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You should be able to walk into a store on Tuesday and pick it up. It's highly anticipated, but it's no Harry Potter or Twilight yet. (Plus, bookstores are hurting enough that they probably can't afford to pay employees to work past midnight...)
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# ? Jul 10, 2011 17:51 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 06:21 |
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McLarenF1 posted:I heard in another thread someone say that book releases are not like video games or movie releases and they don't always stick to a certain date, and some sellers will release them early. Is that true? Do I need to pre-order my copy, or should I just walk in? I've never tried to get a book on release day before. I'd love to get the book at midnight, but their don't seem to be any midnight releases in the northern D.C suburbs. Yes, books are often on bookshop shelves (or delivered) before the official release date. The Harry Potter books' co-ordinated worldwide releases are as far as I know unique, and the publishers went to huge lengths to make the midnight release idea work - up to the level of considering prosecuting people for buying them early. Try the author's/publisher's website/blog if you want to know about release parties. Don't worry about not being able to buy the book - DC isn't the middle of nowhere, you don't have to worry about two other fans buying the only two copies for miles. You might find that some places only have it in hardback, though. If you're desperate to get it as quickly as possible, then preorder it and it might arrive a few days early.
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# ? Jul 10, 2011 17:56 |
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Chamberk posted:You should be able to walk into a store on Tuesday and pick it up. It's highly anticipated, but it's no Harry Potter or Twilight yet. I can see maybe a midnight release for book 6 and 7 though. Look at Harry Potter - the first 3 books just arrived like any other book; by the time the 4th book came out the fanbase was growing and its release was newsworthy. Then between the 4th and 5th, the movie adaptations began and the 5th book was the first real worldwide-mayhem release. With the TV show just started the ADWD release should be pretty big but by the time the 6th book rolls around we will (hopefully) have had quite a few seasons of a show that will have exploded into the mainstream with DVD sales. Also, at the moment all the new fans will still be reading through the first few books. But when the 6th book comes out the TV-show-fans will have been fans for years and there will be a much bigger audience clamouring for the release. I'm gonna predict book 6 (coming in 2019 most likely) will be a pretty big launch with midnight releases all over the world.
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# ? Jul 12, 2011 08:39 |
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My local 24-hour Walmart sometimes starts stocking new releases at about 11:30 PM the night before, even if it's not a major "midnight release" deal. I often stop by on my way home from work (2nd shift) if there's something I've been waiting for. Doesn't happen 100% of the time, it just depends when their night stockers get around to the boxes of books. But if you have any 24-hour stores nearby, it might not hurt to check. Or just wait until morning. :edit: Some publishers are apparently really lax about enforcing release dates so you'll see books out a few days early. But with a major author or a highly-anticipated release it gets less likely.
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# ? Jul 12, 2011 09:41 |
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I've just started reading The Belgariad by David Eddings, and I'm at Chapter 20 of the first book. There was something in the prologue which I really hope my mind is misinterpreting (section in bold). There's this sorcerer called Belgareth, and his wife died giving birth to his two daughters, Beldaran and Polgara. He sends Beldaran away to become the wife and mother of an important lineage, so he and his other daughter are left alone. quote:In the deep silence of his soul, Belgareth was tempted to choose Polgara. But knowing the burden which lay upon the Rivan King, he sent Beldaran instead, and wept when she was gone. Polgara wept also, long and bitterly, knowing that her sister must fade and die. In time, however, they comforted each other and came at last to know each other. I really hope there's an innocent meaning to that. He didn't really gently caress his own daughter, did he?
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# ? Jul 12, 2011 20:45 |
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I really hope there's an innocent meaning to that. He didn't really gently caress his own daughter, did he? Crap as Eddings is, he's not the gurm or Terry Goodkind so no incest.
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# ? Jul 12, 2011 21:36 |
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:I've just started reading The Belgariad by David Eddings, and I'm at Chapter 20 of the first book. There was something in the prologue which I really hope my mind is misinterpreting (section in bold). Edit (Wife Spoilers for a later series than Belgariad, this happens in the Mallorean series IIRC): Oh yeah I just remembered his wife didn't die, she just went cruising off on her own or something, he just thought she had. She comes back much, much later in the stories to interact with Garion, and then Belgarath learns she is still alive and freaks out a bit and there is some funny stuff involving the relationship between Belgarath and his wife, I think. It's been close to two decades since I read them, but yeah you're a little hung up on imagining incest. "Knowing" someone doesn't actually usually refer to bumping uglies. Besides, Polgara would have kicked the poo poo out of Belgarath if he tried any Bad Touch on her, she don't take poo poo from nobody. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Jul 12, 2011 |
# ? Jul 12, 2011 23:21 |
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Okay, good. Just making sure. It just seemed like a strange phrase to me.
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# ? Jul 12, 2011 23:32 |
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This is a man who burnt down his garage by lighting a puddle on fire to see if it was gas. He did not do "subtle". Trust me, no incest.
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# ? Jul 13, 2011 02:12 |
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Will Barnes & Noble employees get upset if I spend a few hours sitting in reading a book? I mean, they expect people to buy the books there, not read the entire things and leave. I'm too cheap to buy from a place that gives me too many options.
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# ? Jul 13, 2011 16:04 |
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Imapanda posted:Will Barnes & Noble employees get upset if I spend a few hours sitting in reading a book?
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# ? Jul 13, 2011 16:44 |
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Imapanda posted:Will Barnes & Noble employees get upset if I spend a few hours sitting in reading a book? Besides, bookstore employees don't work on commission, they're just killing time until they go home. They don't really care about sales, and dread big releases like Harry Potter, and Christmas-time etc, which bring in hordes of unwashed idiots and rude old people and paranoid whackjobs who want to tell them about the Celestine Prophecy or Kabbalah or something. If you are worried about being a pain in the rear end camping out, just don't mess up the merchandise so nobody else might want to potentially buy it, and if you really feel hung up about leaving a pile of books for someone to deal with, you could bring it to the info kiosk and tell them you're finished looking through them. Re-shelving is one of those "busy work" tasks that employees don't tend to mind doing, because it keeps you from being given less pleasant tasks, and it also makes your presence in the store known - nobody with a cartload of books minds a customer stopping them with a question (although some customers are averse to bugging people who're "working", which is why there is also the info kiosk.) Unless you're some obviously mentally deranged person or a smelly homeless person (these would chase away potential customers,) nobody cares if you camp out all day long. Restocking magazines in a PITA though, because there's never anything resembling an organized system, and they tend to shift around so often that most employees can't quickly+easily put them back on the stand in the correct spot. Books though, the employees usually would rather you leave it for them to do, unless you actually do it diligently.. Because it makes their job harder when they get a phone call and have to check if a book is in stock and it's been mis-shelved - policy on people calling to check on books is "never tell them you have a copy until you have it physically in your hand," so it can lead to some fumbling while your potential customer is getting annoyed at being on hold. Heh, that was a lot of about bookstores. But it was a nice job when I had it, and B&N is probably one of the better chain stores to work for. People tend to be more polite in a B&N than in a Borders - I've never seen a person shouting across the floor to a friend in a B&N, but can't say the same for a Waldenbooks or Borders, and it's hard to be an rear end in a top hat to someone who's dressed in business casual, compared to a dude in Birkenstocks and a tie-dye shirt, who you can barely tell if they're an employee or just some random hippy rummaging through a shelf with an armload of books. Edit: one fun little thing about people leaving piles of books next to the chairs, is that you can often find hidden gems you never had heard about, or you get to see just what kind of crazy that person was who hung out in that chair for 3 hours, reading about power crystals and kama sutra techniques. coyo7e fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Jul 13, 2011 |
# ? Jul 13, 2011 19:42 |
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I used to go to Barnes & Noble to read some books I wanted to pick up, and choose the one I felt I needed the most. I would usually sit behind the romance section because it was a little nook with tables hidden away from the main thoroughfare. Often, a large, older woman with hair like a grey, wispy shower cap and wearing a paisley dress that fit her girthy form a little too tightly would come lumbering over to the romance section from a table across from me, holding what looked like receipt tape, and eyeing various titles in the romance section, carefully checking off items on her long lists. She would come back to her table, which was otherwise empty except for a large Polar Pop mug, with these huge armfulls of romance paperbacks and stack them up until she evidently had what she needed before lumbering away, out of sight. I like to imagine she just placed them all around the store like she was part of a conspiracy, and then left the store with nothing but her list and her giant Polar Pop mug. I saw her consistently for about six months, but I haven't been back to B&N recently.
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# ? Jul 13, 2011 20:25 |
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She's probably still going there regularly. The women who read romance novels read them religiously. I worked as a caregiver for a bedridden elderly woman (her husband had been a career Marine so she spent basically her entire life hanging out at home chain smoking and reading romance novels and W.E.B. Griffith novels and the occasional pulp western, while waiting for her husband to return from tours, until she got cancer from the smoking ) who listened to romance books on tape because she could no longer hold up the paperbacks - she had hundreds, maybe THOUSANDS of romance novels carefully arranged on shelves in their spare bedroom. Every single romance novel is exactly the same. The people who read them totally understand this, and read them anyway, it seems to be some sort of "security blanket" of predictability. Flashing eyes, stormy and smoky gazes, heaving bosoms, and rippling muscles, while the protagonist agonizes over whether or not to sex up the man in question (who she almost always hates on and treats like poo poo) - and invariably has 2 (possibly 3) sex scenes through the course of the book, the first and second followed by a great deal of hand-wringing and navel-gazing, and the final "climactic" love scene where they have both decided that they're utterly in love and will live happily ever after together. Apparently the romance book industry is one of the most profitable and easiest niches to be successful in, I heard a This American Life episode on how they are all basically a big happy helpful family who help out new authors and give each other tips.
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# ? Jul 13, 2011 20:38 |
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As a bookstore shopper, I've definitely done the "read part of a book in the store" thing, but the downside of that is some folks aren't very careful with the books. There's nothing more annoying than tracking down the book I came in to buy only to find that the one copy in the store has bent pages, a broken spine, or a torn dust jacket. This has happened so often at the BN near me that I only go there when I have some other reason to be at that shopping center, or when I want something new and popular that's likely to have a lot of copies to choose from. Otherwise I make the trip over to the farther away Borders or just order online.
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# ? Jul 13, 2011 20:41 |
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The last book I picked up at Borders wound up having the juciest brown goo splat right in the middle where someone had clapped it shut on a huge spider. At least with library books I'm kind of expecting dogears and fecal matter from page to page...that just caught me off guard.
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# ? Jul 14, 2011 07:27 |
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I was actually disappointed with my Kindle delivery of Dance with Dragons. Not only did it arrive hours after midnight on release day, but I had to redownload it because it was freezing my Kindle AND Amazon didn't charge me for the book the day I preordered it as I thought, but the DAY the book was delivered, so there was $15 out of my bank account that I had to scramble to figure out what happened. Kind of wish I had just drove to Walmart and bought the fat hardcover.
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# ? Jul 14, 2011 22:38 |
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Well, my copy of Crime and Punishment that I bought new off Amazon has what looks like a boot print on it, so you're hosed no matter what you do.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 22:01 |
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Conduit for Sale! posted:Well, my copy of Crime and Punishment that I bought new off Amazon has what looks like a boot print on it, so you're hosed no matter what you do.
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 03:10 |
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I'm putting most of MY BOOKS into storage, most likely for 1-2 years while I'm overseas. The idea being that once I'm done in Japan and have figured out where I'm going to settle down more permanently, I'll throw them and some other stuff into a moving truck (or shipping container) and have it sent to wherever it is I'm finally putting down roots. I've got them off the shelves and am packing them into empty liquor boxes, which are loving awesome for this purpose (both in dimensions and durability, plus free). I'm *hoping* my parents will continue to have a ton of space in their climate-controlled empty nest in Florida, but there's a possibility they'll be moving into a smaller condo while I'm away, and the boxes might go into a regular storage unit at that point. What is the best way to keep them from getting lovely? Should I buy one of those big ol' rolls of Saran wrap and seal them up, or would that potentially create its own problem? Nothing is particularly valuable, but it'd be a few hundred dollars to buy them again even second hand, and some of them have some sentimental value. bengraven posted:I was actually disappointed with my Kindle delivery of Dance with Dragons. Not only did it arrive hours after midnight on release day, but I had to redownload it because it was freezing my Kindle AND Amazon didn't charge me for the book the day I preordered it as I thought, but the DAY the book was delivered, so there was $15 out of my bank account that I had to scramble to figure out what happened. It was the first book I bought on my Kindle (normally use it for foreign language newspapers and blocks of text from the internet) because I'm moving overseas and space/weight is at a premium. I'll probably scoop up a used hardback on Half for a few bucks next time I'm back in the USA though.
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 17:30 |
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I've never successfully stored books, but probably invest in some anti-insect stuff, and some desiccants, especially if they'll be in Florida..? My folks stored a bunch of my books in my dad's storage unit in OR without telling me they moved them out of my old room while I was in college, and I came back to hundreds of mildewy, warped paperbacks and hardcovers that had been chewed on by insects and mice.
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 18:55 |
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This is an under-appreciated thread over in GBS. Thought you guys might want to read it before it ends. There is a ton of great artwork and audio recordings in it as well.No Real Pattern posted:Remember those weird self-published books about a naughty horse? Ever wonder what would happen if someone with approximately that level of writing ability wrote a full length work of fiction about street racing? Well, worry no more, because it's time to read: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3417942
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# ? Jul 18, 2011 20:01 |
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I saw on TV Borders was going out of business. You guys think they will just firesale all of their books?
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# ? Jul 19, 2011 03:45 |
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Yup. They say that closing sales are starting this Friday.
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# ? Jul 19, 2011 05:31 |
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Wait wait, I knew some of the stores had already closed, is this saying that now EVERY store is guaranteed to be closing nationwide? Because oh god yes the sales
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# ? Jul 19, 2011 08:24 |
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Yup - every single one.
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# ? Jul 19, 2011 14:53 |
Pompous Rhombus posted:I'm putting most of MY BOOKS into storage, most likely for 1-2 years while I'm overseas. The idea being that once I'm done in Japan and have figured out where I'm going to settle down more permanently, I'll throw them and some other stuff into a moving truck (or shipping container) and have it sent to wherever it is I'm finally putting down roots. I've got them off the shelves and am packing them into empty liquor boxes, which are loving awesome for this purpose (both in dimensions and durability, plus free). So long as you can keep them in a climate-controlled space, you should be fine just boxing them up (though it couldn't hurt to have some pest control measures). But if your folks move and just toss the boxes into Joes Super Storage or something... Well, they're in Florida. Start saving up to rebuy all your books. Saran wrap might work, but I don't know. Actually you may want to look in to some of those vacuum bag things that you hook up to vacuum cleaner.
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# ? Jul 19, 2011 21:24 |
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I got a gorgeous uniquely illustrated and gilded copy of the Complete Shakespeare. It's old, though, and cover is starting to crumble, so I want to replace it. How much should I expect to pay for that?
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 00:09 |
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I hope Barnes & Noble doesn't close their stores too. I don't really like buying books from those types of stores but I do like going into them and reading if I don't feel like going home. They're usually have better air conditioning and comfier chairs than my local libraries. Plus no bums coming in to shower themselves in the bathroom and look at porn.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 02:15 |
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Conduit for Sale! posted:Plus no bums coming in to shower themselves in the bathroom and look at porn. Does this happen at your libraries?
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 02:17 |
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Does that not happen at yours? It even used to happen up here, back when we had a real library.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 02:41 |
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I worked in Fine Arts dept of college library when I was a student. And let me tell you.. people know where the photography photos with the nudes are. We kept the most popular behind the desk so it had to be asked for. There was an old security guard who would come and request a specific book, about once a week. It was just black & white female nudes.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 02:51 |
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penismightier posted:I got a gorgeous uniquely illustrated and gilded copy of the Complete Shakespeare. It's old, though, and cover is starting to crumble, so I want to replace it. How much should I expect to pay for that? If you want it done nicely, it'll be pricey and will likely depend on who's doing it. However, I would encourage you not to replace it if the book is a rare or particularly well regarded edition, as a new cover will depreciate the value. You might find someone willing to try a restoration, which could be even pricier. Of course if you want to actually read it and the thing is literally falling apart then you're in a bit of a catch-22. Mostly unrelated question: does it have marbled endpaper? I wish marbled endpaper was not a thing that books stopped having.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 03:29 |
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H.P. Shivcraft posted:If you want it done nicely, it'll be pricey and will likely depend on who's doing it. However, I would encourage you not to replace it if the book is a rare or particularly well regarded edition, as a new cover will depreciate the value. You might find someone willing to try a restoration, which could be even pricier. Of course if you want to actually read it and the thing is literally falling apart then you're in a bit of a catch-22. It's not particularly old, but in bad enough shape that if I read it cover to cover it'll split. I do want to read it. I can get myself a cheap beater copy of his plays, but that feels like cheating somehow. penismightier fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Jul 20, 2011 |
# ? Jul 20, 2011 04:19 |
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Mahlertov Cocktail posted:
I once saw a businessman jerking off whilst on his cellphone on the main street where I live. I have also seen a hobo jerking off behind a dumpster in the city centre. In other words, I'm not really that surprised when & where people jerk off. Ahhhh, my mind has been forever corrupted by people who can't resist their sexual urges.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 04:40 |
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Wasn't there a thread about good YA books? I can't seem to find it. I'm trying to figure out if I want to start reading the Discworld series or the Hunger Games trilogy. Are they both pretty light reads?
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# ? Jul 22, 2011 03:53 |
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spixxor posted:Wasn't there a thread about good YA books? I can't seem to find it. Both are relatively light in terms of being a quick read. Discworld is much lighter in terms of humor.
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# ? Jul 22, 2011 07:51 |
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wheatpuppy posted:Both are relatively light in terms of being a quick read. Discworld is much lighter in terms of humor. Although it can get serious at times just as well, usually when Pratchett is nearing the climax(the humour sometimes takes a backseat in such cases).
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# ? Jul 22, 2011 23:14 |
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According to my father the Borders closing "sale" is a joke. He was in the DVD section and was interested in buying the complete set of Deadwood. They had it marked down from $150 to $120, which isn't bad, except Amazon has it for $96 shipped.
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# ? Jul 24, 2011 04:19 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 06:21 |
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Yeah, almost everything is 10% off, which, with tax, doesn't even bring mass-market paperbacks very close to competitors' prices. I had a gift card, so I used that up but didn't buy anything apart from that.
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# ? Jul 24, 2011 04:25 |