Casey’s Literary Rants

Casey Literary RantsIn which I rant about the passing of Borders

To be honest, I had absolutely no idea what I was going to write for this rant. Everything I tried seemed to just fizzle out after a few sentences. But then it hit me – this is Borders’ last week before vanishing into the mists of our memories. How can I not write a rant on it?! I’ve had good times, fun times and surprisingly awful times at Borders.

I’ve always thought that people preferred remembering the happy moments in life because, well, they’re happy. Turns out I’m wrong. I was told by both my psychology and mythology professors that people tend to focus more on the bad than the good. Weird, isn’t it? But like I said before, I remember both good and bad times at Borders. So I’m going to very quickly gloss over the bad then excessively exaggerate the good memories to make up for the bad.

You know how everyone has that one break up you really wish you could do over? Either because you realized too late that you still love the other person or you wish you had told him he was an egocentric jerk instead of begging him to stay? Well, my break up regret is neither of those. The relationship was over. It wasn’t meant to be. I just wish I hadn’t done it at Borders.

The first time I ever watched Megamind (one of the best children’s movies ever, in my humble opinion) I was sitting in a back corner of Borders with a guy who had the potential to be more than just a friend. It was one of our best non-date dates. We have a few other memories at Borders but that was the best because Megamind is one seriously awesome movie. (That non-relationship didn’t turn into anything, in case you were wondering. No matter how much I loved Borders, it wasn’t the place for me to find true love.)

In a non-related Borders memory, I almost had my first kiss in a library. It would have been EPIC. I mean, really, do you realize how perfect that would have been for me? I love libraries and to have my first kiss there…Unfortunately it didn’t happen. That guy turned out to be a jerk too. Sigh.

So now that we’re all done with my blah memories let’s go onto the amazing memories! My all-time favorite memory at Borders happened a few years ago. A couple of friends and I spent an entire afternoon at Borders. Just wandering around, picking out books to read for each other, and flirting with a cute guy who worked in the cafe part of the store. After several hours of that, our stomachs growled at us, demanding we eat something more than muffins.

So we left, climbed over the chain-link fence that separated Borders from the little strip mall next door and went into Hungry Howie’s (a really cheap pizza place, for those of you who don’t know) and split a large, greasy, cheesy pizza. Someone gave us a 2-liter Diet Pepsi, which none of us actually wanted. So before we went back to Borders, we ran into a hobo and gave the Diet Pepsi to him. Yay for good deeds! We went back to Borders and stayed until closing. (We actually did that several times, but we never saw the hobo again.)

I really do have so many other amazing memories from Borders that if I detailed each and every one here in this rant we’d be here for probably a few years. I would just walk through the doors and feel like I was walking into a second home. Every time I went, I would always run into a friend or someone I hadn’t seen in years. Sometimes I’d spend just as much time checking out and talking with the cashier about the books I was buying then or authors we both loved. I think it was a law – you have to be awesome to work at Borders.

One thing that has seriously been annoying me though, is when people say to me, “Oh if you had bought books before Borders went bankrupt then they wouldn’t be closing.”

Oh no you didn’t. (Imagine me being all sassy and snapping my fingers while drawing an imaginary Z with said snapping fingers.) I buy books all the time. Well, I don’t buy every book I want to read (I work at a library where I can get lots of books for free) but I do spend a vast (and I mean VAST) majority of my money on books. However, if I bought every single book that I want to read/have read then my debt would rival that of America’s. In other words, trillions upon trillion of dollars. (I don’t think any bank would give me that much money to buy books, do you?) So while, no, I don’t always buy books, I would bet my personalized signed copy of The Stone Prince by Gena Showalter (aka the first signed book I ever won) that I have bought more books than those snotty-faced, “I-know-everything-and-it’s-all-your-fault” people ever hope to read.

So here’s to you Borders! We’ve had our ups and downs (well, I had some downs inside of you) but it’s so depressing to see you go. I’ll try to visit you once more, before the end, but know that you will always have a special place in my heart.

JBlack-Devil InsideP.S. A couple of weeks ago, after my rant about diversity, a few of us got into this discussion about Jenna Black’s Morgan Kingsley series. I really LOVE this series, and all that talking about it made me desperately want to reread the entire series. So after a little bit of talking and pondering with Jackie, who wants to reread the series, we came up with this totally awesome idea: once we’ve all had ample time to reread this awesome series, I am going to rant about it, then that Sunday, Jackie and Larissa are going to have a Bookish Escape about Morgan and her gang! Isn’t that awesome?! (The answer is obviously, “Yes Casey! It’s so awesome I am literally bouncing in my seat in excitement! When is all this awesomeness going to take place?!”) All this awesomeness is taking place the first week of December! My rant will be posted on Wednesday, November 30 and then the BE will take place on Sunday, December 4. So that gives you just under 3 whole months to read the entire Morgan Kingsley series.

Because we are going to be discussing the ENTIRE series there will be spoilers, and trust me, you SO want to read the books first. So, if there is a Borders in your town, about to close down, run there and see if they have The Devil Inside, The Devil You Know, The Devil’s Due, Speak of the Devil or The Devil’s Playground by Jenna Black. Or you could buy them from Amazon. That works too. Or check your local library. They’re probably there too. Maybe you could borrow the books from a friend. I don’t care how you get them, READ THEM! You won’t regret it.

P.P.S. Even though I will never ever run out of rant ideas (I’ve made a list. It’s a really long list) I sometimes really don’t have any motivation to write something from my list (like this week). So, my loyal, lovely fans, if you ever have a topic you would like for me to rant about (a character, book, series, author, literary theme, genre, or anything else book-related) PLEASE feel free to LET ME KNOW. I am more than happy to rant about anything you want me to rant about. (Although, if it’s one book in particular, that may turn into a book review, unless I can find a way to relate it with something else.) Just remember, it has to be related to books unless I can somehow relate it to a book (So no rants on politics or my favorite zoo, but I can rant about writing. Or words. You know, I should write a rant on words. Because words are just so awesome!) Anyway, you can leave your ideas in the comments, or send them to me here on GoodReads or here on Twitter. I have no idea when I will be able to get to your rant, but I can promise that if you send me the idea, I WILL rant about it (and tell everyone the idea came from you). Sound good? Yes, yes it does.

About Casey 203 Articles
Casey is the founder of Heart Full of Ink, Director at Reading Until Dawn Con, and a full time cheese addict. She's been ranting and reviewing for Literary Escapism since 2010, and is part of the trio #3Bloggers1Series podcast. When she's not reading, looking for new books, or stalking authors online (waiting for more books), she can be found binge watching Netflix. But really, her life is all about DEM BOOKS!

3 Comments

  1. Reading Jenna Black’s Morgan Kingsley series.

    What a neat idea. I have owned The Devil Inside, The Devil You Know and The Devil’s Due for a long time. They got buried in my TBR bookcase.

    Will look forward to this – just need to get the other two.

  2. A pet peeve of mine – poorly proofread books. I hate finding grammatical, typographical or spelling erros in a book. It breaks my focus and I lose enjoyment in the story. I can understand a slip up now and then, but some of my favorite stories have been downgraded on my enjoyment scale due to proofreading errors. Oh yeah, proofreading should be done for continuity errors too. Like one chapter ends with her shirt coming off and then on the next page the shirt is taken off again. (That just happened this morning.)

  3. @Roger – I know what you mean about them getting buried in your TBR pile. I haven’t read Speak of the Devil or Devil’s Playground because they got buried in mine. :(

    @Debra – That annoys the crap out of me too!! Not only is there an editor for the grammatical and spelling errors but there is a copy editor who is supposed to read the entire story to make sure everything flows and that there aren’t any taking off the shirt twice occurances. So you think SOMEONE would have caught those errors before the book was published. I kind of (barely) already ranted about this in <a href="http://www.literaryescapism.com/19933/caseys-literary-rants-3"my rant on details but I am so going to do another rant on editing.

    Another P.S. for my rant: Today was the last day my Borders store was open and I was the LAST PERSON inside before they locked the doors to the public. *sniffle* But you can so bet that when I’m old and on my death bed I will be telling anyone close by that I was the last person there! Me! (If the person or persons nearby have no idea what a bookstore is then I so won’t be going into the afterlife peacefully. I’ll be ranting and raving about how amazing they were back in the good old days and young children today have no idea how good it used to be…)

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