Ramblings, A.K.A., God, I'm tired.

I am tired, the kind of tired that's a mixture of minor sleep deprivation and boredom. I'd be okay if I had something to keep me stimulated, but since classes haven't started yet, it's kinda dead here in the ILL department.  In about five minutes, I'm either going to start perusing Sporcle for a language-based game or I'll downloaded something from NetGalley.

I should concentrate on filling up my GoodReads reviews, but I'm too tired to be articulate at the moment. It would be all 'Book ok, heroine a little whiny, not enough sports stuff.' Maybe that should be something I do here instead of 5 minute reviews: Reviews in 30 words or less. I'll have to think on it.

I just went to Sporcle and took this clever Typing Test. I messed up a bit because it took me a while to figure out where to look and to leave off the punctuation at the end of the line, but my score was 65 words per minute. A little more awake now.

Heading to Barnes and Noble after work today. My best friend, who used to be a merch supe at Borders until the first round of layoffs, now does receiving there. So I'll be taking advantage of our friendship to pick up Blood Bound by Rachel Vincent (read a .pdf of the first chapter here). Since I'm no longer on the front line of what's new and incoming, I'm relying on GoodReads to keep my TBR list handy and FictFact to help me keep track of what's coming out when.

I finished The Chase by Erin McCarthy and I think I'm just about done with sport books for the time being. I still want to finish those three baseball books I have pending, but I think I'm going to try to tackle some new stuff next. I have a slew of things out from the library, including two YAs I wanna read: Forgotten by Cat Patrick and White Cat by Holly Black. White Cat's been out for a while, but YA always fell low on the priority list while I was Romance Expert-ing. I've been seeing good things about Forgotten so I made sure to snag it the last time I went in.

A coupla more things before I get up to stretch my legs and try to the juices flowing. Let's do it in list format because now I'm feeling lazy.

1. It appears I am, in fact, done at Borders. I will remain 'on call,' but it's unlikely I'll work again as the liquidators are making a very big push to increase sales. They definitely want to be done by the end of September. 
2. If you have any saved personal information, like a credit card or email, at Borders.com, us employees suggest you delete it ASAP. Customer information is up for sale right along with the website.
3. Also, if you haven't already twigged to the pattern, the liquidation prices drop every Thursday or Friday. If there's nothing in particular you want, you're better off going on Monday-Wednesday as there's less chance of a crowd.  The warehouse is empty now so whatever product the store has, that's all it's going to get. The stores never got anything that was published after liquidation was announced so if you're looking for new books, you're SOL. Use this opportunity to boost your backlist reading  or replace old copies that may be falling apart.
4. Barbara Vey has a statement about Sandra Hyatt, written by the Romance Writers of New Zealand, up at her blog. No real new information, but it has everything in one spot now. 
5. I think the GoodReads glitch is mostly fixed now, but I'm going to be hand-posting reviews for the time being, at least until I finish the sport romances. Follow @lionessbkshelf to get a tweet when a new entry goes up. 
6. There's 8 days left to enter my Cynthia Eden giveaway!

I miss Borders.

I was attempting to write some Leverage fanfic because I realized I've only written one fic all year. It's been a bitch of a year, chock full of good and bad, but incredibly stressful. I was kinda hoping that things would calm down after July, but you know what they say about best laid plans.

It appears, I'm still waiting on confirmation, but it appears I've worked my last scheduled shift at Borders. I might get called in if someone calls out sick, but otherwise I'm done. This is not precisely a shock because I did sorta know this was coming. I'm in a better position than many of my co-workers since I don't have a family and my full-time job is here at the library, so it makes sense for me to give up my hours for someone else who needs them. It'll also help my pocketbook because I was shopping during every shift and I was basically spending whatever money I was making.

It sucks, though. I miss it, miss it more than I thought I would. I read PW or the book section of Entertainment Weekly and I make mental note of what the 'big books' will be. I was reading Shelf Awareness or something similar one morning and there was this kid's book that made me go, 'I can totally sell that.' Then there's that moment of awareness when you go, 'Oh, yeah, right.' I miss the books, I miss my co-workers, I miss knowing what's hot, and I miss being able to read almost anything I wanted.

Still, I've been re-reading a lot lately. Mostly because I no longer have the sense of guilt about the stack of ARCs waiting for my attention, but also because all I want now are good books. I feel wounded and I just want the comfort of the familiar. This blog is helping, though. It gives me a sense of purpose and a place to dump all the romance opinions I've been sharing with the romance buyers for the last five years.


Of course, when Borders closes for good, you may just find me wandering around, wringing my hands together, my identity crisis complete. *sigh*

Odds n' Ends

Now that I'm a soon-to-be-ex-bookseller, I find my reading habits changed slightly. I guess I felt a little constrained at Borders and I was always racing to keep up with ARC flow. I'm more comfortable re-reading now and therefore, I'm reading a lot more.

I signed up for a GoodReads account a while back, but I wasn't thrilled with it. LibraryThing was a much better fit for my needs. I basically wanted something I could use to catalog my books and tag them like crazy. GoodReads doesn't have a tag system, but it does have a bizarre shelving system and, more importantly, an app. So what I'm doing is trying to transition my TBR to GoodReads. Now that I'm not working at Borders anymore, I know that it's possible I could be book-shopping on the spur of the moment and I want to have my TBR handy. I don't know how well I'm going to be able to search it, but it'll be better than nothing.

In addition, theoretically, I should be able to post reviews at GoodReads and have them cross-post here. At the moment, I'm not having any luck with that so I have to tinker with it a bit. Hopefully, someone on GoodReads will be able to help or I'll have an epiphany and figure it out. The twitter account for this blog is @lionessbkshelf & it's set up to tweet whenever anything gets posted here.

Liquidation isn't going as badly as I feared. Mostly because I only work one day a week and I don't really do customer service anymore. I joke that my new title is 'inventory shifter,' but it's really kinda true. I'm either at the register or circling the store, putting away the crap that was dropped on random flat surfaces. We're not even alphabetizing anymore. This is supposedly the last week the warehouse will be sending us stuff so I figure it'll really sink in when the store starts looking really bare. *sigh*

Hello and Goodbye: A Romance Expert revealed

When I started this blog, I decided to be secretive about the bookstore chain that I worked for. My reasons for doing so were two-fold. First off, the company made no secret of its dislike of employees blogging about working there. Secondly, since I received ARCs as part of my job, I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize the ARC pipeline, but I did want a little leeway to be honest if I didn't like a book. I did know that the store's identity wasn't too hard to deduce for anyone who came here by way of my personal twitter.

However, the point has become moot. I was a Romance Expert for Borders. Sue Grimshaw, Borders' Romance buyer, started the program back in 2005 and I joined up right away. When Sue left Borders for Random House earlier this year, Ellen Clark took over the position and the program up until Borders declared bankruptcy. Liquidation began on July 15th. Ellen's last day was July 29 and her departure marks the official end of the Romance Expert program. You can read our goodbyes at the Borders True Romance blog here.

I'm still working at Borders for the time being. Liquidation is not a pleasant experience and I wasn't about to abandon my team when all hands are needed on deck. My last day will tentatively be around August 15th. By then, I believe the liquidation process will be reaching its conclusion and store hours will be cut. Since I have a full-time job in an academic library, I'll cede my hours to those who need them more. However, if things keep stumping along, I'll keep working.

It's no surprise to me that Borders is closing, but it's a bit of a shock nonetheless. I think I always anticipated the stores would radically close, but I didn't think the entire chain would go under. I've been employed by the company since 2002. That's nine years of my life and I'll be 30 years old in November. I'm suffering from a little identity crisis. For most of my adulthood, I've defined myself as a bookseller. For the last six years, I've been a minor player in the romance genre. Arrogant as it may sound, it was a self-esteem booster to be reporting directly to a buyer who was partly responsible for 13% of the market for print books. My opinions, my thoughts, played some small part in the buyer's decisions as to what and how much to purchase. Also, from a purely fangirl perspective, it was damned awesome getting books by my favorite authors ahead of schedule.

Now I'm simply a reader. Of course, I find myself paralyzed by the decision of what to read. I kept myself on a loose schedule, trying to read four ARCs a week. I rarely re-read anything or dipped into my growing TBR pile. Now I feel vaguely guilty reading the ARCs I have left, like I haven't earned them somehow.  In addition, Borders was like a very current library for me. I could borrow up to two books at a time. I had the freedom to try new authors, to pick up whatever struck my fancy, regardless of format or cost. Now I'm limited by money and my county's library system. I have been demoted from someone special to someone quite ordinary. It is quite lowering to think about.

Perspectives from fellow Borders ex-employees

My time on the Borders - An Eulogy for the Big Red Bookstore

How to Work/How to Shop at a Liquidating Borders


Bookseller Without Borders (an assistant manager who's perhaps a little on the understandably bitter side, chronicling his store's liquidation)

Michele Lee: Day One (an author who worked as a bookseller at Borders. Her store closed during the first round and she also documented each day of liquidation)

There is a very funny webcomic called Mike: Bookseller that is drawn/written by a gentleman who works for Barnes & Noble Booksellers. There's a lot of parallels between the chains, but, obviously, two entered and only one is walking away. Here are some strips he's done so far about Borders's bankruptcy.

I used to say that...
Thousands of voices...
The silver lining to Liquidation