There’s a bookstore here in Mesa that has earned my respect. It’s called Changing Hands (www.changinghands.com) and it’s an independent bookstore that was named Bookseller of the Year 2007 by Publishers Weekly. They have new and used books, gifts, storytime for preschoolers including sign language and bilingual storytimes, and a very impressive calendar of events.
Changing Hands donates books to veterans groups, senior citizens, and prison inmates just to name a few. They also support local Girl Scout and Boy Scout book drives, school book drives, etc.
And get this…they offer bus fare reimbursement and a bike rack for their employees!
Anyway, we were over there, today, and I bought a (used) trivia book called This book of More Perfectly Useless Information. It’s great. Pure silliness. Here are a couple of little gems that are on the very first page:
“Trivia was a Roman goddess to whom sacrifices were offered at crossroads. Because travelers often engaged in idle gossip at crossroads, Trivia’s name (referring to three roads coming together) came to be associated with the sort of information exchanged in such places.”
“Every time Beethoven sat down to write music, he poured ice water over his head.”
In the category of “Onlys”, we find these snippets:
“Almonds and pistachios are the only nuts mentioned in the bible.”
“The only two people in the Baseball Hall of Fame who had nothing to do with baseball are Abbott and Costello.” (Go ahead, check it out.)
And this little gem, “Snails make only once in a lifetime, but it can take up to 12 hours.”
Well, that was fun!
Razzmatazlady 
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