another trip to Borders, books found, and an idea

First of all, before I forget:
Those of you interested in the Borders liquidation might want to check out The Book Frog, who has been posting about her experience living through it. She's also gearing up to open an indy bookstore so her blog is very interesting reading.

We decided to run over to Borders on Thursday after work since the discounts had gone up (on Wednesday?) to 25-50%. Well, I didn't really want to go, but Russell did and I'd much rather go on a Thursday evening than on a busy weekend day. This time I actually prepared for the trip. I went over to my Amazon wishlist and made note of the current Amazon prices for some of the books on it.

Russell ended up buying two books -
1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West by Roger Crowley from the history section. It was only 25% off, but the history section in our Borders was already decimated.
The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates by Ralph Ketcham at 40% off since it was housed in the politics section.

I didn't get anything. The prices on the knitting books (30% off) were still not as low as on Amazon. The general fiction/literature section was 30%, but again the prices on the majority of the books that were in stock were not competitive. YA books were only at 25% off (as were the genre fiction sections except romance, which was 40% off). At one point I had three books in my hands. Two were from my wishlist, while the third was one that just jumped off the shelf at me.

I put back the newly discovered book--The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma--first as it was hardcover with a high list price in addition to being an admittedly intriguing unknown entity. When we got home I looked it up. I'm happy I didn't get it at only 30% though since Amazon has it for 38% off.

The wishlist books--Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde (which I reviewed in February after listening to an e-audio version from the library) and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender (which is a personally much-anticipated book club section for October)--were both general fiction trade paperbacks and were ever-so-slightly cheaper at Borders than on Amazon. I might have bought these two, but the longer I stayed in the store the more I felt irritated with the shopping experience (it was a bit zooy as they were closing early for inventory) and unable to justify spending the money given that there were more than one copy of each (2 of the one, 3 of the other) still in stock.

Also, I finished reading the book I bought during our first Borders liquidation trip (see post), The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross. I have to admit that I was disappointed in it. Not enough romance for a book published by Harlequin. Two different love triangles, but if I remember correctly only one kiss in the entire book. If there had been enough romance I might have been able to overlook the other problems I had with the book (two love triangles, far too much in the way of anachronism, the author always using the same adjective to refer to one of the character's hair, how the author skipped over the big action, etc).

I know many people are upset about the downfall of Borders and worried that their book-buying options will be limited. Yesterday as Russell and I were planning to visit a local used book shop (to check it out and see if we could pawn some of our weeded books off on them), an idea occurred to me. Russell and I will make an effort to visit local (and not-so-local) bookstores and then feature them on the blog. Expect to see the first of these features in the next week.