On Friday, my beautiful wife and I went to the members-only preview night of the Friends of the Library book fair in Ozark, Missouri. We’ve been off-and-on members since we’ve been down here, but this is the first time we’ve deployed our membership to get a look at the books before the general public could. Well, the general public could pick through the books and pay a $5 premium at the end to join if they needed to, but that’s neither here nor there.
It was a little crowded at a little after 8pm when we got there. The main library was closed, and the book sale was a little bit of light in a sea of darkness. It was just crowded enough and we were on short enough time before picking our children up that I didn’t tip into the buying frenzy I sometimes get into, but I got a few books.
I got:
- Several films on both DVD and VHS. Given that I watch six new movies a year, these should hold me a while, especially coupled with the others I’ve stocked up over the last couple of years. And yet sometimes when I want to watch something, I don’t have anything that jumps out right at that moment.
- Science, Numbers, and I by Isaac Asimov. One of his short nonfiction books. I like them, although I haven’t read one in a while. So how much can I say I actually like them, then? I dunno.
- Spectrum II, a collection of sci-fi short stories.
- Monster from Out of Time, a book whose title sounds an awful lot like a Lovecraft story. I haven’t checked up yet, but I think Long was in that milieiu.
- Knight of the Scimitar, a novel about the Crusades. Given its age, it probably has a clear-cut moral idea.
- The Broken Snare, an ex-Library book about someone building a ranch in the Canadian Rockies.
- One of William Shatner’s many autobiographies. Internet, how come no one has done a parody of the theme from Shaft called “Shat”?
- Richard Marcinko’s guide to success. As you might remember, I read his autobiography Rogue Warrior in March.
I was a little disappointed that the sale didn’t have any Gold Eagle pulp paperbacks; I have found my first Executioner and SOBs titles at this sale in previous years. Also, one of other attendees was a twit scanning all the books with his smartphone to find what he could sell for more than a buck on Ebay, and I have a whole post’s worth of disdain for that behavior that I’ll have to get into later.
At any rate, I ended up with fewer books than I got at the Friends of the Clever Library book sale, but I did get a new FoL t-shirt in black. I’m also just about ready for the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book fair coming up the penultimate week of the month. Since I’ll hit that one on half price day or bag day, I might end up straining my bookshelves again.
