Competition, National Happiness, And The Bagging Of Groceries

What the National Grocers Association’s Best Bagger Championship “illustrates most is how the recognition for doing something well, and the desire to do it even better that that recognition prompts, enriches [the competitors’] lives on an everyday basis.” And a “country cannot be great without great grocery store baggers – their speed, courtesy, and ability to keep our spaghetti sauce from crushing our hot dog buns is crucial to maintaining public morale.”

An Independent Music Store Tries To Compete

“Amoeba Music will this year take its boldest stride yet into the online world, launching a digital download store this spring or summer. Amoeba will join the likes of Other Music in New York and ThinkIndie.com, a digital outlet that represents a consortium of the nation’s top indie stores, including Fingerprints in Long Beach, as one of the few independent retail outlets trying to claim a slice of the digital marketplace.”

Huge Surge In Book Business In India

“The success of Jaipur’s book bash, now the biggest literature festival in Asia, is in part thanks to India’s burgeoning appetite for the written word. As the country’s economy has boomed, and its middle class has grown, book sales have shot up. Most books in India are still sold in small family-run shops, but book chains are moving into malls and airports.”

‘The Best Story Salinger Ever Wrote’

It “runs about 120 pages and has no appreciable form, reading like an unedited, freewheeling character description. I know several avowed Salinger fanatics who have never made it through the thing, and I don’t blame them … I see the messiness of ‘Seymour: An Introduction’ as Salinger’s final confrontation with all the strains of his earlier fiction: sentimentality, depression, Eastern philosophy, isolation, and the guilt of being happy.”