I’m a real sucker for book stores. Now that I’m in America, with a very low exchange rate of the US dollar to Swedish kronor, and nice big Barnes and Nobles and Borders stores abound, I’m a bit reckless. We’ve been to four book stores already. The first one because book stores are nice. The next three because I want to find Tommy Angelo’s Elements of Poker. I still haven’t been able to find a copy, and I’m starting to resign to the idea that I’m going to have to order it via Amazon, but in that case I have to wait until it becomes available at amazon.co.uk, since it’s not released in Europe yet.

Which sucks, because I’m an instant-gratification kinda guy.

The end result hasn’t been one visit to B&N and then going empty handed out of the other three stores though, oh no, I’m much too easily persuaded into buying books for that to happen. In fact, we’ve bought 15 books during our stay here, in just three days. The only poker book bought was Professional No-limit Hold’em which I’m mostly through now, but there are quite a few other goodies piled up now for the future, too, including Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene which I’ve heard good things about, a biography of Thomas Jefferson, a couple of novels (which I don’t read many of, but, uh, they were on sale) including Martin’s Game of Thrones, a book that a close friend (a fantasy freak) has recommended so many times that I felt guilted into picking it up.

We’ve also bought a bunch of clothes. Books and clothes. And restaurant visits. For Lori, the ex-patriate, coming back to America means fulfilling the desperate cravings for American restaurants that she gets once in awhile, so during our 9 day stay, there is a lot of catching up to do. We went to Applebee’s today, and had the “sampler” for starters which, as it turned out, was probably meant for four people. It’s been three and a half hour since we got to the restaurant, and I’m still very noticeably full, and probably will stay that way for the rest of the day.

Oh blessed country of consumption, how nice it is to visit.

If only I could have found Tommy’s book. That would have made it perfect. If you haven’t go read his articles. They’re awesome.