Citizen Reader

I know: puke. I was in a store the week before Halloween and they already had holiday decorations up, which always just seems really wrong. And this year I'm hearing that stores are dispensing with Black Friday opening times of 2 or 4 a.m. and just opening up on Thanksgiving night? Ridiculous.

But you know me, I'm part of the problem, not the solution. As this season creeps up on us (particularly Cyber Monday), I thought it might be a good idea to offer a small, hopefully-not-too-obnoxious reminder that if you do any shopping online this year, please consider doing so by stopping here first and then using my affiliate links to Powell's Books or to Amazon. You can use the links in this post, or the two links that are permanently at the top right in my sidebar. If you click through on those, anything you purchase in that session will yield a small kickback to me, which I primarily use to support this site's hosting, etc. In addition, all of my title links in my posts go through to Powell's; if you use one of those, again, anything you buy in that session (doesn't have to be the book whose link you followed) will be credited to me.*

And that's the last you'll hear from me on the subject for months--I might do reminders quarterly, because that's the sort of mercenary I've become--but tomorrow, back to regularly scheduled programming. Thank you in advance, and thank you in particular to readers who have already shopped those sites after clicking through here. Your friendly neighborhood nonfiction ranter really, really appreciates it.

*If you'd like to patronize other great sites with similar affiliate links, you should know that The Millions, Bookslut, and Bookshelves of Doom are all great book sites to support too.

UPDATE: Would anyone who views this site on an Apple computer please comment and let me know if you can or can't see the fairly large Amazon graphic/link near the top of the right sidebar? A reader let me know they can't see that graphic, and the only thing I can figure out is that I think they use an Apple. I use a PC so it's hard for me to check that! Thanks so much.