Sneaking a Little Perfection…

Perfection Salad

What’s the opposite of a Shit Sandwich?

I was locked out of the house for a few hours yesterday, and decided to stop for some bookstore puttering.    Large, corporate bookstore with a piped-in music track that most likely has subliminal “buy! buyyy!” messages buried in the music, like the satanic messages that were said to have been in “Stairway to Heaven,” or the Paul McCartney obituary messages in “I Am the Walrus.”   Except that this music track actually was a bunch of Beatles (and also some James Taylor and Carole King, sometimes at the same time), and today, Corporate Bookstore had me at “Gooolden slumbers fill your eyes…”  If they had kept those tunes coming indefinitely, I might still have been in the store, six hours later, stomach filled with really good (Seattle’s Best!) coffee and a really bad sandwich.

But I digress.

I settled down into a soft chair with a vanilla latte and a small stack of coveted books to skim and smell and…covet.  Because the recession may be ending, and we both may be gainfully employed, but I remain in Library Mode.  In my experience, total abstinence  from all book-buying is the only answer, lest I completely fall off the wagon and decide that I need, NEED, a couple of audio books and an issue of The New Yorker and a Moleskine notebook, because what more worthy to write important thoughts in, should I have some such thoughts, and some stationary and  a copy of David Sedaris’s latest and Mastering the Art of French Cooking and maybe Dorie Greenspan’s new book.   I’ve watched Dr. Drew, I know how this goes.

So I’m in the throes of Book Euphoria and coffee love and Paul McCartney crooning “Oh! Darling,” and it’s all a lot of beautiful wrapping on the gift! (and I mean the kind of gift that comes in a small, velvet box) of some mandatory free time in a bookstore.

Stacked on my lap are:

Even Silence Has an End (Ingrid Betancourt)–an amazing-looking story of a woman who was held for six years in a Colombian guerilla prison camp;

Laurie David’s  Family Dinners–Gimmicky, yes, but a neat and not preachy book about eating dinner as a family, complete with practical suggestions for making it even better;

Laura Shapiro’s Perfection Salad– (it’s an actual dish)—because I’d read anything, anything by Laura Shapiro, and a history of American women and their cooking at the turn of the century is so totally tempting;

No Country for Old Men (Cormac McCarthy)–I had heard similar “best writing ever” comments similar to what I had heard about In Cold Blood.

I bought none of the above.   I borrowed the McCarthy book and will read it when I finish what I’m currently reading.   As afternoons go, it was a Perfection Salad.