Another secret genre?

I was hunting for a book for a friend and went into a Waterstones near Glasgow Central Train Station and discovered another whole section of books I'd never heard of. I know romantic literature is popular with young ladies and they all love a vampire, so I guess it was an easy jump to create "Paranormal Romance".

Xmas Shopping Blogging

Shouldn't have done it, but it had to be done, Xmas shopping is the anti-Christmas, no good cheer and some people seem to just go out to stand in the streams of people and cause stress.

But one of the joys of Xmas shopping is entering shops and looking at stuff you'd never normally look at and I'm always surprised at the thing that people will buy.
For instance a few years back I was in the ladies shop "Accessorize" to buy my wife some ear-rings and there I discovered grown women buying clothes for dogs. I gave the woman in question a withering man look and she came to her senses and put the dog dress back on the hanger.

So I was in Borders Books looking at the Biography section, my dad likes a biography and I was seeing if there was something up his street and discovered an entire section called "True Lives" which as far as I can tell are hideous true stories of child abuse and rape. They all have the same cover, sad child, hand written font for the authors name and a title like Ugly, A Child called it, Slapped Bairns or Please Daddy Don't. Apparently Waterstones has a similar section and its called "Damaged Lives", who new misery was such a big seller.

Neal Stephenson

Tonight I went to see Neal Stephenson reading from his new book "Anathem", which was a bit difficult due to waterstones not having a working radio mike, so Mr Stephenson had to shout his reading.

After the reading there was the question and answer session, all the question were from glasses wearing wanna-be-authors asking about writing and not many question about the stories or characters. I really wanted to know who Mr Stephenson thought would win in a fight between "Captain Jack Sparrow" and "Half-Cocked Jack Shaftoe"?
But I did find out that by the time he was almost finished "Cryptonomicon" he came up with the idea for "The Baroque Cycle" and was able to place teaser-mcguffins into Cryptonomicon.
Not that every bit about Solomanic gold was cunningly put in as a tease, Mr Stephenson smiled quite widely when i Enoch Root's cigar box and the golden punchcards.

I did also find out that Half-Coked Jack Shaftoe's Syphilis was cured by the high fever (apparently this was crib from the life of Sir Richard Francis Burton who may have been cured of the clap by malaria) and not as I suspected that he was brought back to life by Enoch Root. Which I could have sworn there was a passage in "Confusion" that alluded to this.

It were great and then I came home and had oven chips.