In which Ernest wanders throughout the Pentagon Yards Barnes and Noble to see what the world is on about as seen through book and magazine covers.

The nook display hasn’t gotten any bigger since before Christmas, and it occurs to me that I only actually know one nook owner, my friend and WSFA Secretary, Sam Lubell, who told me he’d gotten a color nook for $200 recently. Most of the people I know own Kindles, or the occasional iPad. Since Nooks are selling for $249in the store, I asked the salesgirl if she knew about any discounts, but she said no…though you might check Groupon. Her own eReader is a Nook classic (the original), she tells me, though her husband, like your correspondent, packs an iPad.

I always stop at the featured mug section on my way to the purchase of an evil Starbucks coffee frapachino, evil because it’s guaranteed to undo any benefit I might have gotten from my Saturday morning workout at the gym. Spring is clearly on the way, promised the collection of pastel mugs, including an upbeat “Good Morning” mug in a sun-risey pink box.

The coffee counter is armed with cheerful spring cookies and adorable children reaching for them. It’s almost enough to shake me out of my curmudgeonly mood. Almost doesn’t count.

The magazine rack, all eighty feet of it, beckons me with its promise of glossy zeitgeist. The house section offers a title that catches my eye: Atomic Ranch full of retro suburban grooviness. Of course, what I long for is a magazine called Container Living, or one about houses made out of shipping crates. Thoreau gets it.

Spring has come to the cooking rack too, with sprays of asparagus, and I’m very nearly seduced into buying Cooks Soups and Stews special issue for 7.95. But not quite.

“Am I a sociopath?” Berine Madoff asks from behind bars and on the cover of New York Magazine. No such luck. Like most of us you’re just pretending to be one to excuse a lack of moral courage.

Women’s Interests appear to be defined by cheerful, young, sexy and athletic twenty something’s leaning out from their magazines, same as always. I thought I’d snap a shot of Men’s Interests to go with it, which I expected to be the same girls, but with poutier countenances, but at least in this store, men have no interests. Or all other interests are men’s. Or something.

Lifestyle is pretty clearly the codeword for “Men’s Interests,” complete with pouty girl collection. I confess to placing the 2011 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue into the picture, where it would have certainly been if not for having its own rack. I always wonder though, if it’s a sport, why aren’t there scores? Well, I guess there are stats, but I didn’t look to see if they’re inlcuded.

In the entertainment section, I pass on boy toy Justin Beeber’s middle distance stare, eyes shadowed by his trademark hair mop. Charlie Sheen only acts like a boy, and he just looks scary on the cover of Entertainment. I’m drawn to a small music magazine, Waxpoetics, which looks to be issue 45, and isn’t that fitting for their love of vinyl groove. This issue they’re trying to wrap their heads around the fact that the music they like to dance to really is disco…and the editorial is a wordy walk of shame.

In Current Events Newsweek tells us how too much information overloads the human brain (they’re right, but deal with it) and The Atlantic promises that machines will never beat the human mind (they’re wrong, and also need to deal with that).

I pass by Computers and Web for the moment, though I know I’ll be back another day.

Wallpaper, my favorite purveyor of design porn, lies on the floor offering up its 2011 design awards. Buried deeper still is the popular science and technology section, the under the heel on transportation, a blur of supercars and jet fighters, neither of which really have transportation on their minds.

Last stop, the new science fiction isle, where I try to find interesting sf that might have escaped my attention as a galley. It’s hard to find actual science fiction amidst the rows of leather clad, unclad, tattooed vampiresses and huntresses that adorn the wall though. I’ll give E.E. Knight props though for managing to blend Mil-SF and Vampire war in a mix more like like alien invasion fiction than dark chic-lit. Ben Bova has a follup to his novel Jupiter, in which he returns to the big planet to talk to the leviathans that saved the expedition in that book. Hasn’t anyone read Poul Anderson’s classic [amazon_link id=”B000URV9XU” target=”_blank” ]Three Worlds to Conquer[/amazon_link]. Been here, done this, got the paperback. No? It’s all good though, Bova is a master of classic hard sf, and another episode of his Grand Tour of the Solar System is more than welcome.

That’s enough for me. I pass with hardly a glance at the mystery shelf, the cookbook stack, the new business books and a shelf of mil-sf paperbacks by Ian Douglas and almost make it out the door. But the New Releases table exerts a gravitational pull on me, not unlike a dark star, forcing me to slingshot around it a few times until I break free of its pull and head back out into the day.