As I've probably mentioned before, when I'm traveling I'll often stop in to the local library to see what's going on and to pick up a bookmark or two. Sometimes the library is really beautiful inside, sometimes there's a local history display. I'll skim through the local newspaper and check out the collections. You'd be surprised at how many libraries have really terrible weather and climate books from the 1970s still in the stacks. People, support your local library!
In the fiction section I'll look to see if they have any of the original editions of Dawn Powell's novels, and since I'm in the POWE's I'll also look for Richard Powers. Haruki Murakami isn't too far away, neither is Richard Russo in the opposite direction. I'll check to see if they have an edition of David Foster Wallace's first novel that pre-dates Infinite Jest. All but Powell have had books on the best seller list.
This is where I got confused in Luling. There was no Powell, which is not surprising. No Powers either, which happens sometimes. No Russo, no Murakami, no Wallace. This was getting unusual. I started looking for other authors. No Jonathan Lethem, no Chuck Palahniuk (really wasn't expecting to find one of his), no Truman Capote, no Willa Cather, no Jack London... There was plenty of James Patterson, Richard North Patterson and Danielle Steel. I thought maybe they had separated popular fiction from literary fiction, but no, on either side of the Steven King section was To Kill A Mockingbird and The Old Man and The Sea. I found copies of Catcher in the Rye, East of Eden and the Grapes of Wrath.
It was amazing. I had never been in a library where the fiction section was almost entirely mass-market publications. My two favorite finds were the Dickens novels above. Sorry, that's not such a great photo. What I liked about those books are the covers. Do they look like wallpaper to you? They should.
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