No one likes that thing you like.

I went to a board game meetup on Tuesday. Our host has several shelves of games available, and a few of these games he has decided he does not wish to keep. These games have sticky notes with prices on them should you wish to purchase them from him. This week, his copy of Eminent Domain had one of those stickies on it. I really like that game, so this made me kind of sad. (I already have my own copy, so it's not as if this was an opportunity to snap up a game that I wanted cheap.)

The previous time I had been there I actually played his copy with him, and he said that it was a game he really liked at first, and after a few games wasn't as sure. I asked him this time if the sudden appearance of the sticky meant that he had officially decided he didn't like it after all, and he assured me that it's not that he doesn't like it, it's just that he only has so much space for games and he only likes it well enough to play now and then, which he could do with someone else's copy. That makes perfect sense, but I still couldn't shake this feeling of sadness over such a tangible example of "you don't like this thing that I like as much as I like this thing."

Tonight I got home to find a copy of the book The Night Circus waiting for me. Someone had been keeping an eye out at the their local Stuff Going Into the Library Book Sale for a copy of it for me, had found one, and it had finally made its way here. At first I was happy to see it, because hey it's a cheap/free copy of that book that I like that I wanted to own but hadn't gotten around to buying. I picked it up, took in the crossed out barcode from a library, opened the cover, and on that first page saw the big black stamped word "DISCARDED," and that same feeling hit me all over again.

It's not a perfect book, but I very much enjoyed it, and it really resonated with me on some level. Yet here I am holding a copy that got expunged from the library's collection presumably because it wasn't circulating enough to maintain a place on the shelves. This also reminded me of the fact that my local library no longer has a copy of my favorite book (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel) on it's shelves, which is something that makes me a little sad whenever I'm reminded of that fact.

A quick search of this other library's catalog took away some of the sting - they still have a copy of The Night Circus, and this was a duplicate.

But I've been feeling a lot lately that I really dislike many things that are popular, and no one seems to like the things that I do, and for a moment there this just felt like more physical evidence of that, and I was surprised how upsetting that was.

...and in far worse news from the world of publishing...

I am very sad to hear of the passing of Terry Pratchett.

I adored his books when I was growing up. He was only getting better at that point, and so I enjoyed many, many years of catching up on his existing works while looking forward to the release of the next one and frequently enjoying each even more than the one before. He was my favorite author for so many years, and unquestionably a huge influence on my own writing style and my sense of humor in general. I know I'll be reading my favorites by him again and again in the years to come.

I have this sense that sometimes when an author passes away people are sad because they won't get any more books from that person. I suppose that's true here, but it's vastly overshadowed by a feeling of loss for the man himself.