On October 11, we went to St. Martin of Tour’s book fair in South County. I’d seen the signs, but they were not listed on BookSaleFinder.com, so we expected a small sale. Will we have enough money in hand with only $30? Probably.
Oh, but no.
It had more books than we anticipated, and soon more people than we would like for a two-year-old to run around mostly free. So I held onto the five books I’d picked up and watched the toddler, who discovered a stage at the end of the hall and loved to be upon it. As I watched to make sure he would not also discover stage-diving, Mrs. Noggle found a set of Sesame Street books. 25 in total. Which meant that my $30 was spent mostly on children’s books:

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I managed to get:
- The Circuit-Riding Combat Chaplain, a self-published book about being a chaplain in the Korean War.
- Peter the Great, a biography.
- Culture Warrior, a preening tome, no doubt, by Bill O’Reilly.
- The Hundred Year Dash by George Burns.
- The Death of Ethics in America, a book whose title indicates it was written during the process. A book written now would probably be Ethics Are Dead in America.
I spent the rest of the day expressing disappointment that I only got five books and that I only got to look over like four tables, but here’s a tip: remember the lower lip when pouting, otherwise you’ll just look sullen.
On October 18, we didn’t go to a book fair, but we found a listing on Craigslist for a book garage sale, so we loaded up and went there. I got more books:

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This haul includes:
- The Handbook of Folklore.
- The TV Theme Song Trivia Book. I flipped it open, and the first thing I saw were the first words of the voiceover for the original Battlestar Galactica theme. It’s a quiz book, and I’m sure I’ll do okay on the 1970s and 1980s and probably “I’ll Be There For You” from Friends.
- The Human Brain by Isaac Asimov.
- Grassroots Tyranny.
- Quality without Tears. Frankly, it doesn’t sound like as much fun as Quality with Tears, Sobs, and Lamentations of Developers. But I’m open to new ideas I’ll discard.
- Uppity Women in Medieval Times. An idea book.
- The Crime Encyclopedia. Also an idea book.
- Montezuma. No doubt a laudatory biography about that wretched monarch.
- Imressionism, a right purty book about my favorite art style.
I know, it’s not a lot, but it should represent a quarter’s worth of reading spread among many years and bookshelves.