Things I Bought Recently: Baby Names Book

As I mentioned previously, I am reading a book about how to write a novel in 26 days. The book includes a series of exercises to help prep for what it describes as a "writing marathon."

Some of the sections was devoted entirely to the tools I would need to write my book. Most of these exercises have involved writing lists or figuring out resources from the internet to utilize. One section, however, explicitly states that I should go out an purchase certain items to be successful.

Being unemployed the idea of being told to go buy more things that weren't really in my budget did not directly appeal to me. But, I did say I was going to commit myself to this program and follow the instructions of the book to see if it could be done. So, off to the bookstore I went.

Among the books I was supposed to have at my disposal were a dictionary (which I had), a thesaurus (again, something I had) and a book on Chicago Manual Style (I cheated slightly on this with a pocket style guide). The only book I did not have was a baby names book.

I could have ordered this off Amazon, but with shipping it would take several days to get to my house. I wanted to keep moving forward with the exercises in the book, so, instead, I decided to reserve a copy down at Barnes & Noble. I figured reserving a copy online was the least embarrassing way to purchase a book like this. I didn't want to have to deal with a lot of questions from people about why I was buying it.

My friend came along with me and we decided to stop at a bookstore closer to my house just to see if they would had it in stock before driving the 20 minutes to the closest Barnes & Noble. Unfortunately, that bookstore closed at 7 o'clock, which is kind of absurd, but there wasn't anything we could do about it. Getting back on the freeway we went down Barnes & Noble.

We browsed around a bit before picking up my book, which is always dangerous because I didn't want to spend anymore money on this trip than I had too. When I went to the checkout to pick up the book, the cashier inevitably asked me if I was expecting. I had to politely explain to her that, no, I simply needed it for a writing tool, which she seemed to accept.

When I got home, I found the book actually had a lot of useful information in it. The book wasn't simply a list of names. It also gave country or culture of origin and the meaning. I was able to look up the top five boys and girls names in each state, and names that were rising in popularity due to exposure in popular culture.

There are some really terrible name out there, I won't mention any lest I offend someone, but next time you're browsing your local bookstore stop by the baby book section and leaf through copy. You might be surprised at what you find.