Complaining about paperback prices is something I’m no stranger to.

Now there’s an insidious middle ground, it seems. I bought a paperback copy of Paul of Dune the other day, and was surprised to see that the MSRP was $9.99. It wasn’t a trade paperback, either; it was the same size as regular mass market paperbacks…or so I thought at first glance. The width was the same, but the book was about 3/4″ taller. In other words…you’re paying an extra two bucks because the book’s slightly taller. That’s nothing but a scumbag marketing move to bilk us out of a few extra dollars for the exact same content that would fit in a standard-sized book.

I also noticed that while Paul of Dune clocks in at over six hundred pages, the book is still rather slim. Why? Because the publisher used a lighter paper. That aggravates me even more; now, not only am I paying more because the book’s slightly larger, but I’m getting lesser-quality paper as well! When is this shit going to stop?

The children’s television program Reading Rainbow ends its 26-year run today, and that makes me rather angry.

Like most people my age, I grew up watching Reading Rainbow alongside luminaries such as Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. While the former is still going strong, and the latter had no choice but to stop due to Rogers’ passing away, Reading Rainbow spent over a decade foundering. I don’t know if it was due to kids not reading as much anymore, loss of funding, or some other factor, but the program’s passing is aggravating. Reading Rainbow was a fantastic show; you watched it, too, and you’re a lying scumbag if you claim otherwise. There’s no shame in admitting it, so grow up.

The amount of Reading Rainbow episodes produced per year dropped like a stone over the last decade or two. Host LeVar Burton finally left due to creative differences with the owners, but we can only speculate as to what those differences might have been. My guess? The powers-that-be wanted to revamp the show to make it more appealing to the Internet generation, while Burton is still a staunch supporter of getting off your ass and going to the library to read a real book. I definitely side with Burton on that; more people go to the library these days for free Internet access than to get books!

It sucks to see such a great program as Reading Rainbow go down the toilet after all these years. Kids nowadays don’t know what they’re missing, and even worse, I doubt they care, as they’re too busy texting each other and wasting time on Facebook. That’s likely the extent of their “leisure reading”…

…but you don’t have to take my word for it.

I’ve ranted about those awful female-targeting vampire novels before (actually, more than once), but now, a new gauntlet has been thrown down.

I was walking through my local Barnes & Noble store during a lunch break, heading towards the science fiction and fantasy section. Once I got there, I was shocked and appalled by what I saw. Those “urban fantasy” novels and whatever such nonsense? They were everywhere…and replacing the books that used to be there! Science fiction and fantasy are now relegated to a small corner of their own damned section, while those blasted trendy romance novels take up their space.

Legendary writers such as Bradbury, Asimov, and Heinlein are being removed from shelves in favor of vomit-inducing romance stories masquerading as “fantasy” or “horror.” The only thing horrifying about them is that they’re pushing distinguished authors off the shelf. Tolkien’s about the only one left holding on, but fortunately, I don’t think his stories are going anywhere.

This is complete and utter nonsense. Just because your story has an emo vampire or an angsty werewolf in it, that does not make it a fantasy book. Dump this trash in the romance section where it belongs. In fact, the new genre that fans have created for this fluff, “urban fantasy,” is misleading to begin with. “Urban” pertains to cities, not a time period. You could have an urban novel that takes place during ancient Rome, for crying out loud! (The correct term, kids, would be “contemporary fantasy.”)

If a store wants to devote new shelf space to these craptacular tomes, then I’m all for it; that’s smart business, after all. But getting rid of the classics, written by authors who are noted for their writing skill, rather than marketing a fad? That’s not only aggravating, it’s highly insulting to anyone with a brain.

My post about downscaling my gaming habit got me thinking about my other hobbies, some of the unfortunate side effects they cause, and what to do about them. (And holy shit, did I file this under enough categories, or what?)

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate any of my hobbies; I’m just not pleased that I have far too many of them. In my neverending quest to become a somewhat decent human being, I do understand that sometimes the most innocuous hobbies can cause problems with one’s life. The main issue is that a majority of my hobbies revolve around acquiring some kind of physical object, such as an action figure, building set, video game, book, et cetera. As such, this immediately creates two problems: price and space. You need money to buy said item, and a place in which to display or store it. Both of these are serious issues, and even worse, they sometimes compound one another! I’m not affluent (or even upper middle class) by any stretch of the imagination, so indulging in my hobbies tends to have financial ramifications down the line that I’m not always prepared for. So what’s a man to do?

Here’s a rundown of my various hobbies, and the problems I’m running into while keeping up with them. Aside from giving you an insight into my madness, it’ll help me keep track of this stuff later on. I should point out that this stuff was all acquired over the course of a decade or two; I certainly don’t have the cash to acquire massive quantities of stuff in a short period of time!

• LEGO®. This one gives no quarter; the entire premise of being a LEGO® fan is based on the building sets themselves. You need to own at least a few in order to get involved! The upshot is that once you’ve got a good amount of bricks, you can create just about anything you want. You can display an official model for a while, then if you get tired of it, rebuild it into something else. It’s not like a collectible game, where you’re absolutely required to spend money on a regular basis just to stay competitive! (That’s the exact reason why I gave up on playing Magic: The Gathering long ago, and Axis & Allies Miniatures more recently.) With my LEGO® addiction, space has become my biggest challenge. I’ve completely run out of room to display my sets (mainly Star Wars ships), so I’ve been forced to disassemble many of them.

• Star Trek. The beloved science fiction franchise spans over forty years of history, twenty-nine seasons of television, and eleven films, not to mention all of the countless merchandising and other goodies. The television shows and films are most important to me; I own all of the films (save the newest one, which isn’t available on disc yet, and Star Trek V, which is crap), but only five of the twenty-nine seasons. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and that’s not going to be cheap. Granted, Voyager and the first two seasons of Enterprise can wait until the very end, but I’ve still got a majority of the original series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine to pick up.
• Star Wars. The core of this franchise is the films, and there’s not many of those; that made collecting them quite easy. I also enjoy reading some of the novels, and collecting the artbooks and other reference tomes. However, when it comes to Star Wars action figures…therein lies the rub. Even casual fans of the franchise know how addicting that can be, and I’m no different. I used to display them in my office at work (gotta be the stereotypical IT department, and all), but since we moved to a new location, I now have a cubicle rather than an office. Thus, I no longer have a door that I can lock. I don’t think anyone would pilfer or otherwise screw with my collection, but why not err on the side of caution? Since I’ve got nowhere else to put them, though, they now sit in a box in my apartment complex storage space.
• Model railroads. While this is one of my most enjoyed hobbies, it’s sadly one of the most neglected, simply to due to the high cost. I’m “over the hump,” as it were; the most expensive pieces of my layout were the tracks, locomotives, and control system. However, I’ve still got landscaping materials to buy, plus model cars and tiny little people. Those aren’t cheap! If I don’t finish my layout this summer, I’ve got a feeling it will be indefinitely shelved.
• Video games. Ouch. This one’s definitely the 800-pound gorilla in the room, since I play a lot of games. They’ve never been cheap, and with more and more titles coming out all the time, with more platforms competing for market share, costs can add up insanely fast. Part of this can be alleviated by renting games, but that creates two more problems. One, renting from chains like Blockbuster is a complete ripoff; the rental price is too high, and you’ve only got about five days to play! Two, even if you use a much better system like GameFly, now you run into the subscription problem. Here, you’re paying a flat fee per month to rent a certain number of titles (GameFly wisely offers a tiered system), but what if there’s a few months where nothing’s coming out, or there isn’t anything you’re interested in playing? Now you’re literally spending money on nothing. As far as older titles are concerned, emulation’s a quick solution, but legal issues aside, that doesn’t compare to playing original games on original hardware. It just doesn’t! (I keep a 13″ CRT TV in my room specifically for retrogaming, fer crissake.) I’ve focused much of my attention on my NES collection, but those still take up space. Right now, I’m using the ol’ cardboard-boxes-in-the-closet method, save for a small stack of cartridges I’m actively playing. Those get a place of honor on my desk. Classy.
• Heavy metal. You’d think that simply enjoying listening to music wouldn’t cost too much, since you don’t have to pay to use your ears. And as far as acquiring music goes, that’s inexpensive, too, especially in this day and age of iTunes and BitTorrent. Too bad I’m one of those old-fashioned fuckers who enjoys owning actual physical copies of his media! The backlog of discs I still want to buy would probably equal the down payment on a small house. Eesh. My subscriptions to Decibel magazine and the Requiem Metal Podcast have exacerbated this addiction by getting me into many new bands.
• Books. Normally, this isn’t a problem, as we have libraries for all of our reading needs. However, some of the licensed series I enjoy (particularly Star Trek novels) have little to no library presence. Translation: if you want to read it, you’d better buy it, and I’ve bitched about the ridiculous cost of paperbacks before. Even though the recent Star Trek film has breathed new life into the franchise, the books are still a relatively niche commodity. The Star Trek section at my local bookstores just keeps shrinking over time, and when new novels come out, you really need to nab them within a week or so of release, else you run the risk of missing them. Then, of course, there’s the fact that eventually, my bookshelves at home start to get very crowded.
• Manga. Since the stories I enjoy only come out every few months, this one’s at the bottom of the problem pile. Prices are on the rise, though, and I read much of my manga well in advance via scanlations. I buy the official collected English editions later on. If the prices get more annoying, I may dump the printed versions, and just stick to reading them online. And before you bitch at me about the “illegality” of scanlations, they’re not technically illegal, and publishers often use them as a way to gauge interest in localizing new series! Eat me.

As you can see, the solution to many of these issues falls under the usual purview of “stop buying shit.” Which, as it turns out, is something I’m actively working on, especially in the video game realm. I know that sooner or later I’m going to have to no choice but to severely scale back or ditch a few hobbies, but them’s the breaks. It’s happened before (like when I ditched that filthy comic book collectin’ habit), and I’d like to think I’m a better person for it. Life is more than just random collections.

It’s apparently common knowledge that two of the nation’s largest bookstores, Borders and Barnes & Noble, are in financial trouble. While both stores are still functioning, it would be a dark day indeed if either of those two stores went out of business.

I buy almost all of my books from Borders, simply because they offer a better discount program than B&N. However, I’m not averse to shopping at B&N, especially since they sometimes carry items that Borders does not. But if one of those stores went out of business…then the other would have no longer have a reason to one-up the competition with great sales, discount programs, and so on. The exact same thing happened when Circuit City went under; they were in a running battle with Best Buy as far as sales were concerned, and I’ve noticed Best Buy’s discounts have waned since CC went the way of the dodo.

It would be even worse if both B&N and Borders went under. Then, what option is left to us? Amazon‘s great, but not if you only want to buy one book. After shipping’s factored in, you’re going to end up paying more than MSRP! (Obviously, this doesn’t apply to coffee table books and the like where you can often use their “Free Super Saver Shipping” offer.) Sure, you could solve this issue by ordering multiple books, but you shouldn’t have to do that in the first place. When a new book comes out that I want to pick up, I don’t want to feel pressured into buying a few more along with it. Besides, you can only read one book at a time, at least until we’ve evolved an extra pair of eyes. Last but not least, if brick-and-mortar bookstores disappeared…what would be Amazon’s incentive to keep their prices low? It’s the CC/BB problem all over again.

Paying $10+ shipped for a measly paperback had better not become a reality in the near future. Not only that, the loss of physical stores means impulse book purchases will dry up, too. Nothing beats just nabbing a random book at the bookstore, taking it home, and reading it. Let’s hope Borders and B&N get back into the black, otherwise we’re all in trouble.