Reid About It

My pup and I are regular visitors to Barnes & Noble. She's a great reader, so we normally cap off our evenings out by dropping by, reading a few hundred dollars worth of books, drinking a small bottle of juice from the cafe that costs six bucks, and generally having a grand old literary time.

As I came in through the front door, the first thing to catch my eye was the giant display of half-off calendars.

This officially marks the end of the holiday season for me. Christmas starts when Santa Claus begins showing up on Coca-Cola bottles, and ends when the New Year calendars go on sale.
Then, I went on to the games section. I'm not sure why Barnes & Noble has a game section. Games are something you normally play at parties, and books don't usually go over well at gatherings. You don't invite everybody over to all gather in the living room to break up into teams and read "Moby Dick."

Anyway, they now have a Beatles version of "Monopoly." I counted more than a dozen different versions of Monopoly for sale including NFL, Family Guy, James Bond, and Pokemon editions. Does anyone really need more than one kind of Monopoly set? Hell, has anyone actually ever seen a game of Monopoly end in any way other than with a bored-out-of-your-mind surrender? I've played probably two dozen games of Monopoly in my life, and technically, most of those games are still going on.
Trivial Pursuit now comes in "Easy, Medium, or Hard" questions. I guess that was the problem, sales were down because they just weren't hitting that 24-49 dumb guy demographic. Nothing like being able to play a hotly-contested game of Trivial Pursuit against a total simpleton. You're naming the capitol of Zimbabwe, and he's keeping up by correctly identifying "eggs" as where chickens come from. Sounds like a blast.
Twilight books? Yeah, I think we've got a few of those over here somewhere.
Everybody loved this "Marley & Me" book, and now loves this movie. I have absolutely no desire to read it, see it, or be told about it.

Yes, dogs are good. They make us feel good. They love us, and then at the end of the book, they die and we all cry. I get it.

I'm fully aware that if I read this book, I will cry regardless of the literary content. As a man, I haven't been allowed by society to cry since the 1980 Winter Olympics. I will abstain.

On a table full of "Dummies" books, I spotted this timely tome entitled "Investing in an Uncertain Economy."

TIP ONE: Don't buy investment books at Barnes & Noble. One Dummies book isn't going to make you into the next Suze Orman. Making financial decisions based on a Dummies book is like planning wartime strategy based on a game of "Risk."

They also have a large section of Books on CD. This is something I just don't understand. I get the concept of having a book on tape or CD for a specific purpose, such as taking a long trip. They're great to listen to in a car or plane. However, who wants to keep these things around forever? I see books on CD as a perfect rental item.

A bookshelf full of books means you enjoyed them, and might refer to them again at some later date. A bookshelf full of CDs of books says you were too busy to read them the first time, and if you wanted to look something up, you'd have to go back and listen to 8+ hours of narration.
Finally, there were several tables and displays full of diet and exercise books, apparently trying to cash in on everyone's new year's resolutions before they all fall by the wayside. I can't help but think that coming to the conclusion that I'm a great big, fat, lazy load sometime in the middle of July would be a lot cheaper than making the break on January first.

I also think a great idea for a diet journal like this one would be to have a secret page halfway through a Winter month with a twenty dollar bill attached to it. You make it that far, you can treat yourself to ice cream.