superior because I was not holiday gift shopping and I did not worry about walking the extra distance from the back of the lot.  Once in the store, I was faced with hordes of book buyers.  Normally, seeing a lot of people in a bookstore would make me feel good, but this didn’t.  I felt the same way I feel when I take Muttboy for a walk in our park on a sunny warm day and have to elbow past the crowds to get to the secret trails.  Where are all of you people on the cold days?! I want to shout.  I’m out here when it’s 20 degrees and snowing, you miserable, fair-weather, fake-hiker poseurs!

I quickly found the science fiction shelves and ran to the S section.  A long line of Stirling books greeted me.  Volume One of the trilogy.  A dozen copies of Volume Three.  A bunch of other books from other series.  Not one copy of the second book.  Not one.  Here’s a new rule:  If there is a series, a bookstore must stock every volume of the series, not just a few random volumes (And, by the way, don’t suggest reading the third book and coming back to the second.  What are you, some kind of lunatic? Did your parents have any children who lived?).  Failure to do so is punishable by death.  And I don’t want to hear any sniveling about shelf space.  Do you really need to stock three hundred goddamn copies of The Secret?  Please.  And just how much space do you really need to devote to cute kitten calendars?  Now I like cute kittens just fine, but this is a bookstore.  Got it?  Book.  Store.  Sells books.

So after thirty minutes of driving and fending off every moron in central Fairfield county, I arrived back at home without my book.  I was able to order the books online, of course, which is what I should have done three days ago but didn’t, and now I have to wait until next week to start reading the second volume.  This is gonna kill me, I’m sure.