Good Book Hunting: October 5, 2013

Subtitle: Wherein Your Book Fair Hero Disappoints You

Today we drove through the rain to Clever, Missouri, from downtown Springfield for the Friends of the Clever Library Book Sale. Why were we in downtown Springfield? Because I’d gotten an email from the YMCA about a book fair at the Downtown Springfield YMCA. So my beautiful wife unloaded my children in the rain and I sought a parking space downtown–don’t laugh, Springfield has a revitalized downtown that’s at least as busy as most sections of downtown Springfield on a comparable non-Cardinals Saturday. Well, okay, maybe it’s worth a laugh, since the parking spot I found was just across Jefferson. As I got out of the car, they were coming out of the library. According to the front desk volunteer, the book sale was books on a couple of tables, and the tables were gone now.

So, off to Clever.

In April, I said I was going to limit the number of books I bought. I did not. This trip, however, I did.

Purchases at the Clever Book Sale October 5, 2013

The stack on the right: My beautiful wife’s collection of magazines and books. In the center, where my towers usually stand: the boys’ collection of new books and VHS cassettes. That little bump on the right: what I got.

I got:

  • The Crossroads by John D. MacDonald.
     
  • Lemons Never Lie by Richard Stark.
     
  • Dead Street by Mickey Spillaine.
     
  • Stony Man: Vanishing Point, the only Mack Bolan-related book they had this time around.
     
  • A hardback nonfiction book on Japanese gangs.
     
  • Three Highlander movies on videocassette.
     
  • A couple of Star Trek movies on videocassette in case I didn’t have them yet.
  • Kingpin on videocassette.

That is right: Five books total, and one of them I might already own (the MacDonald). I bought the Star Trek movies because I think I have a gap in my collection, but these did not fill any gaps, so I have dupes to ship off to someone. Today’s purchases were heavily insurance in nature: that is, I bought them to make sure I would not have missed them if I did not have them already.

Funny what a thirty-to-forty books read year can do to even my well-known thirst to acquire books.

Of course, in the coming weeks, the Friends of the Christian County Library and the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library will hold their book sales, so I might fall into my irresponsible hoarding of bound and printed knowledge habits again soon.

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5 thoughts on “Good Book Hunting: October 5, 2013

  1. It was quite a time-trip for me. I hadn’t heard the theme song in ages. And as the events in the first couple of minutes transpired, I thought, “I had that guy. I had that guy. I had her. I had that tank.”

    Correction: I have them.

    One thing about having a pack rat for a sainted mother is that all the trappings of my youth, including comic books, action figures, and baseball cards, were not thrown away.

  2. That is fortunate!

    I still have a few stuffed animals that were precious to me as a child. Their existence gives me a sense of permanence and security–that not everything changes.

  3. As a frequent reader, you probably know already how much artifacts from youth mean to me. Especially as my line dies young.

    By the way: The GI Joe videos do not include the little “So now you know/And knowing is half the battle” lessons at the end of each episode. I let my children convince me that we were watching “the lesson” (which they didn’t know what I meant, but they humored me to get a little extra cartoon time). It was a couple of minutes into the second episode that I realized it was not, in fact, the lesson.

    Played by elementary school children. I know how a sitcom dad feels.

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