I will build a fortress of unread books, so help me...

I feel a seething laziness. I'm furious for having nothing to do. I take my frustrations out on worthless online games. I have a pile of books that I'm building that I haven't read yet. Books I collected from all over the country. Hip, bizarre, they sound interesting. Here, let me list them for you.

In Seattle, I bought another Cormac McCarthy book in Left Bank Books, which is basically a sister store of Boxcar Books in Bloomington. Blood Meridian, as it is talking about the wild west that I'd just passed through in getting to Seattle. More than that, I wanted to give Left Bank Books some money, as, like Boxcar, it was all volunteer-run.

Later on in Seattle, I bought Sons of the Profits after taking the tour of their underground. It was a bestseller. It sounds promising. It could end up being boring. We'll find out.

In Olympia, I found another radical anarchist bookstore and decided to buy something just because of it once again. This time, it was a book called The World's Shortest Stories, edited together by Steve Moss. The cover reminded me of a popular zine series I'd seen in Boxcar. I aim to establish a connection.

In Portland, while still dumbfounded by the size of Powell's City of Books, I bought Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy, as it is currently being advertised and promoted by hip booksellers all across the country, namely because it's something strange that most people never think about. I think it's probably going to be like a summer horror film, Mary Roach style.

I bought a Mary Roach book while in Powell's, too. Bonk, this time. I read about half of it while on the road and then lost interest, but I'll finish it eventually. I also bought a book to satiate the ever-growing interest in forensics-Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner. My mother glimpsed this book right after I came home and demanded that I tell her whether or not it was interesting, because she wanted to read it if it was. Have I ever mentioned that we spend a good chunk of our free time watching the Investigation Discovery Channel? Imagine 24/7 of crime investigation shows. That's what it is. I almost bought Anna Karina, but convinced myself that I could find it cheaper elsewhere. Perhaps that was foolish.

Then, while in Bloomington, Domino asked me if I had ever read any Terkel, and when I responded that I hadn't, she produced one of his books, The Good World: An Oral History of World War Two, and told me to read it. I'd never heard of it before, but the cover tells me that it's a Pulitzer Prize Winner and was on the New York Times Bestseller List for over five months. I was intrigued.

Last night, in thanks for fixing their computer speakers and reminding him that he had left his checkbook at the Walmart Pharmacy according to a call received during my visit, my grandfather came by with three books he'd freshly bought from Walmart that I had asked to borrow from him when they were returned from other borrowers earlier in the day. The first three Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris: Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas, and Club Dead. My grandfather has a thing for vampires in the same way that I once did, though his fetish has never diminished, nor has his pleasure in sharing vampire novels with me. As he gave me the third, with a cover marred by the HBO series' cast rather than the original artwork, he lowered his voice and said "a little piece of trivia for you...that one," he pointed to Anna Paquin, "just came out recently."