Words Seem Out Of Place

Sometimes you come up with a title and you love it so much you just have to write something to accompany that title. This is one of those times. After writing about it once before , I realized I still had more to say about my experiences in retail bookstore hell back in the day (a.k.a the 1990s). I figured I'd simply turn this post into a sequel of sorts to the original. I've seen far too many bad movies in my life. Throw all of that together in a blender and here we are: Tales from the Bookstore 2: Electric Bookaloo . I'm sure what you're about to read won't be anywhere near as entertaining as that title. I don't care. (If you're of a certain age, you probably saw Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo. Since then, any time you see a movie sequel called " [Insert Title Here] 2 " you reflexively want to add " Electric Boogaloo " after it. That is a scientific fact.) A Motley Crew We were a ragtag group of nerds and geeks at my Waldenboo...

While sifting through my books recently, and because it's the most wonderful time of year  (please read that with the dripping sarcasm with which it was intended) I was reminded of my time working at a bookstore, during my college years. It was a Waldenbooks—remember those, kids? A dinosaur, now extinct, Waldenbooks was the bookstore of choice for most Americans in the 1980s and into the early to mid 1990s, with one located in nearly every decently populated town across the country. Most were in malls, like the one where I worked. At some point in the '90s, the superstores, and then Amazon, began dominating the market, and eventually the chain was liquidated. Wikipedia tells me it was in 2011, which blows my mind! I thought for sure they'd disappeared completely somewhere around 10-15 years ago. But my time at Waldenbooks in the 90s was during their heyday, when mall shoppers flocked there like a politician to a campaign fundraiser. I spent countless hours working in o...