I'm Not Going To Let The Fact That I Forgot The Incredibly Clever Title For This Blog Entry Stop Me From Writing It

What's really annoying is I came up with that incredibly clever title not once but twice. And both times I forgot it.

But it sure was incredibly clever.

I know the incredibly clever title had the work Book in it because this entry is about books. Or book to be a tad more accurate, that book being Life As We Knew It.

The books part comes from the fact that yesterday, armed with a 40% off coupon, I went to the Borders bookstore at the mall to go shopping for (you guessed it) a book. It's not like I don't already own a fair number of books, some of which I actually intend to read someday. But I have a trip to Texas coming soon, and I'm in a state of low level terror that I won't have enough to read on the flights there and back and in the evenings in my hotel room. So I'm accumulating as much travel reading (i.e. novels) as I can find.

While I was deciding between a paperback novel and a non-fiction hardcover about Edwin and John Wilkes Booth (I opted for the novel), I noticed Borders had a display of books in the front of the store, that said if you bought this book, you could buy a second one at 50% off. There were a number of books with that enticing sticker, and one of them was LAWKI. Another was The Book Thief, so LAWKI was in good company.

I couldn't figure out then, and frankly still don't know, if this is a good thing or an insult (not that I can imagine Borders insulting The Book Thief). Did the sticker indicate that Borders thought the only way to get people to buy LAWKI was to entice them to buy something else at a highly discounted price? Did they have so many extra copies of LAWKI that they put the stickers on to get rid of them?

Or did they pick LAWKI because it's so irresistible they knew it would inspire people to buy, buy, buy.

Ultimately, I suppose, it doesn't matter. A copy bought is a copy sold, and a copy sold is 50 cents give or take in my wallet. Two of those 50 cents adds up to a dollar (minus the 15 cents my agent takes before I ever see it). And there's a lot I can buy with that 85 cents. Don't ask me what, since offhand I can't think of anything, but maybe there's something of interest in the Dollar Minus Fifteen Cents Store.

(Speaking of shopping, I still haven't ordered my copy of Cuban Rebel Girls/Untamed Women. I keep going over to the website and they keep saying it's coming soon and they don't allow preorders.)

Back to Life As We Knew It (the book that allows me to afford my as yet unordered copy of Cuban Rebel Girls/Untamed Women). You know how much Google loves me. They worry so much that I'll feel lonely unless my mailbox is full that they send me email alerts about places that mention me. Lately, most of the alerts are about eBay listings of my books, which aren't all that exciting (like not at all) to me, but I can hardly blame Google for its excessive enthusiasm.

The other day though, they emailed me the following:

Apocalyptic Teaching
Education Week News
My favorite, however, is Susan Beth Pfeffer's Life As We Knew It, a tale of a fifteen year old girl and her family after a meteor knocks the moon out of ...

I scurried over to Education Week News to read the rest, but they wouldn't let me because I didn't have a subscription. Well, that wasn't going to stop me, especially after I saw there was a way of registering without paying money. So I registered, using my real name and everything (under what was my professional connection with teaching, I put Other, always a useful option). I'm glad I did, because here was the complete quote:

My favorite, however, is Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life As We Knew It, a tale of a fifteen year old girl and her family after a meteor knocks the moon out of orbit. Not only is it more feasible than a world-wide zombie attack, it also deals with themes of growing up, examining what we value, bravery and courage—all of which our kids can use in strong doses in these tumultuous days.

I'd give you a link but you wouldn't be able to read the article if I did. So I'll let you know that Dina Strasser wrote the article and I'm very glad she did. It makes me very happy to think of all the teachers and educators and others hearing about my book.

Now if they scurry over to my Borders bookstore, they can buy LAWKI, sticker and all, and make me 42.5 cents richer. And two of those purchases might be just enough money for me to buy a title for this blog entry at the Cheap But Incredibly Clever Blog Title Store!