Good Book Hunting, June 15, 2019: ABC Books

ABC Books had an author in to sign her book yesterday, so I headed up after a martial arts class. As is my wont, I acknowledged the author, headed to the martial arts section, then the artist monographs, then the philosophy and poetry shelves, all of which are getting more and more sparse as I pick them over. Only then do I go to the author’s table to see what the author has to offer.

Here’s what I got:

You cannot see them, but they include:

• Selected Poems from Midnight Galleries by Jennifer Silvey, a free giveaway promoting a collection of poems.
• Zen and the Art of Stickfighting by Stephen F. Kaufman. We’ve been working with sticks at my martial arts school for six or eight months now; certainly this book will be more useful to me than Zen and the Art of Knitting.
• The Book of Goodbyes, a collection of poems by Jillian Weise.
• The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson.
• Retraining Your Mind by D. Dyneska, the author who was in shop. It’s a little more practically minded, so to speak, than the Buddhist and Stoic thought that I read to try to get my mind right. It’s more in line with what my beautiful wife reads. Perhaps I should have had it inscribed to her and gave it to her for her birthday.

Not depicted: A monograph on Antoine Watteau and a five hundred page biography of Vince Lombardi. I had to save something for the next time there’s an author signing.

The proprietrix also related a story: The author who appeared on May 19 was a little saddened to learn that I attend the same church as the owner of ABC Books; she thought it meant I would not like her work. The owner of ABC Books reassured her that I read a lot of different things, that I’m well educated, and that I’m a poet myself, which seemed to make the author feel better.

Of course, the owner does know that I not only buy a vast variety of books, many from her, but she also catches me from time to time sitting on a bench at church with a book in my hands. I’ve explained to her the code–if I’m holding the book so its cover is visible, it probably has an ABC Books sticker on the back. If I have the book in my lap, it’s from some other book store. Or, more likely, a garage sale or a book sale.

But enough about that–I have to get back to reading.