One of my resolutions for the new year is to buy one new record a month, at a store here in Tuscaloosa. And not Best Buy or Barnes & Noble, but Oz Music, which has these bumper stickers I’ve been seeing on the more sticker-laden cars around town that say “Support Local Music” or some such.
At any rate, I read somewhere that like most things worth doing, resolutions take practice, and that one should give them a shot in December to see how implementing them for reals is gonna go in January. Today I went in and had fun being a music-store clerk’s dream:
Hi, I’m trying to buy more new music. I have some things I like and things I don’t like. Can you help me find something?
One guy kept pushing Say Anything on me, which sounded from his previews like Blink 182 meets The Bloodhound Gang and I was: Not Interested. I almost grabbed the new Wilco record, but that felt like cheating. Instead I got this:
And this:
…which latter record was only half a cheat as I knew all about it but had only heard one or two tracks. Then I put both CDs in my car’s 10-disc changer which resides in my car’s trunk, and now I get to actually listen to them rather than get them on iTunes and hope to remember to listen to them.
I haven’t bought a new CD since, oh, maybe The Arcade Fire’s Funeral?
As I was leaving the parking lot, I looked in a weird corner of the weird shopping center and saw a sign that read Book Nook. I thought, “Oh, that’s a shame. There’s a now-gone used bookstore,” but then I saw an Open sign and got excited. I’ve been living in Tuscaloosa for 16 months, and while I think I can remember hearing about such a store, I never saw it or knew where it was.
This is a store for mass-market paperback fans, specifically those who like Romance or Mystery/Crime/Detective books. I got Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, which I’ve heard mixed reviews of, but I had to get something after the commotion I caused upon my entrance (Oh, wow, I had no idea this store was here!) and I wanted to get some nonfiction, so that was my option.
Which doesn’t mean this has to stand. Non-Genre readers of Tuscaloosa! Sell your bags of used paperbacks here!* In fact, as a sign by the Classics section printed from a dot-matrix printer read: In order to get Classics you must trade Classics. So clearly this lady’s itching to up her inventory.
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* I’d link that word here to the Book Nook’s Web site, but the Book Nook has not only no Web presence in the form of a site, but also no Web presence in the form of even like a superpages.com listing, and as such I couldn’t find it on Bing maps or anything. So if yer at Oz Music, leave through the front doors and walk west until you run into the Book Nook. You’ll find the Book Nook there.