Good Book Hunting: August 13, 2011

Yesterday, instead of doing something productive, I gathered up the family and headed to two garage sales. When we’d gone to Asbury United Methodist Church last year, they had a whole room of books. This year, there was only a table, but it was heavy on the science fiction as you will see below. Additionally, we managed to reach the SLS 8th Grade Trip Sale about 10 minutes before it was going to close at 11, and, hey, they had books, too.

Here’s what I got:

August 13, 2011 book purchases

I got:

  • Note one, but two copies of Robert Ruark’s last novel, The Honey Badger. They had a paperback at Asbury, and a hardback at SLS. So I might have bought the only two copies in Springfield.

    Would you buy a book based on a viral YouTube video?

    I would.

  • A Philip K. Dick book, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said. If you ever find a Philip K. Dick book for 50 cents, buy it. They’re rare. Why do They want to keep people from reading Philip K. Dick?
  • A couple Robert Silverbergs, Valentine Pontifex and Sailing to Byzantium. I need to finish his history of Prester John one of these days.
  • A couple Philip Jose Farmers, Down in the Black and Red Orc’s Rage. I don’t know if I’ve read him, but they were fifty cents each.
  • Foundation and Earth, which I am pretty sure I already own in paperback.
  • A couple of sewing books.
  • A history/biography of Peter the Great of Russia. Because I didn’t have one already. I don’t think.
  • A couple Pohls, Black Star Rising and Homegoing. I think I already own the first, but I buy first and discover duplicates years later.
  • A Lawrence Welk record album, Polka Party. BECAUSE I AM FROM WISCONSIN! One of the strangest things I’ve every seen, and I’ve seen some strange things in my life, was my father dancing a polka at a church festival.
  • An album called Honky Tonk Piano on vinyl. They were a quarter each, so I bought the four they had.
  • The first two seasons of Seinfeld on DVD for $1.50. I blame Greg Gattuso.
  • A Berlitz 90 minute Russian for Travelers cassette. When one fellow saw this at the checkout, he showed it to a high school girl next to him, and she spit out a stream of Russian. Well, then. I see I’m an uneducated buffoon that this simple cassette will not correct.

Sadly, that’s 22 books, mostly hardbacks, to fit onto my collapsing bookshelves while I’m reading mostly pulp paperbacks to make room for them. I can’t even think how much trouble I’d be getting myself into if I’d been doing St. Louis book fairs for the last two years.

The wife

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories