On Saturday morning, my boys and I went to a couple of book sales, and late Saturday afternoon, a birthday party sugared my children to approximately 62,000 Hz. (My scientific studies have shown that a lot of sugar can make children very high pitched, no amount of sugar can actually render them too high pitched for me to hear. Unfortunately.) Once they hit that peak, the time was right to go somewhere where they could easily get bored: The Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale. It was half-priced day, so I focused on the books (but there were some albums in the Better Books section, so I bought some of them, too).
Some highlights include:
- Several books on painting to browse during football games, including collections of Matisse, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and William Blake.
- A Teaching Company course on Chinese History and a course on Mozart ($15 and $5 respectively because they’re priced per binder, and one is in library binders that allow you to check out a couple discs at once instead of the whole series).
- A couple of graphic novels featuring the White Knight (?) and DC’s The Huntress.
- A stack of comic books; once we looked them over and the boys selected a couple of Archie comics, they were no longer bored.
- Growing Up a Twin by a local author.
- A Classics Club edition of Old Goriot. I didn’t think I have it. I looked at the spreadsheet of my collection, and it says I don’t have it. I haven’t checked the physical inventory yet, and I suspect I’ll learn that the spreadsheet is out-of-date.
- After America by Mark Steyn.
- Miracle in the Ozarks by Chester Funkhouser.
- T.S. Eliot by Harold Bloom.
- Mom at War, a retrospective of women at war.
The albums include:
- Together, a two record set by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.
- The Christmas Album by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Although my beautiful wife gave this to me for Christmas last year, I also have a copy for the record player upstairs now.
- Six Presidents Speak, a collection of presidential speeches, I think.
I have a couple more, but I’ve mixed them in with the ones I bought on Thursday.
Even at half off it was a pretty big bill. Looking at the list, I have to wonder how much each individual comic book was listed. A couple bucks each, maybe. Oh, well, I will get my money’s worth in enjoyment, and it’s for a good cause.
Several books on painting to browse during football games, including collections of Matisse, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, and William Blake.
I like this approach. But wouldn’t it be easier to pay attention to them by turning off the football game?
The football game is the primary focus when there’s a football game to watch. The reading is a productive way to fill the commercials and gaps.
Which is why I read more attention-requiring things outside of football hours.