I had the usual time to kill between youth activities last night, and I know where all the Hooked on Books dollar book carts are, so I picked up a couple books.
I spent six bucks and got:
- Twilight at Mac’s Place by Ross Thomas, whose books I’ve enjoyed, but not often.
- The Buddha Tree by Fumio Niwa, a classic translated from the Japanese. To go with my eventual Natsumi Kiyoura CD.
- Every Man’s Marriage: An Every Man’s Guide to Winninght the Heart of a Woman.
- Hundred Dollar Baby by Robert B. Parker. I’ve already read it, but I spent the dollar to make sure I have it in my incomplete collection.
- The Shepherd, a rather thin looking novel by the author of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth.
- National Geographic’s Guide to the World’s Secret Places because it looks like a good book to browse if I watch any football this year, and a good source of ideas if not.
- I’m Ink, Therefore I Am, a collection of Farley cartoons by Phil Frank. Also for browsing during football and then for my oldest son to absquatulate with and destroy.
Unfortunately, that only took twenty minutes, which meant we could go by Nameless City comics and games or the Ozark Treasures antique mall. I opted for the latter, as I expected I would spend less money there and could ostensibly look for Christmas gifts. As it stands, I spent two dollars on myself (I got an issue of Ideals magazine, “Liberty”, from 1984 and an LP, Eydie Gorme’ On Stage. And I did ostensibly get a Christmas gift for a cousin. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
Total spent: eight dollars plus tax on myself, six dollars on the cousin, and probably that much on regularly priced books at Hooked on Books for my children. Not bad.
The real question is, which of these books will I read first (aside from Hundred Dollar Baby)? Probably the cartoons. How many will I have read by this time in 2020? Probably the cartoons.
Don’t know if I’d ever chatted about that one with you, but “Hundred-Dollar Baby” is my least favorite Parker book of all time, behind even the dull thud of “All Our Yesterdays.” A spoiler-y dissection, if you can’t sleep:
http://deepfriared.blogspot.com/2013/06/april-fool-he-said.html
Strangely enough, I liked All Our Yesterdays.
Also, that is an insightful post into the April Kyle story line.
Parker did do a lot of revisiting of other stories, but generally, if the people weren’t Spenser or Spenser like but a different protected class, they got short shift.
Thanks! “Ceremony” was the first Spenser I’d ever read and it hooked me — even his stuff that I don’t much care for is better than so much else of what’s out there, but the disappointment when he would phone it in was just brutal.
“Yesterdays” wasn’t a phone-in, but it just didn’t work for me. It happened when he was still trying more often than not, though.