"It's not my fault!" - Han Solo (and the person who just bought books again)

It's entirely possible that I don't always handle end-of-the-semester stress the way I should. I've been known to call stale donuts "breakfast" and keep walking.

Exercise plan? What's that?

But we've reached the end of those "why is my grade a D?" emails (fingers crossed) and I'm preparing to transmogrify back into a (somewhat) normal person who has heard of vegetables, wears matching socks, and doesn't have to practice kolinahr to open my inbox.

Educators should  get a chintzy plastic Vulcan medal at the end of the semester; the more grade-oriented emails you answered, the more doodads it would have. Some of us would collapse under our medals!

[The answer, for those who are curious as to why their grade is a D: Math. That's why.] Well, I can add one more sin to my post-semester freakout: retail therapy.

In my defense, I didn't splurge on the boxed set of Law and Order with its $300 price tag. But when thriftbooks announced its annual 20% off sale, I couldn't say no to that. The following titles have joined their fellows on the book cart...

I once saw William Shatner in his Broadway show, "Shatner's World," and before the aging actor took the stage, he joked from the wings. While he was in the shadows, I felt my heart flutter, as I thought, "It's Captain Kirk! He's here!" He could have thrown me a bone and admitted his love for Spock, but barring that, I'll settle for this!







Summertime, sweet summertime, when I stray far afield of literary pursuits and lose myself in fun reading. In a book that will eventually merit its own review, How We Got Here: The 70s, David Frum includes this quote about such novels, "the many people who buy [this type of novel] would find it hard to read a book if they hadn't already seen the film which did the work of visualizing characters and settings for them." Frum is discussing the waning intellectual abilities of young people in this section, and I don't think we can lay that completely on such novelizations! My brain cells will welcome the rest, though!

And I'd like to say it stopped there, but it's not like Han only said "it's not my fault," once (it wouldn't be nearly as funny then).

So... I'm on kind of a graphic novel kick. And a Star Wars kick (which I recently elaborated on here). So when some kind ebay-based seller offered me the opportunity to scoop up the first four Marvel trades for the price of two, well "even I get boarded sometimes, Jabba" er, I mean, even I get tempted sometimes. Right.

Temptation was compounded by a recent visit to an actual bookstore (I almost never go to them, because everything's cheaper online). This title was looking out at me:

Weirdly enough, one of my absolute favorite memories is watching Scooby-Doo marathons with my cousins Corie, Emily, and Anthony. We'd pop popcorn or put Velveeta cheese on Saltines and think we were having one hell of a time! Maybe we identified with the meddling kids...

Whatever the reason, I still have a clear mental image of the flickering television screen and a yellow blanket with blue stripes, my cousins' laughter... I doubt this graphic novel will be a fitting substitute for those memories, but until I get a nice enough place to host a retro slumber party, this will have to do!