No, I'm not done complaining

I saw the movie A Single Man this evening. More on that in a moment.

Before the movie, we went to the Borders nearby. Walking in there, it was like I walked into the middle of a disaster scene. Now that's probably melodramatic and incredibly insensitive, but I'm having trouble forming coherent thoughts.

Seeing the 20% off signs everywhere brought up a lovely thrill, then the horror hit me. The signs were everywhere and though you wouldn't see it if you were only looking at the people, the store was in complete chaos. Entire shelves empty, books moved to completely different sections of the store... It was like going to the grocery store when they're predicting a blizzard and suddenly you have to fight for bread and milk. Only it was so much more sad than that.

I love the old mom and pop, independent book stores, but Borders really was an institution. I still have incredibly mixed feelings about their closing. (Though while cruising the half-empty shelves, I realized that the closest book store will soon be much farther away. Given the lack of air conditioning in my car, my feelings leaned slightly more toward distraught about the end of the Borders era)

On the bright side, I got a copy of Shakespeare's sonnets, Mansfield Park, and...

wait for it...

Jane Eyre THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

I'm probably way more excited about this than I should be. I haven't read JE in a while and I've been meaning to, but now I can read it with pictures!

There were so many other books that I wanted, but I'm still jobless and thus in the poor-house. Also, they're still hovering at 20% for fiction, so I might try again when they get closer to shutting the doors and just need to get everything off the shelves.

So. The movie.

It was unbelievably sad, but also incredibly poignant and it truly was great. It's based on a book of the same name, so I unwittingly broke my own rule once again, but I would like to read it now. Since it was showing at AFI and they love doing things like that, they had a Q&A with two mental health professionals afterward, and, of course there's always one whackadoodle who, given a microphone and opportunity, will talk just to hear their own voice. Thankfully, the moderator handled it very well and we were spared what could have been a very long, uncomfortable tirade. Ah, the first amendment. I love it, but sometimes.... well. Yeah.

I've been telling myself that I want to write a post about The Help and the upcoming movie, but this has been a long-ish post, so maybe tomorrow.