Metaphysical Furniture

  Today's post promoting "Someone Else's Book Club" was written by Simon Tybalt, Founder & CEO of Corporate. *** Look, I’ll be honest. I don’t usually write blog posts. Not my style. I’m more of a barstool philosopher, napkin sketch visionary type of guy. But someone told me this helps “engagement” and, well, Corporate loves engagement. Almost as much as lawsuits. “Try not to suck”—people think it’s just a joke I mutter when I’m late to meetings or accidentally fax my lunch order to my favorite gentlemen's club in Phoenix. But no, it’s a philosophy. A guiding star. A Corporate-approved life hack. We can’t all be heroes. Most of us barely qualify as competent. But if you can wobble your way through the day with a 60% success rate and avoid setting the copier on fire, then congratulations—you’ve achieved the Tybalt Standard. Try not to suck, and if you do suck, try not to make it noticeable. Now, about this book you’re all jabbering about— Someone Else’s Book C...

  I call my store Someone Else's Books because my mentor, a man named Nelson Kendrick, owned a store by that name. He believed that the used books in his inventory were never really his.  "They belonged to other people," he told me, "and I keep them until they belong to someone else. These are always someone else's books I'm caring for." People think owning a used bookstore is romantic. Let me assure you: it isn’t. You spend your days sneezing from dust mites, explaining to people why their “collector’s edition” John Grisham paperback is worth less than a gas station burrito, and hauling boxes of Danielle Steele hardbacks that multiply like rabbits in the wild. Now, add aliens. Yes, you heard me right. Somewhere between stocking the poetry shelf and arguing with a customer about the difference between sci-fi and fantasy , I wound up in the business of protecting humanity from an invasive race of lizard bullies called Herpezoids who can’t stand reading. ...

NOTE: Today's blog post was written by Dr. Spencer Dudley, longtime host of  "Frequencies From The Fringe," a radio program and now podcast dedicated to the unexplained.  ****** "Computers by themselves cannot launch nuclear weapons." -Adm. Richard W. Mies, commander in chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, allaying fears of Y2K-induced launches .   Folks, you remember Y2K. You were there. We all were, sitting in the dark with our canned peaches and our emergency radios, waiting for the stroke of midnight to fry civilization like a horsefly on a bug zapper. I was on the air that night, microphone hot, warning all Americans that computers were about to declare independence and form their own government. And then… nothing. No toaster rebellion. No ATM coup d’état. Just Dick Clark counting down like he always did, while the world collectively shrugged and went back to sticking their collective heads in the sand, as always. We returned to our usual state of being...

                                                 My wife and I sat down to watch the police thriller  Dept. Q on Netflix earlier in the week. Neither of us were focused on it. We scrolled on our phones. She prepped a crafting assignment for her preschoolers. I obsessed on page formatting for my latest manuscript. She looked at me and said, "This show isn't grabbing me. Let's shut it off." A couple of days later, she suggested we try it again. This time, we agreed to set our phones aside and concentrate on the series. We are so glad we did because Dept. Q is a gem.  Adapted from a series of novels by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen , Dept. Q stars Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck, a brilliant, brooding detective haunted by the tragic shooting that killed a young officer and left his partner paralyzed. This adaptation transports the setting from Denmark to ...

  From the back cover: Saving the world was never on the reading list. Kevin Raulston wants to keep his life simple, at least as simple as one can as a used bookstore owner who hunts extraterrestrials for a shadowy private organization known only as Corporate. But it is the year of Y2K and the world is on edge, fearing the worst. When an extraterrestrial crashes his book club meeting—leaving behind a missing book club member, a mysterious serum, and a very confused married couple, Chris and Suzanne Pershing—Kevin is pulled into a Y2K conspiracy involving mutated humans, a secret lab beneath a ghost town bank, and a potential romance with his bartender crush. To survive, Kevin must do the unthinkable: train the all-too-eager and thrill-seeking Pershings to fight aliens. People who haggle over the plot points of books like The Rapture of the Follies are now armed with glitchy weapons, metaphysical theories, and a disturbing level of confidence. Along the way, the book club will face ...