wavesoflife

Recently I’ve been rereading the BSC books in order, minus the super specials and mysteries (I’m going to read those in their own order). I’m up to somewhere in the Friends Forever series part of it. I’m still missing some of those and a few from the main series (and some mysteries). As much as I enjoy reading them, the inconsistencies stick out more when you read them in order. Normally I read them randomly or all the Mallory books or something like that. It annoyed me especially how in one book Ethan was 16, then in the next book he was 15 again (Ethan is Stacey’s boyfriend in some of the books). Also, I’ve discovered Mary Ann is really annoying. I mean, really annoying.

Everyone must read Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder. Or listen to it, as I did at work. I loved it so much that I listened to it a second time as soon as I was finished. It’s part of a trilogy, the second of which is due out in October.
I can’t claim it’s an amazing piece of literature, but there was something about it. I still can’t stop thinking about that book and the characters.

Today my BSC books arrived! I was very happy. I haven’t read most of them before, as the local libraries didn’t have that many.

After buying those 44 books, I only need 19 more. 10 in the regular series, 4 regular mysteries, 4 friends forever, and one of the other books.

Joe and I went to Borders last Friday to pick up our copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. He got off work at 9 as usual and picked up McDonalds on his way home. Yay for Neopets Happy Meals! We arrived at Borders around 10:30. We picked up our numbers for the books. We were numbers 246 and 247. For the last book, we were in the first 15 to pick up their books since they just formed a line at 11:30 and were out of there by 12:05. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to happen this time. The store was more crowded this time than last time. We browsed around and I ended up getting two magazines and a book as well. Joe bought us bottles of Snapple at 11:30. No Lime Green Tea Snapple this time. Just regular Lemon Tea. There was no place at all to sit and the aisles were crowded with people sitting in them. This wasn’t good for me as I get dizzy when standing for long periods. Eventually we sat down on the floor in the language section.

I’m not sure that having numbers called out was a better plan than forming a line. It was more fair to the people that got there early but that’s about it. Everyone gathered right where you were to line up when your number was called to get the back, making it impossible to get to that area. They asked everyone to move to the back of the store, but not many listened. Then they skipped sections of numbers. They went from 100-125 and then skipped to 150-175. Then after 175-200, they didn’t call anyone for about 15 minutes and then called 200-275. So in our block of numbers, we had to line up with 73 other people rather than the 25 they had been doing for the rest of the numbers. After us they went back to calling it in blocks of 25. There were so many other people hanging around the area it was difficult to find the line. We got our books around 12:30 and then joined the register line. That went from the front of the store, wound around several aisles, and then ended in the back of the store, right beside the line for the books. It was another half hour till we were through the register line. Then at the register line the girl first told me that I couldn’t use the 25% off coupon on another book when buying HP6 they gave us when we checked in since HP6 was already 40% off. I was confused by that and pointed out that it was for a book bought with HP6. I was surprised that in the 240 something people who paid before me, no one else had used their coupon with her. Or else she didn’t give them their discount. We finally got home after 1 and by then I was too exhausted from the two job interviews that day and from standing for several hours that I just went to bed.

All in all, it wasn’t nearly as fun as getting book 5. There weren’t as many people dressed up and people weren’t talking with each other like they did last time. They just stayed in their own little groups and talked. One woman and her son did talk to us a bit back in the language section where they were sitting as well but that was it. Plus there was the whole standing issue. Last time we didn’t have to stand very long and were out right away. I’m still glad we went though.

I’d love to complete my Baby-Sitters Club book collection. I need about 40 in the main series, 2 Super Specials, 10 Friends Forever, and 1 portrait book (Claudia). Plus 3 mystery super specials and 14 regular mysteries. I’ve been having trouble finding them. All the books I need are the later ones and most of the ones I find for sale are the early ones. It would cost way too much in shipping to buy them individually on amazon and most of the ones on ebay aren’t ones I need. Occasionally I stop by the used book store and they’ll have some, but they’re not that cheap (half off the cover price). Does anyone have any suggestions on where I could look for them?