The DVD stores weren't the only things closing from the nearby mall. As part of Borders's bankruptcy the local outlet is closing down, and I've been going in pretty much each week before yoga to see what looked interesting at the current discount rate.
As of last Wednesday they'd reached the 40-to-50 percent discount mark, and were pricing the shelves at as little as $60 per shelf. The remaining stock had also contracted dramatically: the week before they were still putting stuff on both levels of the floor, even if the lowest shelves an the highest had been emptied out. That actually made the store arguably more comfortable to browse since there wasn't the need for kneeling down or for standing on tip-toes to see everything, even if the available stock had dwindled. That week they also had the ``down'' escalator out of order, but kept the ``up'' escalator running, with signs saying that people should use the elevator to get back down. I suppose at least that gave me the chance to try out their elevator.
But now the stock's dwindled to a single floor, with desperate hand-written attempts to label the sections in their new places correctly. It's doing terrible things to my effort to bring my Strategic Reserve Reading Pile under control, but it isn't like the books are going to spoil before I read them, right?
I haven't seen any signs about the final closing, so I don't know this week what the discount will be or what if any stock will be left.
Trivia: The settling of the Swedish colony on the Delaware river in March 1638 was lead by Peter Minuit, the German native of French ancestry renowned for the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. Source: The Island At The Centre Of the World: The Untold Story Of The Founding Of New York, Russell Shorto.
Currently Reading: The Story Of Maps, Lloyd A Brown. This is kind of a slog, I suppose because the meat of this book (written about sixty years ago) --- providing a general history of mapping --- has been done since and I've read many of those books. But you can't justly blame a pioneer book filling a gap because you liked the later books better. (And some of the narratives I'd have found more fascinating if I didn't know them well enough already.)