The Written Word at its Finest

Every time I enter a bookstore I usually get the same inviting feeling, like I should spend more time there. Maybe it’s the ambiance. It’s possible all the bookstore owners have figured out the right kind of lighting to use or the fact that so many of them house cafes that emit pleasant aromas throughout the building. I guess it could be that I’m naturally drawn to all the reading material, but I’m not sold on this notion since most of the time I’d rather watch an old movie on cable that I’ve seen a dozen times than pick up a book.

It’s becoming harder and harder to figure out the reason because lately whenever I walk into a bookstore, there’s nothing but crap sitting on the shelves. Maybe that’s why so many of them have cafes with pleasant-smelling brews and desserts – to cover up the smell of crap. But there’s no hiding the sight of it. In fact, it’s the covers of a lot of books that give them away.

This is where the fiction section has a decided advantage in keeping readers in its aisles because novels and other works of fiction are harder to, pardon the cliché, judge by their covers. But the poor non-fiction sections don’t stand a chance. Their titles practically scream, “Get out of here! Save yourself!” Before long, your eyes feel like they’ve been staring at the sun.

Take the Business/Management section, which is the first one I happened to stumble across at Barnes & Noble earlier this week. Here you’ll see that besides dominating the real-estate market and flooding the airwaves, Donald Trump is also an accomplished author. His latest is called (and I’m not making this up) Think Big and Kick Ass. Only time will tell if his follow-up works – If You Think I’m Obnoxious on TV, Try This Hard-Bound Bowel Movement, and If You See Rosie O’Donnell on the Street, Spit on Her For Me – will be as successful.

This section also contained all sorts of titles that promised 7, 9 or 12 steps to achieving success, getting rich, getting ahead, getting the corner office or avoiding the corner office and offices altogether. Depending on my level of impatience, I could have also learned how to get the job I want in either 30 days or 48 days. These books mean well, but they all have the same vague, formulaic advice, like “Follow Your Dreams,” or “Be True to Yourself,” or “Don’t Stab Your Boss.”

These quick-fix Road to Success-type books look more and more like the diet mega-sellers that say you can lose a significant amount of weight in 30, 21 or even 10 days. But all of these have been out for so long, they’ll no doubt soon be replaced with Lose 20 Pounds in One Hour, Lose 50 Pounds in 15 Minutes, and the limb-severing Lose 100 Pounds in 29 Seconds!

Oddly enough, despite the popular movement of using minimalist approaches to achieving what you want, I saw a self-help book near the front of the store titled 100 Ways to Simplify Your Life. A hundred?! Call me crazy, but shouldn’t simplifying your life BE simple? You’re telling me that the road to simplicity involves either memorizing 100 tips to incorporate into my life or, more likely, writing down all these tips and placing them strategically around my home, my car, my office, my hands, arms and forehead so that I look at them everyday, ensuring that I’ll have far more clutter filling up my mind and my personal space than what I had before? If this book really wants to help you simplify your life, its first tip should be: Don’t read this book.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I left this section of the bookstore and stumbled into the area providing the perfect antidote – politics. I knew that politically-motivated publications wouldn’t pollute my senses with inflammatory accusations and authors’ personal agendas. My optimism soon wilted, however, when I saw wall-to-wall books with titles like Today’s Godless, Moraless, Lawless, Senseless, Gutless and Topless Democratic Party and Beware: Republicans Will Sneak Into Your Home and Eat Your Children.

Sigh.

I wondered if the sports section would renew my faith. If nothing else, it opened my eyes. For instance, did you know Kurt Angle has written a book? I bet you didn’t. You know why I’m betting you didn’t know that? Because if you’re anything like me, when you think of great literary writers you don’t typically think of professional wrestlers. Well, you better start. Not only does the abrasive Mr. Angle have a book, so do many of his contemporaries – Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Triple H and Mick Foley, who, judging by his output, must have spent at least as much time writing as he did wrestling.

I glanced at my watch and thought I better head home. It was getting to be the prime-time hours for television viewing. Surely TeenWolf would be on some channel.