Good Book Hunting Saturday, September 16, 2017: Branson, Missouri

Yesterday, we found ourselves in Branson, Missouri, with a little time on our hands, so we visited:

  • Calvin’s Used Books (one of the best used book stores in Missouri last I heard), where I bought a number of books because at $2 each, that’s almost as good as $1 each.
     
  • The Shepherd of the Hills Humane Society Thrift Store, where the books were significantly cheaper. I walked out with a box full of books for a buck fifty.
     
  • The State of the Ozarks festival in Hollister, which had a couple of booths with comic book and regular book authors, and I always like to pick up some of their work, although I don’t tend to get to the books quickly.

I got:

  • Five comic books from Anthony Hunter: Two issues of Lame Brains and the first three issues of Silent Sillies. Which proves my thoughts of “Are these the last comic books I ever read?” were indeed premature.
     
  • The Proof of God by Larry Witham.
     
  • Three by the lately departed Jerry Pournelle: Janissaries (which I bought even though its front cover is almost completely detached), Exiles to Glory, and King David’s Spaceship.
     
  • Everyday Life in Ancient Egypt
     
  • Six Easy Pieces by Richard P. Feynman
     
  • The Wards of Iasos by local author J. Cristopher Wilson. I saw him at LibraryCon 2017, but he was speaking in a panel when I passed by his table on the way out, so I didn’t buy his book. I saw him and caught a little of a talk he gave at the Ozark Mini Maker Faire the next week. When I saw him yesterday at a table in Hollister, his old home town, I told him if he was going to keep following me to fairs and festivals, I’d buy his book. Now, when I see him around, I’ll remind him of that.
     
  • “A” is for Alibi by Sue Grafton. It’s an early edition, but I think it’s book club.
     
  • The Face by David St. John, a novella in verse.
     
  • Voodoo, Ltd. by Ross Thomas. I’ve already read it, but the copy I read is paperback, and this is a first printing. Note to self: Do not put this on the to-read shelves, or I will have to read it again before I move it to the read shelves. THERE ARE RULES.
     
  • Finding my Father by Rod McKuen. It’s prose and looks to be a memoir of some sort with a title Roger Waters and I can appreciate.
     
  • The Mycenean World by John Chadwick.
     
  • Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen. He takes a lot of hits from non-believers and otherly denominated Christians, but what is his theology? I aim to find out.
     
  • A companion to the television/video series Charlton Heston Presents The Bible. Without the video.
     
  • Two books of photography, both called simply San Francisco.
     
  • The World of Herb Caen by Barnaby Conrad about the legendary San Francisco columnist, and by “legendary,” I mean “mostly forgotten by the illiterate generations following ours.”
     
  • The Cotswolds, a picture and guide book to that region of England, because I haven’t read a Cotswold or similarly named book in weeks.

Someone from San Francisco (or a Friscophile) donated a bunch of books to the thrift store, as there were volumes of Rod McKuen poems along with the picture books and memoir I snagged above.

My wife got a couple of Daniel Silva books she read as library books and wants to re-read and a copy of an inspirational book, Joni, to replace a copy she recently gave away. The boys got three or four books themselves, but these are not pictured because they’ve already taken them away and probably have read most of them by now.

This should keep me in browsing and reading for a bit. Now, to get to finishing the books I have half-completed so I can get to them, maybe. Except for the Ross Thomas book. I really, really have to remember to put that on the read shelves.

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2 thoughts on “Good Book Hunting Saturday, September 16, 2017: Branson, Missouri

  1. I also like Silva — I get a “Mission: Impossible” vibe off of the operations in the book and Gabriel Allon is a very interesting character, if sometimes a bit repetitive.

    I liked both “King David’s Spaceship” and “Janissaries,” which you will probably find have some similarities. “Spaceship” is set in his CoDominium universe and the original serialized version kind of set the stage for the world he and Niven would use for “The Mote in God’s Eye.” “Janissaries” was the first of three — almost four, with the last stranded in pre-publication. We’ll see if anyone finishes it. I liked it quite a bit although I remember enjoying the later books more — but it’s been a long time since I read them. Happy journeys!

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