Banana Yoshimoto saves the world

My sweetie and I decided to hit Borders today to look for books. We'd both been unhappy with our large but picked over collection at home, and needed new blood. I always look at the new releases first, but nothing leapt out at me. I checked the graphic novel/manga section for Chyna Clugston-Major's stuff, but had no luck. I breezed through the fantasy/science fiction section, only deepening my sense of no longer being a genre reader. Then we started, like we always do, on fiction, working from the As to the Zs. By the Ms, I was beginning to be afraid that this would end up like the last several times I'd been in a bookstore; despite a deep love of books, I could find nothing that didn't irritate or alienate me. By the time I was in the Ts, I caught myself thinking how lucky for the world it was that I was no capricious god, judging a continued shot at existence by the presentation of one worthy book. I had given up hope, but still made my way to the end, like I always do, catching Zola at eye level and then looking up one shelf on the reflexive hope that there might be something new of which I was unaware, and this time, shockingly enough, there was: Hardboiled and Hard Luck.

So all of you should thank the heroic author for the sunrise tomorrow ;)