a good book and a dead book.

I finished up another book by Per Petterson last night. In the Wake was the first of Petterson's novels to be published in the US, though I managed to miss out on it until he'd had two more released here. This one was just as well written as Out Stealing Horses (my favorite book ever, I think) and To Siberia, but still wasn't quite as good. I think it suffered because my reading of it was so fragmented, reading 20 to 40 pages then not being able to pick it up again for another week or so...and it's only 202 pages long. Petterson's fluid writing is simply fantastic though and that was still easy to see. I get completely caught up in it.

After I added In the Wake to my LibraryThing library, I looked at the list of recommendations they've assembled based on my entire library. One of the suggested books on the list was Wendy McClure's weight loss memoir I'm Not the New Me. I remember this book very vividly now, but I had totally forgotten about it. We had it when I worked at Dutton's and I remember it had these awesomely terrible Weight Watchers recipe cards from the 70's with commentary about how awful they are. Those are actually online here at Wendy McClure's website. Anyway, I read the title and instantly remembered the book and thought, "Oh, I have to get that for the store!" I was so sad when I looked it up and found out it has gone out of print! It was just published in 2005 and it's already dead. And I never bought it! Poor little book. It's easy to find a used one online, but I don't really need it...and I feel stupid buying a book elsewhere when I own a bookstore.