Good Book Hunting, March 14, 2019: The Church Garage Sale

Yesterday, we dropped by the annual garage sale at church that benefits the youth group. It always happens on spring break, which always catches us by surprise, as we like to clean out a little and donate some things, and we always end up just dumping random nearby things into a box.

But never books. No, never books. Well, unless they’re duplicates or titles that I decide I will probably never want to read.

But I did manage to find a couple for myself at the sale.

I got:

  • The Man Who Used The Universe by Alan Dean Foster. I haven’t read much Foster lately. Perhaps I should pick one up. This one will no doubt be at the top of the stack.
  • Wyrms by Orson Scott Card. This book is from the 1980s? Why did I think Card was from later? Because I didn’t know of him in the 1980s, undoubtedly.
  • The Paradox Planet by Steven Spruill, another 80s-era science fiction paperback. Someone was culling his collection. I know I should say “his or her,” but, come on, man. We know the odds here.
  • Sixth Column by Robert Heinlein. A Heinlein juvie for a quarter? This made the trip worthwhile on its own.
  • The 15:17 to Paris, the story of the three American servicemen who stopped a terrorist attack on a train. This is the movie tie-in version.
  • A New Owners Guide to Beagles because we’ve been thinking about diversifying the livestock at Nogglestead.
  • Conquistador by S.M. Stirling, an alt history novel of some sort.

I also got Natalie Cole’s Christmas album Holly & Ivy along with DVDs on learning American Sign Language, a Groucho Marx compilation from You Bet Your Life, and a collection of The Three Stooges films, and Adventures in Babysitting on VHS.

Total cost was less than $20. The total time to enjoy them all is, what, three or four weeks? The total time until I do so: Decades, if ever.

But we got a couple of kids a couple miles closer to the national youth gathering in Minneapolis this summer if nothing else.

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3 thoughts on “Good Book Hunting, March 14, 2019: The Church Garage Sale

  1. From what I can remember, “Sixth Column” felt dated when I read it as kid. I’ve always kind of wanted to read it again since amongst the moderns it’s supposed to be proof of Heinlein’s virulent racism. Even though the more recent edition of “Conquistador” has been given a cover that makes it seem like one of Stirling’s “Emberverse” series, it’s not. It read OK, but seemed like an attempt to start a series that didn’t gin up enough sales to continue.

    I used to be an avid consumer of *anything* Foster, so I remember finding “The Man Who Used the Universe” kind of interesting when I picked it up. Checked it out again a few years ago and I still thought it was interesting, but not as interesting as Foster thought it was.

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