So a couple weeks ago, the owner of ABC Books posted on Facebook that they were “drowning” in books and would no longer be accepting books for trade.
So I immediately responded to the distress call and immediately several weeks later sprang into action.
I had planned to go there with my children as they were off school, and it’s one of the trips we take as we spend days together. My beautiful wife wanted to go to spend her Christmas gift card(s), so we waited until she finished her work day and packed off to ABC Books. When we got there, we ran into a pastor from our church and his family. Which is not surprising, as the book store is owned by a couple from church. But it made me feel part of a community, running into people I know about town.
At any rate, you’re all wondering what I got? A couple of books courtesy the gift card I have my beautiful wife for Christmas:
Here’s my list:
- Strength Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath. My beautiful wife took this test and found it useful, and she found a copy with its Internet code envelope intact, so we got a really good deal on it. I think she might have been planning this for me for Christmas, but I can take the quiz before then.
- Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus by Karl Barth.
- Everyday Zen by Charlotte Joko Beck. Although I don’t plan to become a Zen master, I do enjoy reading about it.
- The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Bible which I expect to be very much unlike Asimov’s Guide to the Bible which I read in 2015 but apparently did not review.
- A nice edition of The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine.
Most notable was the things I put down. I picked up a translation of Confucius’s Analects. Which I I just read. However, this edition broke up the sayings with the original Chinese, so it looked more digestible. I also forwent a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’ve been thinking about reading this, but I think I have a copy somewhere already. The urge to read it has not been such that I’ve gone looking for it, but it also wasn’t enough for me to buy another copy in case I was mistaken.
I pawed around the church history and books on the Bible section looking for something that distills the evolution of the Bible and why the things that were not included were not included (including the things that didn’t make it into the Protestant versions of the Bible but remain in the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles). You know, I had a pastor there I could have asked, but I did not. Well, I’ll see him in a couple of days and should remember to ask then.
At any rate, my beautiful wife got two books, including one I already own (To Engineer Is Human), but she got her own copy even after I mentioned it. Partly because she likes to mark books up and partly (mostly) because she knows I wouldn’t be able to find my copy for a couple years.
At any rate, that should hold me for a couple of days, anyway. But the semiannual book sales start in a couple weeks.
