Thanks for the birthday wishes! We went out to dinner at the Lei Lounge, a global tapas bar in Hillcrest/University Heights (not really sure where the border is).

After dinner, we had the times for three nearby theaters, and we headed to Fashion Valley to see Superman Returns. The next showing was sold out, so we got tickets for a show that provided us an hour and a half to experience the mall, except we expected stores to close in 20 minutes. Not really wanting to waste that time walking around looking at stores i wasn’t interested in, I used my birthday authority to herd us into the Waldenbooks and declared it to be where we would pass the time.

Oddly, I couldn’t really find much in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy section to interest me terribly much. I did grab a few things from the children’s Independent Reader:

Since I enjoyed Inkheart and am enjoying Inkspell, I decided it was safe to grab both Dragon Rider and The Thief Lord, all by Cornelia Funke.

I also added Artemis Fowl, by Eoin Colfer, to the growing pile of books in our bedroom waiting to be read.

In the regular Fiction section, I also had a few things catch my eye:

Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club is something I’ve been wanting to read since being told that it’s even better than the movie. Not your sort of book, but I enjoyed being creeped out by Haunted, so I got this as well as Diary: A Novel by him.

Labyrinth, by Kate Mosse, just sort of called out to me fromt the shelves. I wasn’t in the mood to argue with it, so it came home with me.

I’d been looking for a collection of tales from the Thousand Nights and One Night, and with an already large purchase, decided that the Burton edition that they had, while not being a complete edition, was at least a good start.

After buying all those books (there may be more I’ve forgotten), we headed back to the theater to discover that it was already packed. I guess everybody who couldn’t get in to see Pirates picked Superman as their alternative? We ended up stuck in the second row, which made it hard to relax and focus, but other than that it was a great time at the movies.

I haven’t read the first Artemis Fowl book, but I enjoyed the subsequent two. He was a tip from Karen.

The cover of The Thief Lord is what made me start paying attention to Funke’s work. I’ll be interested to hear if you like her earlier works.