Good Book Hunting: September 15, 2007

This weekend, we hit a couple of garage sales around our municipality, and we had a better result. For starters, it was less annoying; even though our occasional neighbors in Old Trees have signs proclaiming support for drawing and quartering the head of the nation, they’re less frequent than the “we control the horizontal; we control the vertical” nature of the signs in Kirkwood. Also, I found more books, including:


Old Trees Garage Sale books
Click for full size

  • The Warden/Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope. Because it was an old edition, and I remember the name Trollope from something. Maybe I was thinking of Lionel Trilling, come to think of it. Oh, well, what will it hurt? I mean, other than these are the first two in a series of books set in Britain in the 19th century.
  • Finch’s Fortune and Wakefield’s Course, two novels in a series about life at the Jalna homestead, home of the Whiteoak family, which take place in Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  • Mazo de la Roche of Jalna, a book about the author of the preceding books. Apparently, I have the fruits of one of de la Roche’s two American fans.
  • How to Read a Poem, in case I have been doing it wrong. I suspect most academics would tell me I have.
  • London in Dickens’ Day, a book that should help ground the Dickens books I’ll be reading. As you remember, in my report for Oliver Twist, I lamented that all pre-20th century books’ historical details kind of blurred.
  • The Sociopath Next Door, so I can learn if I am tipping my pitches.
  • Spanish Step by Step, so when I go on a refresher kick, I’ll have one more textbook to read.
  • Rhineland: Winter in a Missouri River Town, a low print run, very local history sort of book just because I could.

Additionally, I bought three VHS tapes to watch on a tiny 25″ screen where the quality won’t suffer (yeah, verily, I said 25″ was tiny, because in the 21st century friends, it’s iPod screens or what we used to call “Big Screen” televisions). These include:

  • Mallrats, which I think is probably Smith’s second best work (after Chasing Amy); reviewing this will help firm up or reject that thesis.
  • Dirty Work, Norm MacDonald’s finest work excluding the Hardee’s star voiceover work.
  • Kentucky Fried Movie, which I have never seen even though it’s Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker film.

Also, I got two record albums of jazz and big band sort of music and two CDs of the University City (Missouri) Symphony Orchestra. I didn’t even know U City had a symphony orchestra.

Tomorrow is another Saturday, so no doubt I’ll be trolling for a couple more books.

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2 thoughts on “Good Book Hunting: September 15, 2007

  1. At your urging, I watched Kentucky Fried Movie, and I had forgotten the sheer number of women’s breasts that appeared in screwball comedies in the decade from 1975-1984.

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